Lochore Meadows Cross Duathlon, 4 Sep 2022

Since I hadn’t raced a duathlon in what felt like forever coupled with my hand not quite being up to scratch after my operation last year and struggling to come back after covid I went into this race with very few expectations. I was really using this as a practice run before heading out to Europeans and to test how much my hand could cope with.

It was a very wet day, but could you expect anything else being in Scotland! This played in my favour as it would make the bike leg a little more technical suiting my strengths.

From the beginning of the first run I managed to take the lead. I set off at a decent pace I was comfortable with until I got to a steep hill, and I quickly realised I’d maybe not got my pacing as good as I initially thought. I dragged myself around the remainder of the first run still managing to hold onto the lead. My first transition was pretty slow so needs to be brushed up on.  

The bike leg was good, I managed to extend my lead in the women’s field and move up to 4th with the men. The bike leg began up a technical single-track hill where I was caught behind some riders, it then widened and we continued uphill through a field with cows. The course then levelled off and hit a fast bumpy section of fire road before heading back downhill. The heavy rainfall had made the rooty descent extra slippy. This was definitely my favourite section of the course. At the bottom of the descent the course snaked through the trees before heading back around for the second lap. I had a clearer run on the second lap which enabled me to get a quicker, smoother lap.

My transition off the bike was possibly even worse than the first but luckily I’d built up a big enough lead that it didn’t affect anything. With this being my first duathlon in a while I’d forgotten how hard running off the bike was. Luckily I’d come out of transition with a little group who were doing the triathlon. I managed to latch on to these to get paced initially before I somewhat found my legs. The running intervals I’d been doing the previous weeks definitely helped with this.

In the end I lost 3 places during the run, 2 of these however I’m putting towards my final leg being about 500m longer than any of the other runners due to poor signage. I came home in 7th outright and first female by a comfortable margin.

Kim Baptista