Posts Tagged ‘duathlon’

I first did the Phoenix Park Duathlon back in 2023 and it was a well-organised and inclusive event. This time, DUCC brought a whole team.

The event was well organised again with loads of marshals available. There was a slight delay to starting the race when the ambulance broke down en route to the event but everything was still very smooth. It went off in three waves and despite promising to run a 25-minute 5k I ended up in the last one.

The first run was two laps of the field and nice and flat. Transitioning on the bike was fine and we set out to complete three laps of the park on fully closed roads. The bike course is fast, too, with only one meaningful hill at the end. I was able to stay aero for a lot of the first lap. On the second, the wind picked up and it was harder to stay on the aero bars but it calmed down again for the final lap. Another smooth transition and it was onto the run for a final lap around the field.

My total time was:

1:23:10

I was slightly faster across everything compared with two years ago. I am pleased with that as I felt like I was fitter back then. I looked at my heart rate and I was working slightly harder this time but I also think my running form has come on a lot and that has helped.

Well done to Hugh, Finn, Paddy and Naz who has completed the event. Paddy won his age group and Naz completed the race despite dealing with a medical emergency in the middle. Great effort all around. The photographers managed to find me this year: thanks to Triathlon Ireland and Belpark Triathlon Club for the pictures.

I don’t like duathlons. It’s just running and cycling. Triathlons are hard, and therefore worthwhile because it involves swimming and I am a poor swimmer. Also, it’s an Olympic sport. Running is good because I like running and again, it’s an Olympic sport. Duathlons are just this weird in-between thing. Nobody ever asks if you’ve ever done a duathlon.

I signed up anyway to race with the club but in the end, I was the only one there. So, I was feeling pretty fed up at the start. Work, university, and being a dad have all been getting on top of me recently and I’m just not feeling like myself. Hopefully, race season will fix that.

Run 1

The first run was 5k: two loops of the field by transition. I was in wave three and set off right at the back but despite my relatively easy pace, I soon began progressing through the field. I wanted to run at a comfortable pace so I could at least attempt to enjoy it.

It was good to see at least some mix of abilities. Ireland is typically focused on highly competitive athletes so having people in the race who were running a 30+ minute 5k made it feel more inclusive and a bit more like home.

Bike

The cycle course was 3 x 7k laps of Phoenix Park. Best of all: closed roads! The course was well marshalled, had a good road surface and few enough athletes on the course that it wasn’t overcrowded. Reasonably flat, too: you could pedal the whole way around with one easy climb at the end. Athletes with a higher FTP than mine will have used the big chainring the whole way around.

The best thing was probably the views. Phoenix Park is huge. Even though you are in the heart of Dublin, you would never know it if it wasn’t for the occasional glimpse of the Dublin skyline. The rest of the time you are cycling through trees, hills and grass.

Run 2

The final run was a single lap of the field. I set off at the same easy pace. Maybe a little faster as there was someone breathing down my neck. After the 2k point, I couldn’t help myself speeding up a little for the sprint finish.

Results

There were 260 finishers of which I was the 200th with an overall time of:

1:26:56

My splits were:

They had a photographer at the end but they missed me at the start, end, and on the bike, unfortuntely.

Duathlon is a multisport run-cycle-run event. I’ve never really been that into duathlons. It doesn’t have the sex appeal of triathlon. Perhaps because it is plausible that people like both running and cycling. Whereas nobody likes swimming, cycling and running so we can all suffer together.

Still, Trinity Triathlon was making it a club trip and my previous experience in Naas, for the Naas triathlon, had been a good one. This one was at the Punchestown race course and featured a 3k run, 20k cycle and 3k run.

Just as we rocked up, the freezing rain came down. Fáilte to Ireland. Luckily, it held off for the race and sat comfortably in the cold but not too cold temperature. The bike course was an out-and-back which had a long hill that, to its credit, felt longer on the way down than it did on the way up.

My splits were:

Good enough for 128 out of 178. It was on the National Championship series so everyone was annoyingly fast. I’m claiming victory vicariously because I drove Maxence to the race, and he came first in his age group.

Racing is back! Last weekend, we headed up to Croft Motor Racing Circuit for the Yorkshire Duathlon. There were both a sprint and standard distance race that formed the national championship. Amy and I did the standard distance that is a 10-kilometre run, 40-kilometre bike and final 5-kilometre run.

The field was competitive and hundreds of people came running past me on the start straight. I wondered if I was going too slowly but my first kilometre came in at 4:10 and I held this throughout the first run section averaging 4:13 per kilometre. When I went through the 5-kilometre mark I realised I could easily run a 10k PB, and possibly take the family 10k PB as well. Alas, the run course came up 100 metres short on my Garmin so I cannot in good conscience count it.

Running so fast was a continuous decision to sacrifice the rest of my race and I collapsed over the barrier in T1. Luckily I managed to recover well enough to put in a sub-80 bike split. The final run was dogged by a stitch but I still managed a 23:09 for a course that measured a little over 5 kilometres so I was happy with that.

Amy put in a smashing performance that won her age group, including a sub-39 minute first run and sub-70 minute bike.

Racing on the motor circuit was excellent: the super-smooth tarmac and generous width really contrast with riding on the roads. There are constant pot holes to dodge and bumpy toad surfaces that make getting down on the aero bars unpleasant. There was none of this on the motor circuit which was as smooth as can be. It was a joy to cycle on.

The organisation by TriHard was very good.

Ironman VR17 was another race that I did finish but I was technically a DNF due to Garmin’s incompetence. I couldn’t access the .fit files to upload to Ironman Virtual Club so despite riding 160 km that weekend, I didn’t manage to get it into Virtual Club to record my result. Thanks, Garmin.

But on the plus side, my World Triathlon Leeds virtual challenge medal has turned up.

As you may know, Garmin have had a massive outage. It went down Wednesday night/Thursday morning and started coming back online on Monday, so 4-5 days. It took out their website, call centres, Garmin Connection, production line in Taiwan and even services like flyGarmin and Garmin Pilot.

Garmin’s software is awful at the best of times. Syncs constantly fail with the Garmin Connect mobile app, there are a bunch of bugs in their website that have lastest years (I still can’t see my swim from Wetherby Triathlon) and a lot of stuff crashes and does not work as it should. Hopefully, this will be a kick up their ass to make things better.

As a result, this has put a lot of strain on the things that rely on Garmin.

I managed to record my World Triathlon Leeds virtual event and earn my certificate. I was less lucky with Ironman VR16. Unusually, Ironman was on the ball and extended the deadline but technical problems at Garmin’s end with synced rides going missing and activities not reporting correctly meant I gave up after an hour of messing around. Thanks for that, Garmin. Still, even if I do not have the badge, I know I was a VR16 finisher in my heart.

The cycle was particularly challenging. I did 120 km, but a third of the way through a bolt fell out of my cleat (see above) and I had to do the last 3.5 hours with one foot clipped in and the other riding the flat side of the pedal. Thankfully, there were no major climbs or descents.

I hsven’t been doing any fast running recently. The endless base miles for GVRAT have been slow plods and Ironman VR14 was an easy run, too.

However, I decided to do VR15 as a brick. Not the full 40 km bike and 13 km run, as I had already done 100 km on the bike the day before. But, as a warm-up, I did a 20 km blast up to Horsforth and back on the bike before setting off on the run.

The first two kilometres were a little sluggish but the rest were down around 4:40 per kilometre, finishing on a 4:05. Total time for the 10km was 47:12, which is one of the fastest 10ks I have ever run. So, pretty pleased with that. Although, there is an important caveat that I took a break at the turnaround point, so it’s technically a Ross Barkley time.

I was originally planning to do the 13 km as one fast block, but after stopping my watch and restarting it for the 3km, I realised I burnt my legs trying to get a good 10k time. So, I finished off the final 3km in a still-not-shabby 5:00 per kilometre.

Now that I have my bike back, and have prep for Dalesman to do, I am back on the Ironman VR events. I did not feel much like running after GVRAT but luckily it was only a sprint distance, so a 6.5 km run combined with my existing bike rides did nicely.

My long-awaited return to Ironman VR racing. I completed all of one to eight (except five, so not all one to eight), but then had my first ever DNF in multisport racing when my rear mech exploded 30 km into the bike route. Since then, my Bianchi has been at Woodrup getting repaired. Thankfully, it is now back in my possession and racing again.

I did the run in a 13 km on Saturday morning and then settled in on Sunday for the 40 km bike ride. Stormy winds eventually convinced me to stay inside on the turbo, but only after I had stopped at 27 km on the Saturday after the Zwift race. I should have thought that one through.

I had a look around the Watopia courses and settled on big loop. At 42 km it was the closest match to the distance and, compared to the others, did not seem that hilly at 650 metres of climbing.

It was very hilly. The first thing it did was take me up Epic KOM, which took 35 minutes. On the flat, I can nail that distance in 1:20:00. I was still peddling at around 1:33:00 after the jungle loop also included a long and sustained climb. And because of GVRAT, I still had to get off the bike and do a 10 km run, even though I had already finished the run for Ironman VR13.

Oh well, lesson learned. Next time I might just grit my teeth and do four boring laps of the 10 km flat route.

93 minutes on the turbo wasn’t too uncomfortable. Having the smart trainer gives a bit more wiggle, but I did have to get out of the saddle a few times to give my ass a break. Less unpleasant than previous training sessions, though. I’m not sure whether it’s the smart trainer, the change in evaluation or the new shorts but it feels a bit less unpleasant than previous 90-minute rides.

Another virtual duathlon in the bag. I was already doing a 23 km road race on Zwift as part of Hyde Park Harrier Triathlon’s Zwift race series, so I just kept peddling fnr another 17 km after finishing to complete the bike section.

I knocked the runs out back-to-back with a 14 km run up the canal and around Kirkstall Forge. I’ve always wondered what the path from the towpath to the forge, and running 10 km every day has given me the nudge to explore it, so I did. It’s not that exciting but a least now I know.