Even with a leisurely start time, my alarm went off at 06:00. I debated whether to get up. After a hard time at Lough Cutra and a hard time at Metalman, I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to take on Kilkenny. But I also need to get back into the water.
In the end, the swim was cancelled due to water quality anyway. Replaced by a 2.4k run along the same run course we could take on twice after the bike. The first run was easy enough. A lot of people sprinted off and soon realised that had over-paced themselves. Even after T1 the running wasn’t over as the mount line was up a steep grassy hill.
The bike was great. Lots of clear junctions or guards stopping traffic for us. The first half of the course was into a headwind and few other people were using aerobars so even riding at less than 200 Watts I was passing long lines of athletes who were struggling into the wind. Maybe only three stronger cyclists came past me, although I was in the third of three waves.
The second run was also comfortable enough. It is not a flat course but I was just about able to pace myself up the hill. We finished on the top lawn in front of Kilkenny Castle.
My overall time was:
1:20:27
I just scraped into the top half coming 100th out of 212 athletes. Of course, I’m in the M30-39 category, so that only translates to 21 of 34. My splits were:
Discipline |
Time |
Run 1 |
12:02 |
T2 |
2:10 |
Bike |
39:49 |
T2 |
2:04 |
Run 2 |
24:20 |
Pace wise, I was 165th in run 1 and 77th in run 2, so some nice negative splits going on there.