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2nd Place Finish

Hello Bloggle, I did my first ever Duathlon on Sunday – the “Chilly Duathlon” at Castle Combe Race Circuit. Fortunately the weather stayed fine and the race didn’t live up to its name. The competition was a demanding 2 mile run – 10 mile bike – 1 mile run for my Youth category which had competitors drawn from across the South West. It was a great experience for me and I highly recommend this race to any beginners in Triathlon – now I know what “Draft Legal” means !

The run didn’t worry me particularly but this was also the first time I had ever done a run to bike transition. I had been practicing with my new Lake shoes – all ready on the bike – secured by elastic bands (very pro !) but by the weekend I wasn’t quite ready to try it for real just yet. As a result I went for a running start in first transition – running on my new ‘gucci’ red Keo/Look Grip Cleats :-( This was not as hard as I thought it would be, but it felt a bit like having clogs on!

Once on I clipped-in first time and I was away. I took it easy on the first lap, tried a bit of drafting and then finally put on the power mid-way. On the last lap I started to figure out how I was going to get my feet out of my new Lake CX210C Tri Shoes, which I love! No worries, the big Velcro tab made it easy. Ready for transition, I rode the last 200m with my feet on top of my shoes which squashed down flat with no effort – this had been a worry as there was a very tight turn back into transition where the timing kit was and I had to keep control with my feet out of my shoes. Luckily transition (T2) went very smoothly and I was able to over-take the girl in front of me on the run: finishing second girl in the Youth race. Not bad for the first outing this year, but better than that – I learnt a lot.

Africa