Oakley City Duathlon Race Report

Pre-race:

After a fairly poor nights sleep (as usual before a race) i woke at 5.45am. My two main tasks were to...eat and drink a bit of brekkie and plaster myself with suncream. I did also put on some clothes, and headed out complete with bike and rucksack at 6.05am. 50 minutes and 20km later I arrived at the start with an hour to spare.

It was a clear and warm morning. This is the transition area, with the Singapore Flyer (to the left) and an amazing field of cranes and piling rigs at the site of the soon-to-be Sands Casino (on the right). I have never seen a site like that before!

I spent some time setting up my transition spot...

.. and studying the rather complicated in/out routes...

I made sure I knew where my bike was and taped a couple of Hammer Gels to my top tube. All sorted. I bumped into Shahrom and Ah Wei, and saw Cort Prois (2nd in recent PCC Time Trial) and his wife Sandy. The queue for the toilets was long...

...so I decided not to bother and went for a 5-10min easy jog warm up. Was feeling quite relaxed and raring to go!

10km Run:

The first thing to report is that my HRM went crazy after only a few minutes and kept automatically stopping - this was extremely annoying so I began to lose track of my time for the run. Eventually I gave up re-starting it. The first 15mins of the run were great - quite fast - and I was feeling pretty good. We had to do 2 x 5km loops across Esplanade bridge, along the river, then back across along Boat Quay. When I finished the first loop the timer at the finish line was on 31mins+ so I was already 1min behing schedule. After another 10 minutes I began to feel a pain in my upper abdomen, under my ribs. Not a stitch, but possibly my diaphragm. Anyway it became quite bad and I had to stop and walk for a while. This might have been due to my fast start. I started running again but quite slowly to keep the pain at bay. I was sure that it would go away for the bike ride. As I finished the ride I was pleasantly surprised that the finish timer was only on 1h02m+, so I was only 2 mins down.

T1:

1 x gulp of water, 1 x gulp of H2O energy drink. I jogged out with my bike but lots of others were walking. Abdomen pain gone - I always stop for a few secs in transition to concentrate on breathing and tell myself to relax.

41km Ride:

I soon got into my stride on the bike and managed to keep pushing on the big ring in 11th gear, a pace that I felt I could maintain for 4 x 10km laps. My legs were spinning nicely and I thought my speed was good, perhaps a shade over 30kph. Early on in the ride I wolfed down a Banana Hammer Gel - a truly disgusting experience I must say! The taste was awful!

The course was as flat as a pancake with a couple of tiny bumps. This was great as it meant that I only needed to change gear once a lap and for the first time ever I managed to stay in the aero position for almost the entire leg. My bar position was fine and my legs were good.

This was a great ride. Apart from a few leading men lapping me, hardly anyone passed me and I was cruising past people continuously - a great feeling! That feeling is even better when passing people with expensive carbon aero frames and aero wheels!

There were some tight corners towards the end of each lap and it was a good buzz whizzing around them with other riders around me - like being in a proper bike race! On one corner the guy in front of me took the inside line but swept very wide on the exit and I had to slow down. I instinctively tutted in annoyance and he said "Sorry!" - I also said sorry as losing 0.2sec of time shouldn't really bother me.

In the 2nd or 3rd lap Shahrom overtook me and shouted some words of support - at that time I thought he was in the top few places, possibly behind Dan Plews.

I managed to keep up my pace into the 4th lap but took it a bit easy in the last 1km to prepare for the final 5km run. I was beginning to feel my quads tire a bit by then. Time for another horrible-tasting Gel.


Having lovingly studied the HRM readings for the ride I've worked out my lap times as...

Lap 1 - 10.7km in 20:15
Lap 2 - 10.0km in 18:30
Lap 3 - 10.0km in 18:40
Lap 4 - 10.7km in 20:50
TOTAL - 41.4km in 1:18:15 @ 31.44kph - WOW!

T2:

Shoes off, helmet off, other shoes on, turn race number to front, hat on. Legs feeling OK jogging out of transition. Thats it!

5km Run:

As I left transition the finish timer showed 2h28m so I knew I'd gained a fair bit of time on the bike and had 32minutes to do 5km - no problem on its own but a bit more difficult on top of 2.5hrs of racing!

By the time I'd done 500m I'd passed about 3 guys who'd stopped due to leg cramps. My legs felt odd as they always do at this stage, with my quads threatening to cramp-up. However I'm beginning to know my legs better now in these conditions and as I hoped, they'd settled down into run-mode after 5-10mins.

But now I was tired, and it was hot. After only 1.5km I really struggled to keep going and ended up walking a few times. I was sure I'd miss my target, but still managed to run the last 1km. As I crossed the line the timer showed 3:04:20.

I was a bit disappointed to miss my 3h target but as it was partly due to my 10k run pains I'm not too sad! Also, the day after the race I realised that the finish timer only shows one time - and we started in waves. I was in the 2nd wave, 5 minutes after the first, in which case my time could be 5 minutes less (2:59:20). I'll have to wait for the official results to see if I'm correct.

STOP PRESS! - Results are out!

• 59:16 - 1:24:51 - 36:24 = 3:00:29.
• 87th out of 277 in Mens 30-39 category
  
  

So I was right about my time being less than what the timer showed - I still missed by target but only by 29 secs! The bike time includes the transitions I think.

Aftermath:

As soon as I crossed the line I headed for the barrier for some support for my almost-cramping legs. The medal could wait a few seconds! Then I got my medal and slowly wandered off to get some water. Once I'd recovered a bit I sat down on the podium and talked to a few of the guys I knew from KL.

By now it was very hot - here's Ah Wei sheltering from the sun...

This is the Mens Under-6 category winner...

Malaysians Shahrom Abdullah and Kimbeley Yap won the mens and womens races respectively. Marianna Mohammed was 2nd in the womens race. Here's Shahrom & Marianna...

Me and Shahrom...

Mens Awards Ceremony #1 - no 3rd place, 2nd place to Mr Singh, 1st place to Dan Plews. Hold on! Shahrom walked over to the MC and said "but I was 1st!". They swiftly moved on the the following categories while they checked the results.

Mens Awards #2 - they got it right this time! 3rd - Singh, 2nd - Plews, 1st - Shahrom

Kimbeley and Marianna...

The finish line: Look! - people finishing 45mins after me!

My medal and number...

Nutrition:

1 x Triple Threat + 1 x banana at 6am
1 x Triple Threat + 200ml energy drink 7.45am
T1 & T2 - gulp of water and energy drink
PowerGel at start of bike ride and after 30km of bike.
Drank bib bottle of ORS and small bottle water on the bike.
Gulps of water at most water stations.

Weight next day - 76kg.