Clumber Park Duathlon Review

On Saturday 18^th March Angus and I started our race season at OSB’s Clumber Park Duathlon. Prior to the race and since my last blog we have both been very busy and overloaded with uni work and its been a struggle to fit in the training so we both went into the race with the aim of a good training session and to simply enjoy the thrill of racing again.

On the Friday evening after I finished Labs, Angus and I had to unpack our race kit from boxes upstairs and dust our race bikes and clean them up a bit ready to race. It took longer than expected to find everything and get organised for the morning so we ended up going to bed late. When our alarm when off at 4.45am we both were very tired and delayed getting out of bed for longer than we should have before having our race day porridge.

After arriving at Clumber Park we registered and set up our transition and luckily the rain was holding off, although it was very windy. I was off in the first wave for the Sprint Distance Duathlon event and Angus a few waves after in the last wave for the Standard Distance Duathlon.

Last year I started on the second row for the start and ended up setting off too fast and didn’t do a good job at pacing myself for the run, so this year I placed myself near the back. However, this was the biggest mistake I made as I had to then weave in and out of people who were much slower runners than I am.  This was hard as the path narrowed fairly quickly and slow runners were running side by side so it took me over half a mile to get through and into enough space that I could run at the pace I wanted to run at.

For the 5km first run I didn’t push myself to the max but ran consistently. My first transition was okay, no fancy tricks as I still haven’t managed to learn them yet but at least that meant I didn’t get mucky socks haha! I could tell my legs aren’t used to cycling hard or cycling outside when I got out on the bike but I still pushed them through the wind and up the hills. I was definitely tiring towards the end of the bike and was thankful that there was a nice stretch of downhill to rest my legs a bit as I came back into Clumber Park.

Running off the bike was a first for this year and I’d forgotten the jelly like feeling which was made worse my my right calf cramping up. I ran the last run with what my legs had left to give and was so happy to finish.

After I had finished and got my breath back I walked over to find a bit of the bike course where I could sit down and support Angus. Angus raced well and looked as tired as I did when he finished and we both couldn’t wait to go home and have a nice relaxing bath.

As we collected our bikes and kit from transition it started to rain heavily and Angus and I got very wet on our walk to the car. When we got home Angus cleaned the bikes and I sorted out of kit and washed our dirty clothes and then we had a relaxing evening watching the Rugby (Angus’ choice).

With no results until the next day, Angus was up early to check how we got on and found out we both got Duathlon PBs! Comparing my time to the event last year I improved by 6 minutes, however last year I was only just getting over my illness so wasn’t in the fittest state then. But a PB is a PB and thinking positively it’s a good way to start the season. Angus also got a Standard Distance Duathlon PB so was a good race for both of us to start the year.

Big thank you to all our sponsors for helping us achieve when training and racing.

• Thank you to Sockmine for my new Gripline pink socks to race in, they were comfy to both run and cycle in and I finished the race with no blisters (which is an achievement for me).
• Thank you to High5 for fuelling both Angus and I round the course! We both started off with some Energy source and an ISOGel Xtreme and had Zero to drink on the bike and a couple of Energy Gels on the bike for Angus too.
• Thank you to Pedal Potential for your financial support and allowing us to afford to race.
• Thank you to Raceskin for our new tri-suits which were very comfy and fast.
• Thank you to Bounce Balls for giving us some energy on the way home - we both had an Apple and Cinnamon Bounce Ball on the journey back to Nottingham.

Thank you for reading!

Emily (& Angus)