As this was not an A race for me I was keen not to use loads of holiday days in getting out there and spending loads of time in southern Holland. So I decided to head out on the Saturday, Race Sunday, and drive home on Monday. I was feeling pretty good leading into this race, I managed to get some valuable miles in during a training camp in Lanzarote (Tiagua81) in early March, which I was defiantly feeling the benefit of. That combined with some solid run sessions and brick sessions, I knew I was in a good place physically. Mentally however, it was a little different! I was really quite nervous, having had a strong 2014 I was keen to get 2015 off to a flying start, so the weight of self-expectation was weighing heavy. These nerves were not helped when I rolled straight into the race briefing from my drive across Europe to hear that a course recce would be really beneficial on this course. Great, no time to ride it, so it was a quick spin around it in the car after the briefing, this settled the nerves somewhat, that, and my knowledge of what the roads are typically like in The Netherlands would have to suffice.

So race day arrived. I didn’t have any trouble sleeping, I never do, and I didn’t have to be up that early. Still I was keen to get to the start in plenty of time; partly because I was a bit unsure of the timings (they had changed 2 or 3 times over the last few days!) I arrived to the race HQ which was a hotel by the way! (beats a couple of dodgy looking gazebos)  It was quite cold, this left me a bit confused about what to wear as I knew it would be warm later. I set up my bike in transition – setting up for a duathlon is so easy. Shoes on bike, helmet on bike…….and put your second set of running shoes in your box, that’s about it. It turned out that the start time for my wave was 09:35, so we had a good 45 minutes to wait. This allowed some time for my breakfast, that wasn’t sitting well, to settle a little bit, have a warm up and catch up with James Elgar and Simon Marks to basically chat about what we were going to wear. 

I got to the start line, for some reason my left quad was feeling really tight – probably psycho-symptomatic but still added to my nerves. This was going to hurt! The pro waves had already started and were lapping the 2.5km course, so the starters had to coordinate the start to ensure we were not being released like raging bulls into any of the groups on one of their four laps. There seemed to be a gap in the field at just the right time so the gun sounded and we were off!

As Coach Mark and I had anticipated the pace off the start was frantic. My plan was to start close to the front but build into the first 1km trying to keep my pace around 3:45-3:50 min/km to give a split of 38 minutes for the 10km. I stuck to this (or at least I thought I was sticking to it), James came flying past after about 1,200m (whatever hamstring injury he had had was well and truly feeling a lot better by the looks of things!) I clocked the first two laps and noticed I was on about 16:45 for 5km. I think a combination of a slightly short course and the tree cover interfering with the GPS. Cardiovascular wise I was feeling great, I was running hard, yet my lungs were not burning. My legs were a different story: both IT bands and quads were in agony, they felt so tight. I ploughed on through the next 5km holding pace. To Clock a 34:42 – a little bit quicker than my 38 min target, and an unofficial 10km PB!

I knew once I was out on the bike my quads and IT bands would feel a lot better, so I was keen to get motoring. T1 was no drama at all, makes a big difference having a nice wide road coming out of T1 to get sorted with shoes etc. Once I was comfortable, I set about finding my rhythm. I knew my target watts, but I would have to take the readings with a pinch of salt as I would be pushing out of corners. The constant pace changing is not ideal for middle/long distance racing, because it fatigues your legs but in this instance getting out of the saddle was helping to release my IT bands so I was all for it! Thank god for Di2, having dual controls made life so easy when down changing into corners or changing up on the exits – massive help. Other than that, I just focused on keeping topped up on fluid and gels (I didn’t pick anything up on course as I was keen to stick with the Torq stuff I had brought with me) and tried to close a bit of the gap to James (he extended his lead by 1 second!).  I had a solid bike, the goal was to hit between 1:35 and 1:40 for 60km which I was bang on for (1:37:04).

Once I was back off the bike I knew I just had to crack out a solid second run to secure a decent result, I felt good; knowing that running off the bike is my strong suit. I set off at 3:50 min/km pace and just looked to hold that, not fade too much. It wasn’t long before I started picking up some of the strong EuroBikers that had flown past me on the last section of the bike; evidently they were paying for the huge effort! I then caught up to a group of Dutch blokes who had been running with me on the first run, they were slowing – a lot, again I don’t understand why people can’t pace better – I’m sure if you look at the results two of the best predictors for overall time would have been the second run split and the difference between the first and second run split. Pacing is vital! (36:28)

I was relieved to cross the line to finish, 5th in AG and 81st overall. It was a tough day, but a really good experience. The standard was incredible! The guy who won the elite race ran a sub 30 min 10km on the first run and averaged more than 43kph on the bike! The winner of my AG, Rich Anderson finished 21st overall – a monster effort.  Defiantly something to aim for as I build towards the main event of the triathlon season (Ironman 70.3 Exmoor), I am looking forward to getting stuck into some hard training to try and nail my A race.

Thanks to Mark (WhittleFit) for getting me prepped for this race, Andy at Cranc Cyclesport for prepping and squaring away my bike over winter and Torq Fitness for their continued fueling!

Well done Tom, great effort and sets you up beautifully for an awesome 2015 season!