Durban 70.3 2016

A big disappointment with the swim being cancelled, even though it’s my weak phase, but having seen the pros battling, and nearly drowning!, in the rough water and hectic rip current I was very glad not to swim. The practice swim on the Saturday was bad enough!

The self-seeded/first-there rolling bike start was fairly chaotic. 5 people were set off every 5 seconds. And the daft rule is that we must be 10m apart; how was this ever going to happen? Fortunately I managed to get away early and luckily had about 80kms of open road. Strict orders from coach Dave had me riding pretty easy, keeping relaxed and definitely no chasing!

All was going very smoothly until I came to a roundabout/circle at about 40km when a misunderstanding of which way the marshall was waving his flag for us to avoid potholes had me flying through the air at speed and eating some Durban tar. Fortunately my bike was fine; only the rear bottle cages had broken off. And I was mostly fine except a hole in my knee and road rash down my shoulder, lower back and hip. The guy who had been behind me, who I saw later, had said it was quite a spectacular crash!

The last 10kms on the bike, on the smaller inner loop, was when I came across the chaos of everyone riding in bunches. At least most people kept to the left which left room for us faster riders to pass.
I was looking forward to the run – a 2 loop flat run along the promenade, dodging the odd ice-cream seller or small child. My legs felt fantastic coming off the bike! I set off on the run watching my watch closely so not to start too fast like normal! Amazingly I didn’t cramp on the run until the last kay, however my feet were burning from about 4kms into the run. Every stride the balls of my feet were in agony. I guess it wasn’t such a good idea to wear relatively new trainers. I was disappointed with my run as I really thought I could run a decent time.

Swim: Cancelled
Bike: 2:41:24
T2: 0:02:08
Run: 1:42:40
Total:4:26:12
5th (35-39)

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