This weekend I did my second ever triathlon. I hoped for an awesome race in advance, in which I´d perform better than in my first triathlon in Oberschleißheim. I did a few easy training days in advance with the last hard run being three days before the race.
At the evening before the race, my mother told me, that Faris Al-Sultan would be a commentator at the race, as well as Frederik Funk would start at the race as well. At that moment I realized, that I didn´t know anything about the race. I haven´t taken a look at the race course, nor did I look up, who my competitors would be. Soon I realized, that the same five guys would start in my age group as the first five in my age group in Oberschleißheim. Even though I´m usually pretty calm in the advance of races, I was very excited after that. Additionally in the morning, when I looked at my watch about an hour before the race, I recognized, that it was empty and I had to run by feel, which I never really practiced. Due to these circumstances, my pre-race nerves were very high that day and it was a big relief when the starting shot had been fired, as I was overthinking the whole race.
The swim went very well and I was able to get into a good rhythm quickly. I performed well at orientating, even though it was the first time I tried it, except for the triathlon in May. I swam in a small group, which I left at the end of the swim to catch up with another group a few meters ahead.
I left the water at the tail of the new group and went into T-1.
My transition didn´t go as well as planned, as I grabbed my stuff in another order than I prepared before. Heading out to the bike I wanted to get on my bike and slipped off my right shoe Unfortunately I ripped the rubber apart, which cost me another few seconds.
The bike went very well overall. I was able to close the gap to the one person I entered the transition with quickly and decided to go pretty hard on the bike. Suddenly I recognized a repeating clack-noise, which seemed familiar to me. My speed sensor was touching the spokes slightly, so I pulled it out by a few centimeters during the ride, but my computer showed no speed at all, so I put it back in a bit when I recognized that the sensor on the spoke fell off, so I had to rely on feel for the bike leg as well. We fought hard on the positions, which was a great experience.
Coming into T-2 I was second in a small group of three people and exited the transition as first of that group.
The other two ran a pace, which I wasn´t able to run along, so I decided to let them go. When they were about 50 meters up front they eased off the pace a little bit and the distance stayed similar. I tried coming back into that group hard, but I wasn´t able too. On the straight sections, I closed the gap towards to them by a few seconds, but I lost that time on the narrow corners, which I wasn´t able to take at a high pace. There were a lot of them… At one kilometer to go, at least that was what I thought because I saw a 4-kilometer mark on the side of the street I wanted to up the pace to 110% percent, but It felt like after one corner was the finish line. In the end, my run time was 17:40, which means that the course is probably around 4,5 kilometers long.
I´m very happy with the time I was able to reach as well as, that the race went so well overall.
At the award ceremony, I recognized that I was fourth in my age group, which just felt bad. I gave everything I had and it just wasn´t enough to be honored. I will take that as an extra motivation in training to make sure my time at Ironman Klagenfurt will be below ten hours and not that tiny little bit above.
Facts:
Priorität: B
Datum: 23.06.2019
Teilnehmer: 446
Time: 58:23 (14. Gesamt)
Splitzeiten:
Schwimmen: 6:14 (19.l)
T1: 1:58
Rad: 31:18 (26.)
T2: 1:15
Lauf: 17:40 (29th)
Start time: 10:00 Uhr
Disziplin: Triathlon
Distanz: 0,4 / 20 / 5
Ort: Erding
