Confidence

Well there we go, first race of the 2010 season under my belt. It also marks the last training session of a very solid 9 weeks without any specific recovery, meaning I've been tired, so totally looking forward to my ensuing recovery week and 21st birthday on Thursday!

It was the second race in the newly formed Scottish University league, consisting of 2 aquathons, 1 duathlon and a tri. Today was the duathlon, the triathlon which also acts as Scottish University champs will be held in 4 weeks time outside of Edinburgh, my first tri of the year.

The league is the result of some really hard working and keen University Tri captains, very much including the University of Aberdeen's Ben Christman. The whole Aberdeen team this year are better than ever and today we had a great turn out bagging (I would say) the majority of the top 10 spots. I look forward to doing some training with the guys and representing the University twice more before the season ends.

So the Duathlon today was a 4km run followed by a 20km bike. However, I woke up on Friday to a blizzard and (in Aberdeen at least) 4 inches of snow. This pretty much convinced me it would be cancelled which was a bummer as I was looking forward to testing out my completely knackered legs. By today the temperature had risen slightly (around -2 this morning) and the sun was out thawing much of the bike course. The run was still slippy as mud, with much of it being mud, and all of it off-road, including 500m in the snow. 400m was added to the course to allow for a location change for transition so the run ended up being ~4.4km, going through the 4km marker at 14minutes 10seconds.

Off onto the bike and the 20km loop, after leading the run for the first 3km or so Craig Dale from Edinburgh University got 20m on me and was out onto the bike first. I spent the first 5km catching up with him but from 5km-15km he steadily put about 20seconds on me. Over the last 5km I definitely got my legs and started hammering it back into town, 50kph on the flat. After a short mishap with a slight wrong turn I was back on course and across the line in 2nd, feeling great.

After the tough 2 months I've just had and the level of my fatigue this week the result was very encouraging. It looks as if my running has improved as we'd all hoped and my bike is strong.

It's definitely time for me to rest now though and enjoy my 21st birthday. The recovery will do me good,

First race down, whole season to go. Let's do it.

Mike