Wiesbaden 70.3 Race Report

Well - as some of you already know - things didn't quite go to plan on Sunday!

Swim
The Old Guy's wave (Men 50+) was off at 9:10am with just the Relay Swimmers following us. I set off at a steady pace aiming to exit the water in around 45 minutes and was pleased with my 44:39 (official time was 44:49). I took it pretty easy to the turn around point and then tried to pick up the pace slightly on the way back. My average HR was 134 which is mid Z3 for my biking so I guess that was OK - I even overtook several swimmers from the 9:00am wave so that made me feel good.

I took too long in T1 - I logged 7:58 against the official time of 7:48 - I always have issues getting my wetsuit off, anyhow this was a training event not a racing one so I wasn't worried by a couple of minutes.

Bike
The first four miles are pretty flat & fast so I cruised along at 135 bpm and a speed of 18-23 mph - then you hit the first hill - six miles of steady climbing with 1,350 feet to the summit, my speed was down to 6 mph at times but despite being overtaken by pretty much every Relay Team cyclist I did manage to overtake a couple of real triathletes myself!

The problem with the course is that after the long climb(s) the descents are quite technical with loads of safety marshals out to slow you down. I did manage to jump on the back of three other guys and we eventually cruised down looking like a TDF group swooping around the curves - that was a pretty good feeling!

By now gentle rainfall had started.

After 70 km of constant long drag climbs and switchback descents I misjudged my line through a descending S-bend in a little town. Things would have been fine if the curb had followed the road ... but it didn't! So I ended up slamming into the curbstones lining a bus-stop and departed from the bike. Road rash to knee, elbow, hip and shoulder down the right side - nothing serious. Luckily a paramedic team was on the spot and they patched me up. The rear mech was bent into the wheel - no spoke damage - and the service van sorted that out and offered me a ride back to the finish but I still had The Hammer to do so off I went! I think I lost about 16 minutes in total.

Took The Hammer in my stride and the two long hills after that before hitting the long fast descent back to Wiesbaden. Last year I was really cooking on this section with speeds around 50mph - this time I touched the brakes and realised that there was a problem with the front wheel. Checking after the race I saw that the braking surface had been scuffed by the impact with the curb and there was metal swarf sticking out of it!



Discretion being the better part of valour I kept the speed down to around 30 by feathering the rear brake and lost even more time! When I came into T2 I couldn't stop properly at the dismount line and ran straight into the helper!

Run
I didn't really intend starting the run at all but the T2 helpers changed my shoes for me and I thought "What the hell?" and set off. My knee was painful but not too bad and I felt pretty strong (Thanks Craig!). After a while I was thinking "This knee hurts, the elbow bandage is too tight, its only a training day, do I really want to beat myself up?" and at the end of Lap 1 I decided to bail.

So all in all I had a good swim and first 70km of the bike - the last 20km was OK but compromised. Its a very tough bike course and I need to find more hills to train on if I want to be able to improve my climbing.