Last Sunday (August 31th) I raced the World Championships Long Distance in Almere, the Netherlands. This is a so called O3 race: a 4K. swim, a 120 K. bike and a 30 K. run. The ITU considers this still too long and will shorten what they call ‘Long Distance’ even more next year. I think they will delete the whole long distance thing in the nearby future and concentrate on short distance racing, giving the World Triathlon Corporation a free hand. Well, maybe that’s for the best. Anyway, as I’m from the Netherlands I just had to do this race. Some 900 people had the same idea. Fortunately the race was truly international, with many Brits, Americans, Germans, Spanish and other nationalities competing, next to many Dutch.
After doing a ‘classic Ironman distance’ race on June 14th (see my previous blog), I took some time off and actually didn’t start training ‘for real’ on July 20. My swim was truly awful by this time, but biking and especially running felt surprisingly smooth. I did just two really hard weeks, and during the last four weeks prior to the race stuck to my protocol of training long and moderately hard on Saturdays, doing a two hour run on Sundays and only short and intense sessions on weekdays. Every Friday was a rest day. Of course, most my bike training was spent powercranking.
OK, back to the race. The swim was supposed to be only 200 metres longer than the routine 3.8 K. Ironman swim I usually do in about 66 minutes, so I started to get a little concerned when it seemed to just go on and on. Still, I was passing the buoys pretty fast. Exiting the water I couldn’t believe my eyes, 1.30 hours. More than twenty minutes slower than my normal time. Bloody awful. When I reached T1 I noticed that most bikes were still there, so apparently the swim was way too long (as indeed it was, I was told later) and I had done not too bad. Still, a disappointing start. The bike on the other hand was great. I felt strong and kept passing people. This course is completely (and I mean completely) flat, so you have to keep pushing and ride a big gear. It took me 3.15 hours. Wow! By now it was hot, about 28 C, but I still had the run to finish. My plan was to go hard, but while my legs felt great my stomach did not. I knew I just had to take it easy for a while and let my stomach settle down. Although I didn’t feel too great throughout the run, to my amazement I still kept running 4.50 minute K’s. That was not what I had hoped for but it wasn’t bad either. In the end I ran 2.22 and finished in 15th position (in my age-group, 45+) after seven hours, fifteen minutes and some seconds. Good enough for me. Yes I know, Chrissie Wellington was more than an hour faster. She blew by me on the run, looking completely fresh, relaxed, like she was having a great time. She truly is amazing. Does she uses powercranks? It sure looked like she does.
