Originally written in German. Translated to English by AI — please excuse any awkward phrasing.
… those are the cold hard numbers from yesterday’s race, the last test before Ironman Frankfurt.
Or in other words: my very first age group win at a triathlon, and my second-best overall placing ever!!!
Much more rested than two weeks ago at the Challenge Kraichgau, I stood on the start line this time to run one last test of the pacing and my form. With the first start wave I went into the water — the cold and murky Neckar. From the beginning things went pretty well for my standards; I managed to stay out of the brawl and quickly found a good draft. I held that for the full 2 kilometers, coming out of the water relatively relaxed in 29:40.
The first transition was unfortunately the kind you don’t want. The wetsuit just wouldn’t come off and it took forever to get free of it.
Then it was a run through what was probably the longest transition zone in the world — barefoot on rough asphalt with the bike in hand … Finally on the bike, I found a good pace right away. My power meter was showing numbers that were frankly off the charts, but interestingly I could produce them with relatively little effort.
The bike course through the Kraichgau had lots of little hills, lots of tight corners, and some blazingly fast descents. Pretty much designed to wreck yourself. My power meter was still showing those crazy numbers after more than 30 minutes — 250 watts average. That’s not far from threshold, roughly 25 watts more than at Kraichgau. That’s a lot, and I was bracing for the man with the hammer to show up at some point. Fortunately the bike course ended before that happened — the last 10km went by surprisingly fast; someone seems to have misplaced about 4km, or I took a wrong turn 😉 The time of 1:50:21h includes both transitions.
The second transition was good again, and at the start of the run I hit a very high pace (3:40 min/km) and tried to hold on to it as long as possible. Toward the end the legs got a bit heavier, ending up with a time of 53:40 for the 15km. That was the 9th fastest run split of the day.
Total time was 03:15:49h.
Summary:
Test passed, form seems to be there. And racing well-rested is definitely a lot better than carrying a load of fatigue in your legs.