Post mortem of my X3 Duathlon in Karambunai on 6 June 2015

Our team made our way to Nexus Resort Karambunai early in the morning and reached there at about 6.10am.  It was not crowded at all for a place that was going to hold a triathlon and duathlon at the same time.  The first thing we needed to do was to get our timing chip and thereafter we made our way to the transition area to rack our bike and set up our transition items like drinks, etc.

We made our way to the starting line and met a few runners / cyclists friends, the crowd was not big at all, maybe just around 50 of us.  Flag off was on the dot at 7.00am.  My plan was to run the first 5km sector at around 5:30 to 5:40 min/km assuming this was a half marathon race.  But adrenaline got the better of me and I went off at a pace of around 4:40 min/km before I slowed myself down to a pace of about 5:16 for the rest of the run.  The last 800m sector of the route was very challenging as I had to run on sand!  I quickly looked for the harder wetter surface of the beach and made my way to the transition area where I was the 3rd one going in, clocking 27 mins.  Just as I was arriving the transition, I took my first dose of energy gel, unmount my bike and zoomed off.

Riding on a mountain bike, I was at a great disadvantage compared to most of the participants who were using road bikes.  One by one I saw them ride pass me, as I was going at an average of about 27km/hr on the flat surfaces.  I made 2 loops outside of Karambunai then turned back to the resort for the final 5km run sector.  Just as I was arriving the transition point, my right thigh started to cramp but I managed to stretch it off while still riding on the bike.  I dismounted, racked my bike, took another dose of energy gel and went off for the last sector of the race.

At that time there were quite a number of participants who finished their biking sector already as I could see many bikes on the rack.  I ran hard and overtook some of them along they way, but the weather was getting hot and that really slowed me down a lot.

 The last 2km was one of the toughest period of the whole race.  With heat setting in, I was really slowing down.  At the final 800m of the race, it was the beach route all over again but knowing where to run, I managed to overtake a few more participants.  

I am not sure what position did I finish but it was truly a very enjoyable and challenging race.  I managed to clock 2hrs 12mins which was very close to what I initially calculated.  

Will I do another duathlon again? Well I might but if I do, I want to be racing against the same bike that I will be using, it ain't fun riding an MTB against the RBs.