Lee started his race season with a brilliant duathlon result….

Over the winter I decided that due to work commitments I could no longer put in the hours of training needed for endurance MTB racing, I decided I’d try my hand at something new. In that ‘new’ comes duathlon and triathlon.

Now I have ran before and whilst I’m not the quickest, I know I can train at it and do ok. Swimming is another story though and knew I needed to put a lot of effort into this leg for the triathlon, only managing a few lengths of the pool without stopping.

I’ve been hard at it and kicked the season off with the Clumber Park duathlon just down the road from me.

I entered the standard distance (10k run, 40k bike, 5k run) and was looking to get in around 2hr 30min.

The weather was dry that morning but the wind was howling! Fine for the run within the park but the bike leg was going to be tough.

Having not done anything like this before I set off towards the back and at a steady pace. The first 5k felt good so I picked it up a bit for the second, coming into transition in 43 min, way ahead of where I expected to be!

The bike leg, as expected, was a hard one with the wind battering us. I kept my head down and came in 1hr 12 min.

Onto the last leg and starting to feel it, I gave it all I could with a 23 min last 5k. Overall time of 2hr 22 min.

So I enjoyed my first duathlon and came in ahead of my target time, finishing 154th out of approx 900 competitors, pretty chuffed with that.

The next one up will be my first tri, the swim will certainly be interesting….