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Sunday 4 May 2014

My first DNF

Well it had to happen one day.

And it turns out today was that day.

My first DNF.

Gutted doesn't come close to describing how upset and annoyed I am right now. But after some junk food (because I was in an incredibly bad mood) I do not plan on dwelling on what could have been.

I was feeling really strong going into the race.

Given I didn't think I'd be racing after track on Tuesday I was relieved to make the start line.

Yesterday was spent doing a mini aquathlon and some transition training and I learnt a lot.

I got up today feeling good and made my way to Epworth with my Mrs.

After I had registered and racked, it was time to cheer on some of the athletes who I have coached before making my way to the swim start.

Swim

The 400m swim took place in a 20m pool. I was flying in the swim. I overtook two people but unfortunately one of these swimmers didn't let me past as soon as I touched his feet to pass.

Swimmers were meant to stop at the end of the next length to let the faster swimmer pass. This annoyed me a lot and because of my annoyance I lost count of my lengths.

After what seemed like an age, I decided to stop for a few seconds to check I hadn't swum further than needed.  I hadn't I still 3 lengths to go.

I exited the pool and ran to transition.


T1

Now it was time to put yesterdays transition training to good use.

I was in and out of T1 and on my bike in 41 seconds. Thats a huge improvement on my last T1 time of 1:17 and a far cry from my first T1 time of 4:19.

Bike

Oh balls. In my haste of attaching my shoes to #Rinnie with elastic bands to save time I forgot to undo them.


So now instead of having to get my shoes on and fastened, I now had to unfasten them put them on and fasten them up again.

After I got my bike up to speed I set about completing the task at hand. After I had got my shoes on, which seemed to take forever. I was about to do my thing and throw down some power on the flats.

I was passed by some other athletes but was averaging around 20mph and was feeling good.

However after about 10km I started to feel a thump, thump, thump, thump from under my rear wheel.

OH CRAP!!!!!

I checked my wheel and realised it was flat.

After I had made my way to the next marshal who arranged for me to be collected my race was over.

Now I have a million questions running through my head on the whole clinchers vs tub thing.

I have completed all my triathlons to date on clinchers and never had a puncture until today when I switched to tubs.

But now what do I do?

So far there are three thoughts running through my head and I don't know which way to turn. Any thoughts or advice will be considered.
  1. Switch back to my clinchers as I know that if I get a flat I can repair it.
  2. Persevere with tubs but change to a harder wearing tyre. and ensure I carry repair fluid on my next races.
  3. Sell both my tubs and clinchers and purchase some deeper section clinchers as I can repair those.
I can't really afford any disasters in my next triathlon as it is an ETU qualifier and I want to see how far off the pace I am. Today was meant to be a confidence booster ahead of this race. But it was not meant to be.

I have 6 weeks to decide how to proceed.

Thanks to all at Race Hard Events for coming to my rescue.

#onwardsandupwards

Thanks for reading,

Michael

1 comment:

  1. Bad luck with the tubs, but better it happened now than in an A race :-( I swear by clinchers myself for the reasons you mentioned - tubs for anything short that I could walk back to the start if needs be. Good luck in Majorca - I'm also out there - have a good un ! All the best, Andy

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