I place remarkably well at Oshima Triathlon (Duathlon) on Saturday. As you can see from this picture I am very happy to win a medal.I am mostly happy about my bike ride. It was far and away my fastest race on a bike ever - I covered the fast 40k course in around 64 minutes, thanks in part to very favorable wind conditions.
I finished 16th out of 250 (officially I was 12th but I am pretty certain the officials gave our wave a break of about 90 seconds).
Due to terrible weather before the race, the swim was replaced with a 5k run. I was disappointed that yet again I am unable to put all my swim training to use and attempt to gauge my swim progress. However the waves and w
ind and rain conditions right up until the race starting gun were terrifying. Moreover substituting a 5k run improved my competitive positioning - I was officially the fastest person in the 5k. On the other hand, both my transition on and off the bike were comically inept. Somehow in the tumultuous, pre-race storm I miscounted the racks and I was convinced my bike was on the far right rack when it was closer to the middle. Even worse, I double-knotted my laces on my running flats, a mindlessly stupid thing to do in a duathlon. The race timing results adds the two
transition to the bike time so I cannot determine how much time I consumed on the transitions and precisely how fast my bike time was - but I believe of the 1:09:19 total bike time at least 5 minutes were transition.
I found myself mostly dueling with teammate Stan Chow. I had managed to catch up with Stan who started in the first wave, but from midway in the 5k run to midway in the 10k run we went back and forth. Stan blew me away on the transitions.
The new bike ride certainly seemed to help. I felt so much faster - it was especially evident on downhill sections and so much more confident on corners and in crowds.
Amazingly I was fastest among the 5 Namban teammates (and even beat the legendary Kimm-san). If we had done a swim I have to think I would have lost the advantage, but compared to last year's Niijima result against Kimm-san, Reza, Motozo when I was 8-11 minutes behind on the bike, this year I was much more respectable.
My results (official):
5k Run - 17:12 (1st)
40k Bike - 1:09:19 (43rd)
10k Run - 40:40 (11th)
Total - 2:07:11 (12th)
