02 Aug 2009

Antwerp 70.3 - 5:15:58 [Results]



Swim: 33:33 (496th)

T1: 3:06 (206th)
Bike: 2:46:10 (576th)
T2: 1:59 (213th)
Run: 1:53:08 (506th)

Total: 536th out of 855 Finishers
V1H: 79th out of 126

This was one of the toughest and best things I have ever done in a very, very competitve field.

The weather wasn't on our side when we woke up on race day. Pouring rain and quite strong winds wasn't what we needed so everybody was soaked while setting up T1. I was relatively calm before the start which helped a lot.



The swim was pretty uneventful (apart from some waves caused by the TV helicopter) and I exited the water to realise that my stop watch showed 00:00:00 before mastering a huge T1.

The bike was almost flat (a tunnel and a couple of fly overs), quite boring, very windy and rather dangerous. Big mats were placed over railway lines that had to be crossed (approx. 20 of them) which caused problems especially in the wet conditions. Loads of crashes and lost kit. I felt really strong and made up a lot of time compared to my planned schedule of 3 hours.

T2 was on cobbles - very nice to run on with wet and cold feet. There were only markers every 5km by which time I realised that I went out way too fast (sub 24:00). I slowed down (a bit) got through 10km in just under 49:00 before things got very tough. Having to pass the finish 3 times didn't help nor did the lack of crowd support. Managed to battle through the last lap which was very agonising and was awared with the biggest and heaviest medal ever...



Überhappy with my time albeit the terrible run. A fantastic experience, but physically and mentally much harder than I had anticipated.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

hallo alex,

eine echt starke leistung !!!!!
gute vorbereitung macht den meister !!!
Gratzlation !!!!!!


helmut