BUCS Duathlon, 18 Nov 2023

The start of my race felt a bit frantic as I realized I left my bike shoes in the car when I was setting up transition. A positive of this is all the running back and forth meant I was sufficiently warm for the start of the race.

My aim for the first 5km was 22:30 - a pace that would be tough but wouldn’t use all my energy. I executed this perfectly and didn’t even look at my watch once! It was a good first run, helped by running behind people when going into the wind so it didn’t feel so bad.

I then went through T1 so smoothly, overtaking at least 5 people who were stationed near me and had come into T1 before me.

Then onto the bike which I was really looking forward to. It was so much fun, I was very confident as my cycling has really improved recently and this was shown as I was constantly overtaking people. I managed to overtake all but one of the people in my uni who were ahead of me in the run.

Then going into T2 the final person from my uni in my wave was just ahead of me. Another super speedy transition and I had overtaken them.

A final 2.5km run and my only goal was to sit at a comfortable pace so I wouldn’t get halfway through and die. This was harder than the first run as there wasn’t anyone to sit behind to block me from the wind but again I paced it perfectly and even ran faster than I’d expected!

I managed to finish first out of my uni in my wave which I was super chuffed with and came 80th female compared with 118th last year which is a big improvement!

Jess Barratt-Drylie