Team Cycling Plus – Kay Bowen
khodgins | Blog, Cycling Plus | 07/09/2010 16:45pm
Team Cycling Plus will be updating you each week with the highs and lows of their training as part of the team. This week Kay shows the competition what she’s made of…
Team Member: Kay Bowen
36 year old Kay from Southampton is a very active person. She overcame thyroid cancer last year which has inspired her to try a whole host of new activities, including sailing, tennis, skiing and triathlons. As a triathlete, she already does a lot of cycling, but is keen to work on this aspect of her training. Her goals are to sustain longer distances and to go on a cycling holiday.
Have just devoured the results page of the She Active Everywoman Duathlon I completed yesterday morning in Bushy Park, south west London. I will keep the suspense of the data till the end, and tell you what a wonderful event it was first. About 250 entries, but a heap of Did Not Starts meant about 170 women took part in the Challenge Duathlon at 7.30am on a fabulous warm, sunny Saturday. The organisation was superb, detailed emails beforehand, a briefing, clear marshalling, wonderful venue with resident deer and the first for me of being in an all female competition. There were men allowed, in the park, lots of keen partners and kids cheering on their ladies, and a very cheery bunch for such an early hour, they were great at clapping me too. Being a looped route meant lots of passing by the ‘crowd’ for that burst of encouragement, desperately needed, especially for the running which is not my strength. I took my mother in law along as my support team and she was so delighted with the whole event she nearly took part- well, she went and bought a coffee from the local bakery, along with my after race pain au chocolate. Yum.
First off we ran 5k on two loops, wonderfully flat terrain and as everyone was being terribly female and polite, I ended up third over the start line, and so was running at the front of the pack, a novelty for me. Clearly the pace was set high and I made under 26 minutes on my first run, amazing for me, as I usually stumble in at just under half an hour, so a great PB. The second run is when you have comedy legs, still going round from the pedals and you have to make them go straight in a line instead, and I only did only a minute extra on that one too – just over 27 minutes! So far so good, on both the runs I let about 25 people overtake me, but this is the exciting bit – the bike chapter!
Having glanced around at the racks beforehand in the way that us Verenti Millook owners do I noticed a hotch potch of mountain bikes and one with a basket on the front that made me feel secretly hopeful about the bike leg. It was only 20km, over such flat ground I didn’t change gear, and I was able to spin my legs pretty quick. There were 4 laps, and after an energy gel and one lap I was confident I could keep up the pace. I overtook about 10 riders who had overtaken me running, some of whom were being held back by their bike, but some on decent machines. I was not overtaken at all on the ride laps, and with all and sundry going up and down the same route I managed the joy of overtaking heaps of people, some of them twice! Oh bliss! I get to overtake someone other than a toddler or a milk float! I loved the ride and although I wasn’t looking forward to laps I enjoyed it very much, apart from the near collision entering T2 with a lady with brakes better than she thought. I really felt for some women on their bikes, some of them may well be fitter than me but were totally let down by ill fitted bikes, some obviously borrowed and way too big, or with bobbly tyres when a swap to a set of road tyres on a hybrid would make a huge difference. I felt proud of my Millook and it and I make a good team these days.
My finish was at the time when people still get their names read out, before the ‘Well done everyone’ stage, whoo hoo! I got a medal and a goody bag with a T shirt and much needed water and carbs, and there was not much of a queue for the free leg massage so I had one of those. Awesome, but I still ache today. Met some lovely fellow competitors in the queue, and it seemed universally a big hit of an event I thought I was about 25th finisher, and the provisional results put me at 27th overall. In my age group, overall, I was 7th, and overall on the bike leg I was 5th, with the 4 who were faster all being under 25 years old.
How cool are those results? I am so proud, I found the duathlon harder than any triathlon so far, running twice is harder than swimming for 10 minutes. The flat course helped my times and in two weeks I will have no benefit of a flat course as I am doing the West Wight Triathlon, a hilly event with a much longer ride. See you there?
Who are Team Cycling Plus?
Team Cycling Plus powered by Verenti are readers Andy Ward, Kay Bowen, Malcolm Ratcliffe and Sam Shaw. We’ll be following them in the magazine for the next few months as they train towards their personal cycling goals under the guidance of several experts and we will be publishing their weekly trials and tribulations here too. For regular updates check our twitter page and the Team Cycling Plus facebook page.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 at 4:45 pm and is filed under Blog, Cycling Plus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
