Duatlon de Oñati

First off a fantastic trip to Euskadi for some teaching, consulting, training and racing. The weather was decent and I managed to fit in all the things I wanted before heading back to Catalonia, including the climb to Arantzazu for Sunday morning mass and some tasty pintxos in Xaramela in Mondragon!

The race itself was bitter-sweet. With a maximum of 30minutes high-intensity work in the past 5 weeks I was always going to struggle in the 2nd half of the race. I started strongly though and am very pleased with my running form. The field was decent and I formed a lead group of 3 going into the bike with Hektor Llanos and Laurent Galinier. The frenchman though was very aggressive right from the start of the bike and I got dropped on the climb to Deskarga. Facing that climb myself into the wind was bloody hard and I faded badly to 11th. In the end only a minute behind a podium spot and even 1 more week on the bike and I would have stuck with Llanos and Galinier.

Great to get back into it though and hopefully have got a bit of bike form back for the Olympic distance Banyoles duathlon this week, where I nabbed my first Catalan podium spot last year.

Oso ondo, eskerrik asko Euskadi eta agur bat!