Preparation
After a long swim/bike ride 1 week out, I tried to do a little taper leading into the race. After being diagnosed with a cartilage lesion in my left knee, 4 days before the race I received my 2nd out of 3 hyaluronan gel injections to hopefully fix my knee up.
So another planned DNF for this race. Just focusing on the swim and trying to have some fun on the bike, trying to see what I could do knowing I didn't have to run of the bike. At least the gel injections allowed me to be able to stand on the pedals, an indispensable feature on "De Muur" I noticed during the race.
Location
Picked this race as it's the only Challenge/Ironman race in Belgium and because of the mythical climb "De Muur" from Tour of Flanders being present in the bike course.
Registration, swim, T1/T2 are located at De Gavers, the finish line is located at the town square of Geraardsbergen. A shuttle is available to bring people from De Gavers to downtown Geraardsbergen and back. The swim is a one loop in the lake of De Gavers, so no current whatsoever. The bike course is a challenging 2 loop setup around the city of Geraardsbergen and the run course is a 3 loop setup around Geraardsbergen as well.
Stay
Not applicable for this race as we drove up there the day of the race. Athlete registration on race day was from 7 till 9 am, so we hit the road around 6 am to make sure we had plenty of time to set everything up.
Swim 0:29:21 AG-13/108
- One loop, lake swim, setup. Not much wind on race day so not much chop, so almost felt like a huge swimming pool. Because of my left side breathing I love counter clockwise swim courses! So sighting was really easy for me avoiding swimming additional meters. The swim start used estimated swim time starting pens, I opted for the 30-35min pen. I didn't go for a jog as a warm up as I still was weathering my knee injury.
- During my last swim I was gasping for air after heading out to hot so I started in a more controlled manner this time. With 10 second intervals 5 athletes were allowed to enter the water. From my wave of 5 I was going head to head with 1 other athlete for a bit but he fell behind even before the first turn buoy. From that point on I believe I wasn't passed by any other athlete. With the controlled start I immediately had clean water and was able to get into a decent rhythm early on. Sighting went fine as well and I was able to see if I was closing in on other athletes and try to make clean passes. Near the narrow part of the lake -during the out and back portion- the swim was a bit crowded, but overall it wasn't to bad and I didn't encounter any major fighting. From time to time I had to put in a surge to pass some athletes to get back into clean water without taking to much of a detour but overall the swim felt controlled and I never felt totally gassed. I was surprised to see < 30 minutes on my watch when climbing out of the water, I was hoping to swim around 32 minutes.
- 13th swim time in my AG, within the first 13% and a pace of 1:32/100m. I still wonder if the swim wasn't shorter than 1900m as it would be my fastest non-downstream swim. So pretty happy with my swim!
T1 No Data
- As I had a DNF my timings are not included in the results, I didn't record my transition myself neither, so no data available.
- No big issues in T1, tried to do it in a controlled manner, not trying to be super fast and forget things. Left knee didn't feel to great running through T1 though, so still far from optimal.
Bike 2:30:43 AG-5/108
- 2 loop hilly course setup including 2 ascents of "De Muur" from Tour of Flanders. My recording showed a total of 859m of elevation and on top of that there was quite some wind so very challenging conditions.
- I always start my ride on the Wahoo the moment I rack my bike, so that once I get to my bike in T1 it records straight away, that worked fine for my races so far. This time however my Wahoo couldn't find my power meter once I was moving on the bike, I assume because there was a lot of time between racking the bike and race start. So I stopped and restarted the ride but still no luck. Restarted the Wahoo and then it did find the power meter but not the HR meter, but anyway I could see that on my watch so no biggy.
- First lap I went close to all in without paying to much attention to any metrics, just trying to pick up as many athletes as I could. I never had done De Muur so I was looking forward to that one, riding on those cobblestones was an unpleasant surprise though, reminded me that I don't like riding on cobblestones at all! After completing the first lap I directly felt I was already paying a price though, going to hard and not paying much attention to fueling was already taking its toll as I started to feel cramps coming up in my legs at that point. So from then onwards I tried to take in more liquids and keep the wattage around 300W on the climbs. Heading down into town for the 2nd climb of De Muur I tried to recover a bit to be able to attack the climb a second time. This time I made sure I was in a smaller gear from the get go as I didn't want to switch gears on the climb itself. Luckily my legs didn't cramp up on the ascent which I was afraid of. It was cool to see so many people cheering for us on the climb! From there onwards it was basically downhill to T2, at that point I felt pretty good again and pushed on as it was the finish line for me anyway.
- AG 5%, averaging 36.2km/h, NP of 265W. Looking at the power chart its clear that the second lap my power output was a tad lower than during the first lap.
- Never on the entire course did I feel unsafe, big shout out to the organization!
T2
- My finish line for this race and probably for any race in the near future with my knee being far from ok.
- Jumping of the bike basically both my legs went into full cramp mode so I was glad I didn't have to head out for a 21k run at that point. During a normal race I would have to keep my numbers way more in check to be able to run of the bike.
- Nothing else to do to hand over my timing chip to a race official, change my clothes, take the shuttle to downtown and cheer on the other athletes.
Run
- Just got the green light to start running again from my doctor 4 days before the race after not running for 8ish weeks, so trying to run 21km at once was a big no go as I had no idea how my knee would react after running lets say just 1km.
- Looking at the athletes on course it was a very challenging run course. It's basically from T1/T2 at De Gavers heading to the city center of Geraardsbergen where you complete 3 local loops. Looking at the gpx there are 156m of climbing on the course with some pretty steep climbs.
Overall
- 2nd planned DNF in a row.
- Very happy with how I felt during the swim.
- Always fun to go full out on the bike without having to worry about running of the bike.
Some lessons learned
- Easing into the swim worked like a charm.
- When you need to run of the bike, stick to your numbers or you wont even get out of T2.
- Liked the race venue and organization, hope to make it to the finish line one day!
- Anti fog marker and different method to put my goggles on seems to work in training and under race conditions.
Result
- Swim 0:29:21 AG-13/108
- T1 No Data
- Bike 2:30:43 AG-5/108
- T2 N.A.
- Run N.A.
- Total N.A.
Tags: Challenge Geraardsbergen race report, race report Challenge Geraardsbergen, Challenge Geraardsbergen 70.3 race report
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