Challenge-France 2008 race report
The Challenge-France was held at may. 25 in Niederbronn les Bains just north of Strasbourg. I can’t think of a much better place for a triathlon. This city and it’s surroundings are breathtaking, especially if you, like I, live in a small, and very messy I might add, 2 bedroom apartment in the inner city of Copenhagen and all your training is inside the city.
A friend and I went on a road trip – not quite as fun as the movie “Road trip” but still quite nice. It’s a long drive from Copenhagen to France so during the drive we stopped so I could do a shorter run. This was great and something I’ll do for when I have to travel to races.
After a couple of days, and a lot of french cakes and desserts, I felt very ready to do the race. This year I have choosen to aim my fitness for Ironman USA but I still felt a deep fitness for the race.
Since july 2007 I have been training with Markallenonline.com and have for Lake Placid worked close with Luis Vargas. My fitness this year is developing like never before and I knew that even the fact that Lake Placid was 8 weeks away and I didn’t do a full taper, that I was ready to have pehaps my best half ironman race.
The swim.
The swim takes place in a beautiful lake. Again I might be easy to impress because all of my swimming takes place in a pool that hasn’t seen any love since 1950.
The start is in waves, like at the Challenge-Roth. That meant that the pros start is not very crowded and that packs can happen in all of a sudden. I’m not the best swimmer, but I’m improving, but often these swims also has to do with luck for me. For this race I was in the wrong group when a gap opened. I actually felt okay with it until the turn bouy. All of a sudden I could hear a voice in my head “You did not train this hard to just survive the swim..Attack that sh…”, so I did and closed a gap to the 2nd groupe with no problems.
I stayed in the back of that group the rest of the way. Looking at it now, I should have tried to keep going. Oh well there is always next time.
The bike.
On the bike I displayed total incompentance when it comes to racing as a pro. I was up with a group of the swim but decided to just stick to my heart rate and do my own race. In France there was a 7 m draft rule which means that people don’t cheat at all, but you do get some advantage out of this rule. The rule is for everyone that is not as stupid as I am 
I actually did okay on the bike. It wasn’t great but it wasn’t bad. I have a powermeter and the watts were allmost excatly what I had expected and higher than in my other half ironman races.
I was riding by myself all the way and after having passed the fastest swimming pro women. I did not see anyone until km 60 on the bike. Here I caught a french pro – I’m still impressed with the size of his leg muscles – Dominique Duchene is his name, pehaps you can find pics of his legs online. I tell you, his legs look so amazing strong.
He must have seen me looking at him and he must not have liked it because on one hill he upped the pace. Again I was sticking to a heart rate zone I have raced with in the past. I was not ready to take any chance, which again turned out to be a mistake.
The run.
I was worried about the run because it looks like this:
The reason I had choosen to be super strict on the bike was that inside my mind I was affraid what would happen to me when I pushed myself hard on the run.
My run split of 1 hour and 24 minutes and 13 seconds is the slowest I have ever done on a half but the picture above explains it. I actually felt quite good on the run and that I was going with a good speed. I have never run in hills like this. Where I train I only have 4 hills and only one of them is around 1 k long – it’s next to a huge appartment building in Copenhagen – also it’s nowhere near as steep as the hills in France.
Before the race I was out scouting the run course. I had some problems figuring out where it actually was. I remember my friend and I talking about how we were sure that we were lost and that nobody was crazy enough to put such hills in a traithlon. Well as I approched the 2 k mark of the run I realized we weren’t lost. Holy crap that was steep. I don’t weigh much and the hills actually wasn’t that bad, neither was the decents.
Of course I did not run super fast but I ran as fast as I can. I was totally blown away by how relative easy it felt. I guess all the hard training has made me much stronger than before.
Being stronger is a very good thing, however I should have trusted my fitness before the race. I guess when you doubt your abilities you will never surprise yourself. I’m sure that had I trusted my fitness and ridden a bit harder I would have ended up a bit higher that 11th among the pros.
Summary.
The Challenge-France race is absolutely awsome. It’s like racing in a post card – it’s so beautiful. The spectators really got into the groowe and how I wish I understood french. I got splits to the group that on the bike was only 2 min ahead of me all the time. Too bad I had no clue what they were actually saying. When I made my last surge on a downhill I got the total respect of a family that was stading at the end of the hill – very very nice and it came in handy on the last 200 meters as I was beginning to feel the wear and tear of the race.
I would love to return to do the race again and would give it all my recomendations to others. Only thing you need to be aware of is that you need to know some french or german to get by in this region of france. I travelled with a guy who knows french and that made the trip much easier.
Finally my greatest respect to Francois Chabaud who won the race without any contest – 8 minutes of Rutker Beke who was in second. I think the time difference shows that this is not your average half ironman race. He handed a serious can of woop ass to everyone.
In the womens race Belinda Granger won in a super close sprint at the finish line.
Results can be found at Challenge-France.
At the same day my teammate from Nekada Endurance team Dejan Patrecevic was racing in 70.3 in Austria. Dejan did awsome and came in at 8th. You can read his race report here.
Der er én kommentar to “Challenge-France 2008 race report”
Skriv et svar
Du skal være logget ind at skrive en kommentar.
december 28th, 2008 på 11:42 am
[...] billede er fra Challenge-France. Det skulle vise sig at dette stævne på mange måder kom til at tegne det sportslige billede af [...]