Race Report by Lewis Eccleston
Going into Outlaw Nottingham, I was feeling very ready to race once again having done Challenge Roth 3 weeks earlier. Recovery had gone well over the past few weeks. One week completely off, 2nd light exercise and 3rd a few race-pace sessions.
There wasn’t really any of the pre-race nerves that you usually get on the days leading up to racing, so the plan was just to go hard and try and stay at the front. With the swim being cancelled due to the blue green algae in the lake, Outlaw’s decision was to replace it with a 5k run. Not what I wanted, but I think the correct and only decision.
The pace of the run was very comfortable. Towards the end I tried to stretch things out a little just to get some space getting into T2. It worked a bit. There was no point in running away and trying to take any decent time out of people as the run pack was big and this was going to be the case going out on the bike.
Early on the bike, the pace was pretty decent with only 3 of us down the road. We were soon caught and the group was about 10 deep. Throughout the bike I felt comfortable and probably done more work than I needed to on the front of the group.
After a lot of cat and mouse the group was down to 3 with around 20 mile to go. We had lead bikes and referees following to make sure of no naughty antics by anyone.
Coming into T2, 1st place had a 2/3 minute lead on us after putting the hammer down right away after a big pull on the front by myself. I won’t do that again!
With a full distance race still in the legs this run was gonna be the real tester. I wouldn’t say it ever feels good running straight away after 112 mile and this time was the same. I dropped into 3rd for the first 4 mile ish. Things soon settled down and legs started to come around as I moved up into 2nd. The second half of the marathon wasn’t very good and wasn’t able to keep pushing on as the pace slowed.
I’m happy with 2nd and now enjoying some easy training before finishing the season off with hopefully a couple of half distance race’s.