Learning is about continuing to make mistakes, isn't it? As long as you don't make the same mistakes twice... Well, I am pretty good at making new mistakes in my races, it seems! Read on...

After having done 5.06 at Challenge Aarhus last year, my hope was to break the magic 5 hours. But that very quickly went out the window! Not only does the new Aarhus setup feature a swim to bike transition with a staircase with 82 steps and a fairly long run - what was worse was that I by mistake put my reserve goggles on - where I quickly discovered that all of the anti-fog coating had rubbed off - so I spent 51 long minutes in the water unable to see a thing and having no idea where I was, and at the same time fighting some fairly large swells. The good thing was that I was then unable to see the hundreds of stinging jellyfish we were swimming through... So I started the day losing 10-15 minutes on the swim and additional 5 minutes in transition.

The plan then changed to have good bike and run experiences, which I had.

Although it's a fairly challenging course I wanted to try to break 2.30 hours, but ended up with 2.33. Which was OK since it's a pretty technical course with lots of twists and turns, wind, 800 meters of climbing, and pretty narrow roads where you need to be careful not to hit triathletes coming in the opposite direction. It also took me a while to find the power, but about 1/3 through my legs opened up.

Then a relaxed transition - 5 minutes - and on to the run. No problems running off the bike, felt good throughout except for a few heavy kms at the halfway point. Tried for 1.35-1.39 but ended up with 1.44. Not great but I was pleased with that, everything considered.

So in the end I crossed the finish line in 5.23 - a far cry from sub 5. And in fact, my second slowest half Ironman ever!

Think I need to leave the bike alone for a while and focus on swimming and running! (which I already knew).

It was a good test for Challenge Roth full Ironman which is in 3 weeks. A good day, actually