Johnny Hall's Travels and Travails

After Ironman Austria, I've not been training too much and I didn't manage to make it to the start line of any races either, for one reason or another. A chance meeting with someone at Glentress a couple of weeks ago reminded me that the offroad winter duathlon series was starting again, so, to give myself a reason to train, I entered all three. Since then, I've done a fair amount of running, mostly to and from work and the park and ride at Straiton (6 miles, every work day - it adds up), and I've been mountain biking a few times, usually on my singlespeed. The first, medium length, race was today. It was very, very cold, although the sun was out and the sky was blue, everything was shrouded in a layer of frost and the ground was rock hard. I cycled up to the start at the Buzzard's Nest directly from the house. As usual, there were quite a few faces that were known to me, so I got some chatting in before the start. My tactic was simply to bumble round at my own, relatively slow, speed. However, that more or less went out the window as I tried quite hard, not enough to blow a gasket but I was blowing out my ears on several occasions. Every part of the course seems to be going either up or down, no flat. The bike was relatively uneventful but it did seem to involve climbing a lot. It took my legs about 10 minutes before they got used to the effort, after that, I was pretty comfortable. A nice quick transition and I was onto the run. I was using my Inov8 fell shoes, which have decent grip but no cushion. My calf muscles and achilles were super tight after about 5 minutes and my lower back went after 10. I need to do a lot more steep hill running. The run course essentially went up for 15 minutes, then up and down a bit for another 10 and then back the same way. Because of this, I was waiting for the leading runner, so that I'd have a reasonable idea how far I still had to go. As we passed, we exchanged pleasantries (I know him) but I took the eye off the ground and tripped clumsily on a rock and hit the (hard) ground, hard. I managed to rip a hole in my knee (so, now I need new running tights) and bang my arm. Everything was still working though, so I picked myself up, after losing a handful of places (I'd have lost them anyway, I think). The run back down the main track was harder work that it should be, since the ground was frozen solid, I had to work hard to avoid getting winded. I finished reasonably strongly, though I'm goosed now. I've no idea of my final placing. There were more people behind than in front of me, which is all I usually ask of myself. My run plus transition time was around 40 minutes and my ride time was about 47. Update: 48th out of 133 finishers. 35th rider.