Canwi athlete Oyvind Johannessen first win of the season
After a week of easy training and only 14h of it in total, much because of 2 days of being sick, I was ready to do my first race in Taupo, New Zealand!
It started 7am on the Sunday morning and so I had to be up at 5am!
I grab what I thought was all the stuff I needed and left… but of course I had forgotten my energy gels, my goggles and my race belt for the start number… but nothing to do about that as we couldn’t go back and get it when the race started only 45min after we got to the race area…
So I bought some jelly beans, ate one small bag of it, got my bike ready to go, borrowed some goggles and got to the race start…
Start signal went off and we all jumped in the water… It was a fast start, but I felt pretty good, even though I had no warm up… I soon got into third position and stayed there for the swim… out of the first transition I was 2min 50sec down from the leading team with Olympian Dirk Bockel doing the swim and bike and in between us it was one guy…
I got onto the bike and felt pretty good, so I started pushing it and in the first hill after 7km I met Dirk coming down and caught the lead individual… so then I was in the lead of the individual race and in chase of Dirk and his team!
I went hard and really wanted to catch him, but with 1km to go of the first lap, I took a wrong turn and went up a long steep hill… When I was on my way down, I saw the guy I had caught riding past at the bottom of the hill, and so I was in pursuit again…
This time there was also another guy in front of him again, and when I caught him (pretty much half way into the ride) I decided to forget about Dirk and just race for the win in the individual competition, so I just sat 10m behind the leader until it was 5km to go, then I made my move up a hill… I got some time on him right away and just kept going…
After the second transition I had well over 1min, so I was able to just control the run into a comfortable win 8min in front of the next guy!
My splits were: 22min 17sec for 1500m swim and first transition, 1h 5min 49sec for 40km bike and second transition and 37min 44sec for 10km run, and a total of 2h 5min 51sec.
I’m happy with my win and am looking forward to Ironman in less than 4 weeks, as I think I’m right on track!
Lastly I would like to thank Oslo Sportslager for supplying me with all my equipment (Everest bike, Giro helmet, Orca wetsuit and tri suit and Asics shoes), Honey Stinger for supplying me with energy gels, bars and fruit smoothies (it helps me soo much in training and when I remember to bring them, in competitions as well), M&M Tomrerservice and my club Ostmarka IL for financial support, Top Gear cycles for helping me out with goggles at the race, CMS Coaching for all the help with my training, Reed and Michelle Marshall for letting me stay with them while I’m in Taupo and not the least, my family back home for all the support!

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