Last chance Saloon

Sunday 11th April was my second and final chance to try and gain a Great Britain spot at the World Duathlon championships in Edinburgh.
This time I was off to Emberton near Milton Keynes to see if I could improve on my National champs position which saw me miss out on a spot by 20 seconds ! This event is actually the 3rd of 4 qualifiers,but this will be my last chance as the final qualifier in Cambridge is already sold out,so the pressure's on !
The course looked decent with a multi lap run and an undulating 2 lap bike. The weather was set fair and quite mild,a god send seeing as the first wave went off at 07.45.
I went in the first wave and got quickly into a good stride on the first run of a pan flat course. Only complaint is the people who insist on pushing themselves to the front only to get overtaken within 100 yards.Why ?
I ran the 10km in 34.13 which was quicker than the nationals but to be expected due the flatter course. The bike again was my downfall,I can't get used to these tri bar things and spent most of the ride on the drops. I must admit mind that the lads coming past me had wheels worth more than my road bike. It's quite easy to ride at 1-2 mph quicker on a proper time trial bike with aero helmet and top of the range wheels. If you take this into account this can mean losing as much as 5-6 mins over an hour. This was to be the case as I came in at 66min for the 40km on the undulating course. Not a disaster but some lads at the front went sub hour !
So after losing up to 20 places on the bike it was time for me to claw some places back on the 5km run. I went well again on the final run and clocked 18.30 which measured slightly long apparently to gain back some places I had lost on the bike.
So where did this get me ?
Well I was about 40th overall out of the 550 starters and more importantly 12th in my age group. This was actually worse than my 10th at the nationals,panic was starting to set in but I soon dismissed this and just accepted that a) It's too late to worry now I've finished,and b)remember how 10th at the nationals gave me 5th of those who registered.
The only thing I could do was study the results when I got home and see who had beaten me..... and the results suggest that despite a 12th in age I was 3rd registered finisher. All those ahead of me had either already qualified at the other qualifying events or had not registered to be considered.
Great news ! There are 4 qualifiers from each race and so a 3rd will be good enough to get me a slot to the Worlds in September. I must add that this has to be confirmed but I'm 99% certain that I'm in and await an e-mail from the selectors.

In the mean time I have a Duathlon in the lakes on Sunday (18th) followed by a fell race wed,a fell race a week sat (24th) and my first road race (bike) on the sunday. That's 4 races in 8 days !! My legs are already screaming.