Summertime Triathlon Karlsdorf-Neuthard – Aug, 9, 2015

For this year I had scheduled to participate in the 2015 Zofingen ITU Powerman Long Distance Duathlon World Championships the first weekend in September and Anna and I had planned to stay at her parents’ house one month ahead so that I could get used to the weather and time zone.

Then I learnt that Anna’s Dad was going to do a triathlon on Aug 9 and I thought, as I’m going to be there already, I might as well race, too.

I thought it was a local and small, standard distance race, but then I learnt that it was also the provincial championships. I expected a lot of fast guys and looked forward to it although I was taking it more as a training race, as Olympic distance is kind of too short for me and I was still tired from the travel and the Ironman 70.3 Cebu that had taken place just a week earlier.

One day before the race I learnt that Sebastian Kienle, the current World Champion was going to be at the start line. He grew up and lives in the region and sometimes does local races for training. I was excited to meet him.

On race day we had a 40minute drive from Anna’s place to the race venue in Karlsdorf. We got our race kits and then did a short 4km warm-up bike to the swim start at a small lake.

Once I set up my bike in transition, I started looking around and then saw Sebastian with the bib No. 1! I approached him to say hi. He was really friendly and we had a quick small talk and took some pictures. It was great! I also saw again Josh Amberger who had already raced in Subic’s Ironman 70.3 and he was staying with Sebastian for training.

We did a warm-up swim together and then moved to the start line. Once the start gun fired, of course, I lost both of the pros really quickly and just tried to hang on with all the fast age group swimmers.

I was far behind running out of T1 but had a good bike ride on the rather flat 40km loop and was running out of T2 when I saw Sebastian starting his second run lap. We ran together for a couple of hundred metres but there was no chance I could stay with him, he was flying on the run. Just one week after Cebu I still felt the pain in my legs so I decided not to push too hard and finally finished 30th overall. After the finish we hang out to watch Anna’s Dad come in and finishing 3rd in his AG.

It was definitely a great and fun training race and fantastic experience to race with the World Champion. I wish him good luck in Kona to defend his title this year!!!