Tony Dodds and Martin van Barneveld took to a different style of racing over the weekend.
The Kiwi pair, who both race for German club team Software Darmstadt, were in action at the Paderborner City Triathlon with the event split into two races over two days.
Day one was a Super Sprint (250m swim, 5km bike, 2.5km run). Run in waves of eight competitors, Dodds was ranked fourth after heats while van Barneveld struggled with fumes on the swim and was 29th after heats.
Dodds and van Barneveld's team was ranked fifth overall out of 15 teams following the Super Sprint.
Then came race number two – a Sprint Triathlon of 750 swim, 20km bike and 5km run.
Positions on the start line were dictated by results in race one, which meant Dodds started 20 second behind the leader while van Barneveld had to wait 1:35 to start.
van Barneveld gives an overview of how the race unfolded;
"Athletes ranked from 1-8 swam in lane 1 of a pool, athletes 9-16 in lane two and so on. I was in lane 4 and you could draft the people in your lane.
"We had eight athletes start within seven seconds because that is how close the times were from Saturday after all the different heats. So it made for a very tight start in one swimming pool lane but definitely a lot of fun.
"Tony raced really well and his lane of eight athletes kept their lead and Tony ended up fifth overall which was great result.
"Lanes 2 and 3 came together to form a second chase pack of 16 guys, and the lane behind me caught up in the swim so we exited with 16 people as well. When we started the bike no one wanted to work. I forced a break away with two others through a technical section, so made the bike very difficult for myself again. One positive though was I have just had feedback from my coach Greg Fraine that I did a lot of ‘PBs' in bike wattage. So it was a good hit out on the bike.
"We tried to bridge across to the second chase group of 16 guys, and by end of the 20km were just 10 seconds down. I was not sure how I would run as my legs were feeling very smashed from the insane bike. But managed to run reasonably well and passed eight guys from the group ahead to finish 17th overall.
"I moved from 29th to 17th on day two. I would have liked to have run a little quicker but must take everything into consideration and look at the whole picture.
"The weekend was a lot of fun. Really cool to be involved with a great team and race something really different. Now it's time for both Tony and I to get the recovery right but also keep training as we have more races coming up with Madrid next weekend but keeping an eye on for the London race in August.”
Paderborner City Triathlon 2011
Men's Results
1. Steffen Justus (EJOT Team) 0:56:47
2. Jonathan Zipf (EJOT Team) 0:56:50
3. William Clarke (EJOT Team) 0:57:13
4. Sebastian Rank (Stadtwerke Team) 0:57:20
5. Tony Dodds (Tony Software AG Team) 0:57:40
Also;
17. Martin van Barneveld (Software AG Team) 1:00:08
