1700m of swimming, 40km of biking and a 10km run. I have done these distances, individually, multiple times. It so happened that Germany is currently experiencing an unreal heatwave and we started our race at 39degrees Celsius, or 92Fahrenheit, at 1pm in the afternoon.

The Swim

Downstream on the Main, this swim was fun. Not only has the river’s water temperature reached 27,5Celsius, the stream is also fairly fast. I averaged 1:24/100yards, coming out of the water after 25Minutes. I was lucky to be a little bit before the main field of roughly 700starters because Kitzingen is a very local race and the transition zone on the river banks war packed.

The Bike

The first km were flat and I got pretty comfy in Aero. My legs felt pretty good. As always, I loved the biking. Pretty early I was able to find a group that was about my pace and went go back and forth depending on the terrain.

At km 30 I heard someone shouting from behind: “Hello Wifey, how are you feeling?”. I tried to stay behind Pouya, but I could not keep up. Very suddenly I was experiencing some harsh tummy pain that almost made it impossible to stay in aero. It made me a little worried about the upcoming run, since the same thing had happened during my middle distance in Mallorca (for which I am still owing a race report).

The Run, or: Questioning my sanity

The race strategy was to not overpace as I had consistently done in all runs, except for my best 10k where I was able to run negative splits. I started with a 6:17km / 10:11mile. It felt not great, but ok. Running in the sun was very harsh and after the first km I had trouble breathing and I experienced sharp pain in my tummy again. It forced me to go into a run/walk-mode and mentally took a lot. I kept thinking that it would be ok to quit, that I do not have to finish this if it’s hurting so much. After 4km they offered Coca Cola and I figured it would either make my pain worse and force me to give up or it would make it better. This time Coke did the job, the pain gradually went away, leaving me scared and anticipating the next wave. After the first round Juli and Matthias (who had already finished his Sprint) were cheering me up. Running by, I told them I would quit. Juli then followed me and gave me a real pep-talk; the second 5k-loop went much better, I came in with a pretty disappointing run time.

I was proud for fighting through the pain and not collapsing in this ridiculous heat.