On June 18th Margaret Schotte (TEAm Lipton) won the Canadian National Duathlon Championships, and punched her ticket to the World’s in Australia later this year. Of particular interest for you, our bike-obsessed audience, is the route Margaret took to the win.

A highly decorated runner since high school, Margaret discovered her aptitude for the bike in 2002 while training for the New York to Boston AIDS ride. Later that year she made her duathlon debut, placing second. She’s been tearing it up in du’s ever since.

Since the Nationals was a draft legal race, Margaret decided to join a road racing team to improve her pack riding and pacelining skills. She hooked up with TEAm Lipton earlier in the year and competed in road races for the first time. Coupled with an injury that reduced her training time for the run, the bike was now becoming Margaret’s stronger suit. We asked Margaret a few questions about her preparations, her pre race strategy, and how the race actually played out.

@##=#<1,r>@##=#NYVC: First of all, Congratulations! I know you’d never admit this, but I heard through the grapevine that you were very confident going into the race. What were the signs that told you your form was on target?

MS: Well, hold on a second! If you’d talked to me the week before the race, you would have encountered one very nervous duathlete… Due to a chronic hamstring problem, I haven’t been able to run as much as I’d like this past winter and spring, so I was very concerned that I would be a few minutes slower than the leaders in the opening 10 km run. In light of that, I was really hoping that my cycling had improved to the point where I’d be able to make up enough ground on the bike. Another reason that I was nervous is that I felt like I wasn’t really in racing shape yet—compared to last year, when Duathlon Worlds took place at the end of May. By this point in 2004 I’d already done half a dozen races and had better benchmarks for my fitness level.

NYVC: Despite your injury, you didn’t lose any time on the first run and started the bike leg with a group of four. You mentioned before the race that you needed to attack the bike leg and get some time gains before the second run. How did the bike leg actually play out?

@##=#<2,L>@##=#MS: Since this was my first elite race, I was concerned about how I was going to identify the strong competition, or know who to organize attacks with… But it turned out to be easier than I’d realized to pick out who was in shape and who was just hanging on. I was a bit intimidated to find out the week before the race that the most experience Canadian duathlete, Lucy Smith—I think she’s something like the 15-time Canadian champion—was going to be in the field… But fortunately for me, she’d just given birth to her second child 3 months earlier! She was certainly in impressive shape, but an Olympic distance du is a substantial effort, and as she said, she hadn’t yet gotten her fitness back on the bike.

When our group of 4 set out on the first of four 10-km out-and-back laps, it became apparent that the wind was going to be a factor on the return stretch. It also became obvious that one woman in the field was not prepared to do her share of the work—every time she’d rotate to the front, she’d pull for 10 or 15 seconds and then pull off. So aggravating! It got even more noticeable once we took the turn at the far end and headed back into the wind. As a result of this, the pace stayed quite slow. One other woman in the pack was pulling well, and at some point quite early on, when she was dropping back past me, we caught each other’s eye and started to plan an attack. Originally we thought we should go at the halfway point of the race, but then I realized that that would mean a long 20-km stretch for the others to chase us down. Not to mention that 10 km of that would be into the wind. We revised our plan and decided to make our move at the beginning of the final lap.

Things went as planned, and we charged past the spectators, who were near the turn-around point. Then, maybe one kilometer down the road, who should take her turn pulling the break but Lucy. What? She wasn’t included in our plan! But obviously, she is vastly more experienced than myself or the other woman, and when we jumped, she didn’t let us get very far. Having realized that, we relaxed, and the whole pack soon regrouped.

NYVC: So your pre race scenario didn’t quite pan out, and it’s down to the run. Tell us about the last run leg.

@##=#<3,r>@##=#MS: I actually had fairly bad transitions, both from the run to the bike, and from the bike to the second run. I started the 2nd run in third, but was only about 100 metres back. Thanks to my background as a distance runner, I usually have comparatively strong second runs; fortunately, I was able to pass the woman who had put in such a mediocre effort on the bike, and then I caught up to the stronger woman. I thought I might have to put in a surge about 1 km from the end (of the 5 km) to try to drop her, but actually, she faded about a mile from the end.

NYVC: Even though you didn’t gain any time on the bike leg, was your superior strength on the bike leave you fresher for the second run?

MS: Let’s hope so! I think that my original plan—to go out conservatively on the run, and then try to wear people out on the bike—worked well for me at this point in the season. I felt comfortable with my pace, and knew that I probably had something in reserve if I needed it. There was one worrisome moment though, when I was in sight of the finish line; with less than 50 m to go a woman sprinted past me. She was wearing the same colour singlet as the woman in second, so I spent a few horrible seconds being truly impressed with her kick—she’d come out of nowhere! I tried to hang on… then, as we leaned at the line, I realized that she wasn’t in my race—there were several races on the course at the same time, and she was actually an age-group triathlete.

NYVC: Can you talk a bit about your spring as a roadie, and how it helped you on the bike? Did you acquire bike-handling skills that helped you in the group?

@##=#<4,L>@##=#MS: I certainly gained confidence with pacelining, riding very close to other racers, and not letting people force me to the front of the pack… Well, actually, I need to watch that, because my instinct is to drive hard off the front—and then I end up towing the field along. Because the field at Nationals was small, the race didn’t get as technical as it could have. I’m happy I’ll have the next few months to do some more mass-start races before Worlds, where everything is going to be significantly more competitive. The challenge is going to be stepping up my training, especially running, without reaggravating my hamstring injury. I think I’m going to have to take 2 or 3 minutes off my 10-km time just to keep in contact with the leaders going into the bike. Not to mention I’ve clearly got some work to do on my transitions!

NYVC: Obviously, the World’s on September 25 is your next big goal. Are we going to see you in road races and TT’s before then?

MS: Yes, that’s my plan. I haven’t hammered out my schedule yet; at the moment I think it would be fun to try a low-key local triathlon… But I’ll also be out there wearing my TEAm Lipton jersey. I am really looking forward to doing some time trials—I’m still much more used to that style of racing, where you put your head down and it’s just you against the clock.