Kristian Høgenhaug crossed the finish line of IM Vitoria-Gasteiz in 5th place. The BMC athlete shortly led the race on the run and was in contention for the podium until the very end to eventually come home in a time 7:44:36. Antonio Benito Lopez (ESP; 7:36:38) ran to the victory with David McNamee (GBR; 7:41:20) and Cameron Wurf (AUS; 7:43:16) rounding out the podium.
Brutal day
Kristian Høgenhaug toed the line in Vitoria-Gasteiz for his first full distance race of the season. He had a solid start as he exited the water in 12th place, 2 minutes back of the leaders.
Kristian used the first kilometers of the bike to close down the gap towards the first chase group. Once he made the connection around the 50k mark, he immediately rode to the front of that group to claim third place and started chasing the leaders down. A little later, Høgenhaug moved up to 2nd place as Laidlow was given a DSQ. In the second part of the bike, Kristian had dropped all the other pursuers and claimed sole possession of second place. Not having the best legs on the bike, he couldn’t prevent Kallin from building up his lead, but he did manage to open up a significant gap towards the rest of the field. Reaching T2, Høgenhaug was nearly 6 minutes down on leader Kallin and started the closing marathon another six minutes in front of third place. In the first 10k, Kristian matched the pace of Kallin, but after that point he started to close down the Swede. At the halfway point, he cut down the gap to just over a minute. And another 4k later, the Danish athlete made the pass to take over control of the lead. Unfortunately, the danger came from behind. Just before the 30k mark, Høgenhaug had to settle for 2nd place. Going into the final lap of 10k, the BMC athlete was battling with McNamee for second place. Kristian kept his pace as high as possible and gave his all towards the line, but couldn’t prevent the passes of Weiss and Wurf in the final kilometers of the run. With a finishing time of 7:44:36, Høgenhaug crossed the finish line eventually in 5th place after a hard fought battle.
Using all mental resources
Afterwards Kristian reflected: “It was an absolute horrible day actually. I was completely done from the start of the swim and completely cooked during the swim like never before. Halfway through the swim, I lost the connection with the group of athletes I would normally swim with. On the bike, it was a long solo ride with terrible leg and on the run, it was all about surviving. I had to use all mental resources today. Everything had to be forced through and I didn’t have any flow. So, not much of a fun day. I’ll need to process this day.”
