Last weekend I participated in a Duathlon for the first time, and an interesting one at that: Instead of a cycling stage you’ve got rowing! Every year on 1 March they kick off the spring season in Hévíz by paddling about 10km along a brook starting from the thermal springs and then running back the same way.
Hévíz, or termálvíz literally means thermal water and it’s also the name of the town Hévíz where you can find the lake Hévíz. I was surprised to learn this is the biggest thermal lake in Europe and the second biggest in the world. The name of the race is a play on words in Hungarian because depending on where you break it up it’s either Hévízi bivaly (buffalo from Hévíz) or Hé vízibivaly (hey, water buffalo!), as if you were shouting. Apparently they used to drive water buffalo along the brook to clear out the water weeds.
It seemed like a fun idea to do the race on a tandem SUP. We have a second-hand one that we use with the kids on the Danube in Summer and the race rules don’t forbid two people on the same SUP, although I did get a call from the race organisers to double-check I hadn’t made a mistake filling out the form. All I needed was a teammate. I invited/challenged our local parish priest, Father Attila, to team up for the race; he’s really sporty and seemed like someone who’d be up for the challenge.
As the first day of (meteorological) spring after an icy cold winter, it was too cold to go out paddling until the day of the race, so we didn’t have any practice at all at paddling together, which made balancing and steering pretty challenging at first. On the day I ended up going barefoot as the thermal water was pleasantly warm and by the end of the paddling stage we got the synchronised paddling down to a T. The water was really shallow, apparently much shallower than usual, and twice I got knocked down into a kneeling stance when the board’s fin got caught in some weeds. We were the only 2-person team to use a SUP, the rest were in kayaks or canoes, and we ended up being lumped together with the “touring vessels”.
The running stage was particularly tough for me. I’m not really a runner and although I’d run 10k before a few times I didn’t consider I’d start it off tired from holding my body steady on a paddleboard for 2 hours. No problem for Father Attila who didn’t even break a sweat. Okay, it was only 6°C at max, but he also goes for regular runs and is much fitter than me in this regard. Luckily the emphasis of the race is more on fun and several people were even strolling along instead of running, so we didn’t fare too badly despite me being completely out of breath by the end.
All in all it was a great event, pushing quite far out of my comfort zone but with a chilled and fun atmosphere, people cheering each other on during the race and so on. It’s definitely worth trying at least once, even if you’re not a hardcore runner or rower. I met some friends during the race who participate every year and it got me thinking, maybe I’ll sign up next year too… maybe with a bit more practice in advance though. 😉
You can find out more about the race on the Hevizibivaly website or on the Hevizibivaly Facebook page.
FTR, these were the race stats I recorded to Strava/Garmin:
