Kristian Høgenhaug took home 2nd place in his season debut at Challenge Gran Canaria. The BMC athlete had an excellent swim, took over the lead in the second half of the bike only to be caught in the final 6k of the run. Kristian crossed the line in a time of 3:45:29, just 35 second shy of winner Iestyn Harrett (GBR; 3:44:54). Ugarte Ramos Mikel (ESP; 3:46:26) rounded out the podium.
Kristian Høgenhaug had put a lot of work into his swim this winter and that work immediately paid off in his first race of the season. Kristian exited the water in 11th place, only 15 seconds back to the leaders. After losing some time in T1, he jumped on his BMC Speedmachine with a minute deficit. On the technical up-and-down bike course, consisting of 4 laps, Høgenhaug was making work of closing that gap towards the front. At the halfway mark, he managed to connect with the leading athletes. Recovering from his chase towards the front, the Dane settled inside the leading group. With 20k to go, Kristian took over control of the race, by pushing the pace. He immediately opened up a gap and started to break away in the final stages of the bike. Posting a 2:03:33 bike split, Høgenhaug took off for the run with an advantage of 1’20 over the rest of field. With the 5 out-and-back laps of the run course, Kristian had plenty of moments to check in with his competitors. The BMC athlete was running a very solid pace, but saw his lead shrink to 20 seconds halfway through the run. Still going strong, he kept pushing hard, but couldn’t prevent Harrett from making his move for 1st place with 6k left. At that point, Høgenhaug had a gap of over a minute towards 3rd place. Crossing the finish line in a time of 3:45:29, Kristian claimed 2nd place, only 35 seconds shy of the winner.
Good test for what's to come in May
Afterwards Kristian Høgenhaug reflected on his race and was happy with his performance: “I came here to get a good rust buster after last year. So, today was about making it a good and hard race for myself before the big goals in May. I got a really bad beach start, so I had to swim my way to the front and managed to get in the lead group. Things got a bit hectic on the second loop with all the age groupers. I was last in the front pack and lost connection with them. I took it quite easy in T1 by putting my socks on and then, it was business time on the bike. I kept my pace hard, but controlled during the first two loops to eventually catch up with the front group. At that point, it felt easy to sit in that leading pack. So, I knew I had to attack. On the last lap, I went for it with more than 400 watts on all of the climbs. I don’t know if that impacted my run, but I tried to regain a bit of energy in the final kilometers of the bike though. I thought I was able to put down a good run performance, but maybe it was a little under what I expected. I felt like a diesel engine, so I probably need some more speedwork in training. I didn’t feel like I could push through the ceiling and lacked a bit of speed. All-in-all, I managed to hang on to 2nd place, so super happy about that. A lot to build on for the season ahead and looking forward towards May, where I’ll compete in two IM70.3’s and hopefully end with an epic run.”
