As a former swimmer and someone who is (relative to the other two sports) a poor runner, I don’t know why I signed up for a race where I had to run not once but twice! But alas, this is my write-up of my first ever duathlon.

Pre-Race:

I’ve been quite the fair weather athlete this Spring, and while I’m happy with my current fitness given my training volume (or lack there of) this year, I knew that this wasn’t going to be a speedy day. That in conjunction with the fact that I don’t really enjoy running that much and that I really don’t like running hard, I honestly wasn’t really looking forward to the race.

It was a little chilly when I arrived. I had on warm up pants, a long sleeve fleece jacket, and even brought gloves so my hands weren’t too cold. I got my bike racked and transition area setup. By the way, packing for a duathlon is so much nicer than packing for a tri - no wetsuit, goggles, swim cap, body glide, towel, etc. to have to pack. Two pairs of shoes and a helmet and that’s more less it. Anyway, I stood around and chatted and soon we were on our way to the starting area. I would be in the third of four waves to start behind the elite wave and the women’s wave respectively. All the men 39 and under were going in this wave, so it was fairly crowded. My friend was wearing a yellow, long sleeve jersey and jokingly said something to the effect of, “Just so you know, I’m wearing yellow for a reason today.” That got a pretty good laugh from folks around us.

First Run (5k):

My goal here was to start out slowly and to not ruin my day by going too hard too soon in the beginning. Ideally, I wanted to negative split my run paces between the first and second runs. The starter yelled go and the race was underway. I settled in running easy for the first 1/2 mile or so. I started near the back and stayed there to ensure that I didn’t get caught up in race day madness and push too hard too soon. But after about 3-4 minutes, I opened it up a little and got settled into a steady rhythm. I soon started passing some folks in the waves in front of me and was getting passed fairly consistently too, so there was a decent mix of scenery.

The run course had a lot of up and down and was primarily held on grassy paths where there was one lawn mower width strip that you were supposed to follow. Having such a narrow path did make it harder to pass folks, but it wasn’t too bad. I stayed steady for the remainder of the run telling myself to keep it easy as there was still a bike leg and another run to come later. The end of the course has you run up a short but really steep hill which they so labelled “fun hill” on the course map. There wasn’t really anything fun about it, except that the finish line was soon after that hill.

Time: 23:45 - 7:55 pace - 214/355 (ack!) overall

T1:

Uneventful. Bike shoes on. Helmet on. Go.

Time: 0:59

Bike (17 miles)

This was the leg that I was going to work at. I figured I’d coast the first run, bike hard, and run with whatever I had left. So off I went onto the bike course. I managed to go at a pretty good clip and felt really good initially. The course was a little more rolling than I expected it to be and the wind always seemed to be in my face (but isn’t that always the case :) ).

I started getting a little tired after pushing for a while so checked my odometer on my watch to see how far along I was. It read “4.0″.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

I thought for sure I was farther along than that. I’m already getting tired and I still have 13 more miles here?! I’m not even 1/4 of the way there. Oh well. I throttled back a little bit because going on that clip that I was riding at for the first four miles would have totally caused me to blow up. I probably slowed down a little too much, but I didn’t want to roll into T2 totally exhausted. I played cat and mouse with a bunch of folks - I passed a ton of folks on road bikes going downhill and on the flats and most of them passed me going up hill. Tri bikes just don’t make very good climbing bikes.

Oh, and I guess I should mention the rather poor bike “etiquette” that was out there. I didn’t see any drafting really, but there were a ton of people riding in the middle of the road and riding on the left. So I ended up passing a bunch of folks on the right side and even crossed over the center line to pass folks who were riding side by side. Once, I even threaded the needle and passed right between two folks because I couldn’t go around - that was a little scary.

Pedal, pedal, pedal and I approached T2.

Time: 46:14 - 22.1 MPH - 56/355 overall.

T2:

Also uneventful. I changed shoes again and took off my arm warmers because it was starting to warm up (finally).

Time: 0:54

Second Run (4k):

“Why am I doing something where I have to run twice again? Tough. Suck it up and deal.” I headed out on the run course and realized that I have to run more less the same loop that I did for the first leg of the run. Ugh. It was like bad deja vu.

I pushed on, trying to focus on keeping my cadence high. My legs felt fine, but my body was starting to tire. By the start of the second run, I was already at it for over an hour and I hadn’t done anything intensive for that long yet this year. I kept plodding and telling myself that I was almost done and that in a few more minutes, I’d be able to finally stop moving.

More narrow paths and more hills. That “fun hill” was still not fun. Not even the second time through.

Time: 20:55 - 7:54 pace - 154/355 overall.

Summary:

I ended with an overall time of 1:32:45. 116/355 overall and 22/44 for my AG. I negative split my paces for my run, although barely. Looking back, I could have pushed a bit harder for both runs, but I doubt it would have changed that much. I probably could have run 7:30s if I wanted to, but 7:50 pace while cruising vs. 7:30 pace while suffering… I opted for the non-suffering. Yeah, I’m a wuss. :)

Sascha did the race, but signed up all stealth like so I didn’t get to plan ahead of time to meet her in person. She claims to have seen me there, but I think when she saw that I was wearing a tri outfit with arm warmers she decided not to associate with me. I don’t blame her at all - I felt pretty stupid, but it was cold! ;)

My “friend in yellow” ended up getting 3rd place in his AG. He missed first place by about 1:30 but beat the guy in fourth by just eight seconds.

The course was well organized and the volunteers were great, giving up their Sunday morning to direct traffic and cheer. All in all, it was a good day. I don’t foresee any other duathlons in my near future. I like having a swim and having a leg that I can feel good about. :) But I’m glad to have done the race.