Duathlete

Marathon...check. Triathlon...check. Duathalon...check.

It's official I am now a Marathoner, a Triathlete and a Duathlete. "Go Me"

Today was a great day for so many reasons. And really little of it has to do with me. But I'll give my race report anyway.

I was up at 5:45. First instinct is to check my knee, shin and my IT band which has been rather tight the last few days. Knee good to go, yes! Leg, not too bad, I haven't run on it since Monday. IT band slightly tight, did a few stretches before I did anything else. My father showed up an hour later and we were off to the race a little before 7. I was nervous, especially about the running. Dave was quiet. Asked him if he was nervous he said no. If I were him I would of been nervous! This was a first for him with no training on the bike and to add to the enjoyment a bike that is basically a 13 yr old piece of crap. Easy breezy check in and then we racked the bikes. There was supposed to be chip timing but that was not the case. About the only flaw the race directors made. We were set to go by 7:30. This is my most hated part of racing. The wait. You get cold. It was 34 degrees. You get more nervous. You start wondering if you're ready to race. I started sizing up the competition and quickly drew to a conclusion that I was not bring home a medal today. There were some serious cyclists there. There was also a lot of people my age. Much more than a typical race. This group was a well established bunch of runners and bikers. Ones that have been doing this for years.

The gun went off at 8 and let me give you the unedited version of the beginning. I started running and quickly realized that pavement hurts my leg. I couple of winces and an ouch or two later I completely forgot my leg hurt. Instead I was thinking "holy crap!" These people are fast. Everyone and I mean everyone took off. It was like a 100 meter dash! I have never been in a race where so many took off at one time. Usually you have about 25% fast 50% middle of the packers and 25% back of the packers. Not this time. I'd say about 80% were fast! So what's a girl to do? My thoughts, you've got to be friggin' kidding me? Really this fast? Don't they know we have to bike and run again? There's no way if I don't keep up that I have a chance as passing anyone on the bike. So I did the best to keep up. I ran way faster than I had intended. First mile was 7:56 and second was 8:10. This was not nearly fast enough.

Bike transition went well and I was quickly onto the roads. More than 1/2 this course I am familiar with. But yet it certainly doesn't feel that way when you are racing. Because there were so many good cyclists in this race I wasn't able to pass many people. I also felt like I was pushing hard but yet not hitting the 18 mph mark. I have realized today that this winter I will need to put in a lot of spin class hours and a lot of trainer hours to get faster. In order to be in contention for a age group medal I'm going to have to average 19-20 mph. I'm ready to tackle that mission. I had my garmin tracking the whole race and I avg about 3:35 min miles on the 12.4 mile course. I would love to get that down to about 3:15 min miles within the next year.

Transition from bike to run went well. Fumbled a bit with changing my helmet to my hat but not much time was lost. As I was exiting the transition area one of the race directors told me I was the 15th female to come in. What really?? I want to reply, "out of 16, right?" Well didn't he give me something to think about. As I shuffled my way through the first 1/2 mile with my biking legs still on duty I wondered how many age groups are there? If there are 3 top females in each age group maybe just maybe I'll get a medal. If like 1/2 the females ahead of me were all in the same age group which wasn't mine I definitely would get one. I quickly tried to get the math facts out of my head because I was really struggling. No one knows how difficult it is to bike then hop off and run until you do it. Finally after the first 1/2 mile my biking legs went on break and they were replaced with the slower version of the running legs I had about an hour ago. I averaged about 9 min miles for the end of the race. I totally forgot that my leg even was injured. That is progress. I finished the race in 1:22:26. With total miles of 16.4.

We stayed for the medal ceremony but to no avail. Maybe next year. I was rather disappointed. The race director got my hopes up. But really I think I did well today. But my husband is the one who deserves a medal.

Now maybe he didn't really go about this race the right way. Two spin classes doesn't constitute training for a duathalon. But that's what he had under his belt. Better than nothing, right? Smoked the run coming in only about a minute behind me. But what's most impressive is that he avg around a 5:15 min mile on that old crappy mountain bike. It's amazing how much the bike makes the difference in a race. He did the best he could with what he had. Worth a medal in my book. I was glad that he got to experience the bike to run transition. He now knows what it feels like to have biking legs when you are running. And again it didn't stop him. He came in only about 12 mins after I did. Amazing.

My father also did the race today and did great. There are not a lot of men that are 59 yrs old that can do what he does. After breaking his ankle in April he is finally on the road to recovery. Very impressive performance. There is 20 yrs between us and I have to say if he was my age he would beat my butt every time! I have no official times yet, but I believe that he was only 7 minutes behind me. Soon I'm going to have to start watching my back. He may pass me on the bike someday!

Thanks go out to the family for braving the cold and cheering us on and taking 1 million pictures. It's always nice to have them with us. Always nice to feel the support. Always important to share our victories with the ones we love. Thank You.