Rockbuster Offroad Duathlon - DuathlonXterra

I was fairly happy with Run #1. I had scouted out the course before and pre-ran most of it. There was added section that I did not expect, a very large hill that most everyone had trouble with. Still, I feel that I got up and over it with no problem. Overall, Run #1 went well- i kept a solid pace and just tried to run my own race.

I would give myself more time- in February when I started training, I could not run a mile without stopping, so this was a big improvement in a small amount of time.

I am estimating 2:00 minutes here- FIRM does not track transitions, but include it with the next activity. I felt this was a quick transition for me- I got in, changed shoes, and got out without issue. I did forget to switch my Garmin to bike mode- so I lost all data after this transition.

I would learn to use the Garmin in multisport, so I can get better tracking of my results.

I knew coming in to this event that my mountain biking would make or break the race for me. It did not go well. The course was not technical, but the difficulty of the hills really hurt me. As a cyclist moving into multisports, I am not very proud of this effort. At several points during the ride, I really started to question why I had signed up for the race.

I would spend more time on my mountain biking. I feel this is the section that really cost me a decent finishing time. Since I broke each arm in back-to-back MTB seasons, I have been too timid out on the trail. Either I need to stick to the road, or get over my fear.

Estimate of transition time. It was a good, quick transition. Got the bike racked quickly, but not very cleanly. Taking the MTB shoes off and slipping the running shoes on was smooth. One area to improve on is gloves- I took my right glove off, but ran a 1/4 of Run #2 before I realized I still had my left glove on- an homage to the late King of Pop?

Practice. It is one thing to do the transition in a non-race situation, but once your zonked from two events, things are more difficult. I need to practice it more to make it more routine.

I was pretty discouraged after the mountain bike. As I got into transition, I ran into Dan, a fellow racer I had met before the start. I caught up to him leaving transition and we ran and chatted most of Run #2. At that point, I was no longer worried about achieving my overall time goal- I just wanted to finish the race strong. As the run went on, I enjoyed it more and more.

This is a tough one- the competitor in me says I should have run harder for a better time, but I am pretty happy with this run.

Walked around, talked to some more participants, met fellow Bt'r Seren (who won her Age Group).


Mountain Biking- if I am going to this event next year- I need to get better.


This was a fun race. There was a good turn out, and I had a lot of fun. I left the race accomplishing two of my three goals: 1) finish the race; 2) not walk any of the run; I did not reach my time goal of 1:15, but this leaves me hungrier for the next race.