Du at the Dam - Duathlon

Paced myself pretty well, and found the run course to be quite nice. Longer than advertised, but I didn't mind too much.

Slightly slower than I planned, but not too bad.

Definitely the worst bike course i've ever competed on. The first half of the race wasn't too bad, a mix of residential streets, but in the latter half of the race, the course switched to bike trails. The switch over to only bike trails for the rest of the race was a horrible course design decision for a number of reasons:

1. Dodging cars coming out of driveways isn't fun or safe for that matter.
2. Getting stuck behind slower riders because the trail is too narrow to pass safely really robs you of the motivation to treat the race like a race.
3. Not being able to pass slower riders because of pedestrians/oncoming bike traffic is pretty frustrating
4. The big dips in the trail as it cuts across driveways are rather dangerous if you approach them with any kind of speed.

I lost all motivation to even attempt to get a decent time at about mile 8. It was really unfortunate that they chose to have the course switch to bike trails, up until that point it was shaping up to be a rather fun course.

Not go over the dips in the trail at 20+mph, at one point I swore I was going to go over the handle bars, I'm still not sure how I managed to complete the course without flatting.

Could have been slightly faster, but I'm fairly satisfied with this transition.

Packed an extra water bottle instead of trying to extract the very last drops from the bottle I had on the bike.

This run was also longer than advertised, but I still didn't mind too much. I really started to feel the heat as I started this run. My pace was a lot slower than I had hoped, but I'm mostly satisfied since I really wasn't feeling 100% that day to begin with. It would have been nice if they had had a water station between miles 2 and 3, but I'm not really complaining.

Better hydration ahead of the race, and packed a visor or cap.

Drank a lot of water, walked around the venue for about 15 minutes, then headed home.


I was sick the entire week, so I did zero training before the run up to the race. In addition to just getting over the flu, I really wasn't properly hydrated coming into the race.


This would be a great course if the bike leg wasn't so awful and perhaps if they had started it an hour or two earlier, the late June heat can be rather oppressive.