New England Season Opener Sprint Duathlon - Duathlon

I nearly hit my target of 7:30 pace, a little slower thanks to the excessive wind.

More warmup jogging, less hanging out in transition talking!

Still newbie enough to leave my shoes out in transition and change them. At least I have tri shoes with only one velcro.

More transition practice :)

Running first sapped enough energy out of the quads that my climbing was terrible. A couple times I was in the granniest of granny gears and still had to get out of the saddle once. Just seemed inexcuseable for me... Got passed by someone on flat pedals, someone on a 30 year old bike with toe cages, you name it.

Practice more hills. Seriously it seems obvious and yet I settle in to the same old routes around my house in training.

As always coming in to T2, despite having done brick work, the bike holds me up and I need two hands on it to run through transition. Using two hands to hold myself up, I haven't a free hand to undo the helmet or anything. Then add in needing tightly tied running shoes and, well, things are slow.

Really gotta visit the idea of locklaces. I said this last year and I'm saying it again.

Was really feeling the heavy use of legs leading up to the final run. The first half mile or so out of transition is uphill. Same hill as the bikes, and wasn't nearly as noticeable on the bike as it was on foot. Looked at my watch for pace, 09:50 (avg. pace for the whole 3.1 was 7:49). took nearly two miles to settle in to a pace, and then we went up the hardest hill on the run course.

Still working on getting my speed back this early in the season after Half Marathon training over the winter.
More hill work on the run too, though I'm much better at running hills than biking them!

None really to speak of, was just happy to have finished without walking - either during the runs or on the bike!


Two major things - one my multisport training over the winter was non-existent, I was solely focused on the HM distance. And haven't done any strength training at all. Two I didn't taper as well as I should have, ended up trying a long slow run that I pushed the pace on, and same with a race distance slow bike that I also pushed the pace on. Maybe like went 85% on both when I should have been like 70 or less.


Max Performance are very well organized in their races, and this was no exception. The volunteers were cheerful and helpful and the post race food (pulled pork in my case) was tasty. All in all well done!