Lums Pond Duathlon - DuathlonStandard

This is the fastest I have run in any race, ever. I've never run this fast doing a two mile time trial even. As we came to the final corner on the grass before we turned toward the transition area, there was a guy there yelling encouragement and calling out times. He was saying "12:30, 12:31. . ." and I thought that couldn't be right, that I must have misheard him. And the amazing thing was that although I was working hard, I felt pretty good. I honestly don't know how I achieved this.

Nothing!

I was all the way over by the bike exit, and that was diametrically opposed from the run entry, so it was a bit of a hike. I had a bit of trouble getting my bike shoes on, but the run and mount was great. Which is to say I wasn't even really thinking about it, I was just on my bike and away. I remember thinking that I had to clip in and then discovering that I was already clipped.

I couldn't find anywhere to perch my aero helmet so put it on the ground. I could have saved a couple of seconds there, so would want to rethink that.

This was the fastest I've ever biked in a race, and it certainly felt hard toward the end. I got a great start, and passed a lot of people on the road out of the park. I concentrated on getting my HR down, and keeping a good pace up till mile 5, then picked it up. I passed three or four people on the slight uphill on the overpass; people slowed up quite dramatically.

By mile 14 I was starting to feel it. I had planned to back it off a little about mile 15 or 16 but when we turned back on the road that led to the park, it was uphill and into the wind a bit, and I felt myself fading. There had been one large group ahead of me, but I just couldn't catch up with them. So instead of winding it down, I picked it up a little on the road into the park.

I felt the lack of longer training rides on this one. Taking the endurolytes on the bike probably couldn't have hurt, considering I was really pushing it.

Like the mount, the dismount was almost automatic. I barely remember it. And I was probably as fast on this transition as I could have been, and got out of the transition area pretty quickly.

My second runs this season have not been great. They've been in pretty tough conditions, but they've been significantly slower than my first runs, and also significantly slower than what I feel I could be running. So I was trying for a much better effort this time. My feeling was that I had been going out too fast off the bike; I usually feel very good starting to run, but that may be deceptive. So I was consciously going to take it much easier for about the first mile. My footstrike felt completely different and I found it hard to figure out my exertion level (and I hit the wrong button on my watch, so it wasn't timing properly). So I concentrated on my effort level, trying to keep it just under redline and occasionally using my HR to double check that. Got passed by quite a few people on the run, as I expected. I ran the slight undulations really well but it was really hurting. Was passed by one guy in the last half mile, but he was really laboring, but I was able to pick up the pace in the finishing straight and pass him. But man, did this hurt. I had not idea how I'd done until I began doing some rough tallies. But this is the best second run I've ever done. There is some confusion as to whether the course is 3 (as listed) or 3.1, but they seem to be timing it as 3.1.

Nothing, since I'm still not really sure how I pulled this one off!

I was exhausted. I know, I should've done a run, but my partner and our dogs were there, and there were a couple of people I wanted to see finish. I did end up doing quite a bit of walking, ferrying stuff to the car and back, getting water for the dogs, etc.


Lack of distance training for the ride.


This is a fun course, well organized, and a real fun feel to it. Coupling it with a tri and a youth tri the day before makes it a real family affair. Could probably have used a couple of portaloos to supplement the toilet block. And they really need to figure out some basic logistics for results posting. Like separating the du and tri results onto separate boards which are placed in different locations, thus avoiding the crush (and the prelim results took a long time to arrive). The food seemed to put out pretty late as well. But as I say, lots of fun, and I would recommend the race. In all the essential logistics, they run a pretty tight ship.