Opelousas Rotary Sunrise Duathlon - Duathlon

Paced behind Dylan for the first mile, pulled even with him for the second. Pace felt pretty fast and hard, almost too hard.



Nothing. One of my friends/rivals was about fifty yards ahead from the start, probably stretched that to 100 yards by the end, but there was nothing I could do about it...but this was as hard as I could push it.

Didn't have far to run in either transition, so I left my socks on. No problems, slipped out of shoes, put on helmet, unracked bike and left. Mounting and getting into shoes was without incident, stayed on top of shoes until I hit 20mph, past the first stop sign.

Nothing, This went well.

Coming out I knew it was going to be a decent bike as I was doing 22,23 on the road leading to I49 with not much effort. Turned onto service road and took the first hill while holding 21, hit 27 going down the other side. On the second, steeper hill I managed to hold 19 but must have passed a dozen folks going up, including rival/friend. Also passed a guy from BR tri (I think) who would turn out to be my pacesetter.

Got off of the SR, holding 22-23, BRTri guy passes me but stays no more than five-ten lengths in front of me this whole segment, meanwhile we're both passing cyclist. After the turnaround we feel that the light breeze that was behind us is now a headwind, and we're now holding 20, 21.

Back to the SR, I pass the BRTri guy on the steeper hill, descend nicely, then give it everything trying to hold 20 on the not-so-steep-but-longer second hill. Get back to Prudhomme, and head into transition.

Nothing, this was fun. Not quite where I was a couple years ago, but getting there.

Went well, no problems.

Nothing.

Yeah, that's right. All of three seconds slower than the first run.

I knew rival/friend wasn't far behind me but didn't know where. Last week he beat me out of transition by 20 yards and held the gap the whole way. This week the roles were reversed. Hard effort the whole way to stay in front of him. The sun was high and the temps were warming up, breathing was difficult, and legs were tired. Last block before we hit the homestretch I was probably at a 9-minute pace, and if the run was a half-mile longer I would have walked.
;)

Nothing more I could have done.

Walked/stood around until Dylan finished, drank some water, visited, ate. This was the designated Louisiana State Championship Duathlon, so a few of the out-of-town big dogs came in to compete. Even racing one of my better efforts, I ended up being fourth in AG, one of those ahead of me got "Grand Master" so I ended up with a plaque for third.

Dylan got first in his AG, third straight year he got a first place award (two AG and one with me in the relay year befoe last).


Still too heavy, need to get on the bike more, yada yada.


Thirteenth year for this race, first under a new RD, but they didn't lose a step. Everything went well, beautiful day!