This was a very hard run for me. After less than a mile I wanted to quit so bad. I was working so hard and going so slow . . . people were passing me left and right and it was so discouraging. I realize that I am not fully recovered from my flu. I was up coughing all the night before. But I also realized that I am more of a competitive person than I thought and I hate being passed by 90% of the people in the race.

Fortunately right when I wanted to quit I saw my coach running on the other side of the field. I remembered some of the things he had told me (like how he ran an Ironman in 10:13 while recovering from mono) and decided that I could not quit . . . that I would just keep pressing on.
I also made the mistake of wearing a t-shirt over my racing singlet during the run. I was WAY too hot.

Took off the shirt that made me so hot on the run!

OK, but I really was not looking forward to the run!

Started out OK, but two minutes in I got a bad stomach cramp and battled it for at least a mile. Walked some, tried to regulate my breathing, etc. Nothing really worked, but it finally went away. Once again I was not too happy to be running. I survived this portion of the race by thinking about my son and his friends who are fighting cancer and all the pain they go through on a regular basis.

Being ill, possibly bad attitude and not wanting to race.


This was a very hard race for me . . . partly because I was recovering from a lengthy illness and partly because I just don't do well in duathlons. The people around me are FAST runners and bikers and while my times greatly improved from last year, I was still in the bottom 10% of the field. Because I am training for Ironman I don't have the same attitude towards speed that most of the others in the race did. I have only two speeds and neither one of them is fast. It was really hard on me because I have trained so hard for the last 6 months and when I compare myself to others I don't see a huge change. I really need to keep my focus on comparing myself to myself because that is where the change is the most obvious. Still hard though, when you are passed by an old guy wearing a long sleeve shirt and sweatpants.