Run #1 was 10k. 2 laps of a largely out-and-back 5k route that went up and down hills on a park road before dipping into a rather tricky 1k section of trail. I had decided to hold back and let people get away on Run #1, knowing that people typically slow down on Run #2 in a du, and that I should respect that it's a 2+ hour race. I wasn't sure how much to hold back, though, but figured that roughly a 40-minute 10k pace would do the trick. That was probably about right in terms of intensity, though not in terms of the time that it got me.

At the start a bunch of people hared off up the hill, and I settled in at what felt like a fairly comfortable pace. I was immediately joined by Marcus, who tucked in right behind me. Who is Marcus? Here's where I have to confess that I had checked out my AG competition on athlinks before the race, to see how feasible it would be to make the top 6 needed to qualify for worlds. The information is in the public domain, and the imAthlete registration site published names of and estimated times, so it wasn't at all hard to find. But it felt creepy to be doing this all the same. That's how I knew that Marcus had traveled from Massachusetts, and had running speed pretty close to mine. But I didn't have the heart to admit to him that I knew who he was - that would seem just too weird. We ran together for 3/4 of the 10k, and eventually chatted a bit. The miles went by fairly quickly, and having company helped. The road miles were generally taking around 6:30, which was ok given all the ups and downs involved. On the trail section it was impossible (for me) to run fast, so I eased off the pace a little and focused on picking a good line over the tree roots and around the countless curves. The miles that included the trail section were generally almost a minute slower than the road miles. With all of the turn-arounds I could see that there were a lot of people ahead of me, but it was hard to gauge the AG position. I felt reasonably good, but was a bit nervous about the bike leg. My run laps were pretty evenly paced at around 21:30 each. 43:05 for the 10k was much slower than expected, but with the hills and the trail sections, it probably wasn't so far off what I had planned.

Nothing. I think I paced it appropriately given my fitness and the difficulty of the course.

Better than normal - T1 is my weakest event, consistently! This time I had actually practiced part of the transition process, and so I was less dismal than normal.

Just need to practice more.

The bike leg was 40k, consisting of an out-and-back on a 10k stretch of park road, ridden twice. It's a rolling course, with about 1600' of ascent in total, according to my Garmin. Fairly good road surfaces (and with excellent marking of any potholes by the organizers), and mostly with smooth curves that are easy to descend on. But a number of descents that should have generated a bunch of speed come immediately before turn-arounds or sharp turns, so that helped to slow what should have been among the fastest sections on the course. I decided to take the first lap in a controlled fashion, as I was afraid of blowing up later on. I'm accustomed to passing loads of people on the bike in tris, because I generally come out of the water so far behind. But duathlons are different. I was still passing people for much of the way on the bike, but I think that almost all of them were folks who were doing the sprint distance race, which was half the length of my event.

With all of the ups and downs it felt like an interval session, with tough uphills and then resting more on the downhills. I could feel my bike handling confidence improving over the course of the race, so that was encouraging. The first turn-around was ok, though I'm sure I could do it better. The second was a disaster, as I rode past the turn-around cone as if to go towards transition, then had to double back. I think I lost a place to somebody in my AG with that error. Just over 35:00 for the first 20k. Slower than planned, but as with the run I hadn't properly estimated the difficulty of the course. On the second lap I pushed a little harder, though I was struggling more on the uphills by this point. I still gained on people on the climbs, as always happens, but the quads were feeling sore. In the last 10k I actually started passing a couple of people from my race, which I hadn't expected to happen. A couple of miles from the end I passed one person in the AG, and since the last section includes a climb, I was able to pull out a good distance by the end. I never saw Marcus on the bike - he must have zoomed off well ahead of me. I had no idea of my position in the AG at that point, though I knew that I must be well behind the leader. The second lap took a little over 35:00 again, so the pacing was good. But I was apprehensive about Run #2.

Be better trained. Practice cornering/turn-arounds. Improve aero position - I always make gains on the climbs, then lose ground on the flats/downs, which tells me that I'm probably not as aero as I could be.

Fairly businesslike again. Under a minute is good for me, especially with the relatively long run out of transition.

Again, practice more. But I'm happy with how the transitions went. Perhaps it's time to invest in new shoes and pedals -- I'm still using the MTB shoes and pedals that I got when I went to the LBS as an overweight beginning rider 4 years ago.

Normally I eagerly look forward to the run leg of a tri, as that's my strongest section. Nobody passes me on the run in a tri. That's another consequence of being a poor swimmer. But this time I was not so eager. The legs felt much more tired than usual coming into T2, and a I ran out of T2 they felt decidedly unready. Run #2 was the same 5k loop that we had done twice before, but this time in reverse, i.e., with the trail section at the start. Since the trail demands nimbleness it felt particularly hard, as I wasn't feeling remotely nimble. On that section is was passed by one person. And there was a woman gaining on me. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it's very different from my normal tri experience, so I was feeling demoralized. I felt that I had screwed up the pacing on this one, and was headed for a really slow time. It turns out that I was wrong. The guy who passed me was running the 3rd fastest run split of the day, and the woman who edged ahead of me shortly after that was doing the fastest female run split of the day. And I was running faster than on the other legs and was doing the fastest Run #2 split in my AG. It just didn't feel like that. Not even close. Emerging from the trail and onto the road I thought that I was at least going to be able to have more control over my running, but after a couple of minutes the feeling in my quads turned from "we're tired" to "warning - we might cramp up at any moment". I've paid the price of ignoring that signal before, so I immediately took the foot off the gas slightly. This meant that a guy who I had passed after about a mile passed me back. (Like most others, he was paying close attention to AG placings - I had missed the age-marking before the race, so when I passed him he shouted out "age!"; when I told him my age he said "good!" - he was 54, so I was no threat to him.) A couple of minutes before the final turn-around I saw Marcus headed back towards the finish. He seemed to be going well, much better than me, and he was clearly far ahead of me. When I got my 2nd mile split I was surprised to be back at 6:35 pace, as it felt much slower than that. I focused on keeping the cramp at bay until the last half mile, and then pushed on a little, distancing myself from my 54-year old friend. I was happy to reach the finish without cramping, and pleasantly surprised to record a 21:11 split. Not the time that I had hoped for beforehand, but on this course and with leaden legs, I was plenty satisfied.

I wish that I hadn't been held back by the threat of quad cramping, but I don't regret taking the warnings seriously. I don't normally get that during a race, not sure why it came this time around.

I met up with Marcus after the finish, and chatted for a few. He had apparently finished 6th overall, so there was no question that he had made top-6 in the AG. No idea where I had finished, but I was hopeful that top-6 was in the cards, especially as I heard the names of a couple of the likely rivals announced at the finish after I came in. Wandered around a bit, tried to keep the legs moving -- worried about suffering on the long drive home. When the unofficial results were posted, I was quite taken aback to see that I was listed as 12th overall, and I was listed as 1st in my AG. There must have been an error - where was Marcus, who had clearly beaten me by a long way. Then I saw that his name appeared further down: he had been hit with a 6 minute penalty**, which moved him from being the masters overall winner to being 3rd in the AG. So I won officially, but I think I would have preferred to be a straightforward 2nd. Either way, I certainly got the top-6 that I was there for, so the family summer trip to Canada is now set. Hope the weather in Ottawa in August is nice. I waited around for a few minutes for the awards, then hopped into the car and hit the road for the 800-mile drive back home. For the first couple of hours I was kept entertained with updates from my daughter's first ever track meet - so sorry to have missed that. And then as the evening wore on I had to keep myself awake by singing along loudly to whatever the local radio stations were throwing at me. Stopped occasionally to stretch out the legs. Sit bones were suffering more from the drive than they had on the tri bike, which is a sign of progress on my bike fit. Rolled up back at home around 1:30am.

** PSA: So what was the 6-minute penalty for, you might ask. Something that I wasn't aware of, and nor was Marcus. I know that you're supposed to keep on the correct (right) side of the road, i.e., don't cross the yellow line in the middle, but I wasn't really cognizant of rules on keeping to the right of that side of the road, except when passing. For those of us who are slow swimmers but faster bikers, we generally spend most of a tri passing people anyways, and on a fairly narrow park road that is free of cars it seemed fine to ride down the middle of the lane. Marcus put down the fastest bike split of the day, so he wasn't exactly getting passed. But it turned out that he was being shadowed by an official who first dinged him with a 2-minute penalty for riding on the left-hand side of the travel lane, on a left-hand curve. I'm sure that I did the same myself. And then he was given a 4-minute penalty for the same thing - apparently the second violation yields a double penalty, even though he didn't know about any of this until afterwards. Given all of the curving descents on the course, it seemed harsh that one person should have got a 6-minute penalty when I imagine that many were doing this. Hence my feeling that I was really 2nd in the AG.


Very nice event put on by Team Magic, which has been running the Powerman Alabama events for years. Oak Mtn State Park is a beautiful venue, and for northerners who have been waiting for too long for spring to arrive, early April in Alabama is very nice thank you. The race organization was outstanding. No great frills in terms of swag or post-race food. And I didn't particularly care for the trail section of the run course. But the organizers did a great job of getting all of the race essentials right, especially the very good bike course marking and marshalling. I'm not sure that I'd make a habit of driving a 1600 mile round trip for a race, but for people within closer striking distance I'd definitely recommend this race. The idea of having regional qualifiers for worlds is attractive, though it looks like USAT plans to move back to having a single qualifier at du nationals, something that's less accessible for many.