South Bay Duathlon 2012

I haven't been on lately mainly because it's just dog class, train, sleep, work, train, sleep.... <rinse and repeat>.

However, this morning was different. I woke up early to do my first race of the season - the 2012 South Bay Duathlon down 30 miles south of me.This is a 2mile run, 10 mile bike, 2 mile run on a fairly flat course. Note that there is a pretty good hill on the bike course that must be done twice.

Saturday was a lite swim day and a short spin on the bike. Obviously, I didn't spend enough time with some one.

A quick drive down to packet picket with Molly and a drive over the bike course, the rest of the day was spent working on my new project -- shhhhh.

This morning, I easily made it to parking by 7am and set-up by 7:30ish. Temperature was 48-50ish - perfect. I met up with Molly and a couple of new friends (Meredith and Krista),chit chatted until it was time to warm up. Warm up was a little walk, jog, then a few accelerations. I felt the cold on my bare knees during the warm up which was a little concerning. However, this never turned into anything. More troublesome was the cold air on my bronchi. This triggered my asthma. Even though I had huffed on my inhaler before warm-up, the cold air was enough to irritate so before the race I was coughing.

When the gun went off, I tried not to go with the surge instead to ease into it. Most of my age group left me there but I just stayed focused on running my race plan. Because of the slight declines/inclines, I had a hard time keeping a steady pace. However, I felt good the whole of the first run. Time 00:21:11

Going through T1 I dropped one of my arm warmers and had to go back and pick it up. I still ended up with a fairly fast transition for me.  Time 00:01:23

For the bike leg, I managed to not hit the right button on the Garmin so all that info is lost (if you follow my blog you'll recognize a theme -- I don't do well under pressure).  I concentrated on staying in the planned RPMs in the biggest gear I could and catching as many people as I could. I passed many but, not in my age group. I was a little nervous about the hill until I got to the steepest part where I did get out of the saddle for a bit (there were people that got off the bike????).  I really didn't want to work that hard. At the beginning the of second loop, a little guy on a bike easily passes me and says "This is hard". I ate my Gel and just smiled -- little shit. Things started to thin out on the second loop and on the flats, I chased a woman until we reached the hill where I passed her... but not for long. She caught me at the bottom of the hill. Time 00:38:34

Into T2 I jogged to my spot making sure NOT to unclip my helmet. I parked the bike and swapped shoes, fixed the Garmin, and out I went again. Time 00:1:44

On the final run, I was surprised at how quickly my legs felt good. I got to a pace where I was huffing and puffing so much it HURT and couldn't go beyond but my legs didn't hurt (I'm very hoarse now from it). However, I could keep that pace the whole of the run. Almost immediately, I caught back up with the woman and passed her. 3/4th into I passed a woman in my age group (yeah me). Then I noticed that little guy from the bike. I just kept going and going and eventually passed him. BUT, that got him going and he passed me seconds before the finish line. Time 0:22:01.

Total Time: 1:24:53

I managed to beat my lower end goals. The biggest thing of note: I was ok with running and ran the whole way. No mental crap and no walking!

Other than that, it was fun to get out there and pound for awhile.This is what I can do with just base building -- really no speed work to speak of.