dannon duathlon series opener: grenelefe, florida
3246 days agodannon duathlon series opener: grenelefe, florida
race report
flew into tampa on saturday afternoon. i picked up my rental car (a suzuki aerio; aerio is japanese, it means shitbox. my bike wouldn’t fit in the trunk and so i had to put it in the backseat) and made the roughly one hour trip out to the race venue in only an hour and forty-five minutes. the total door-to-door travel time was a shade under thirteen hours. put my bike together, committing the cardinal sin of not taking it for a test ride before race morning, and went to bed early.
i fell asleep promptly, after only three hours of tossing and turning, and bounced out of bed at five in the morning. because of a bad experience last sumer with an alarm clock failing, i had a three-tiered wake up system set up: first the alarm clock in the hotel room; second, the alarm on my phone; finally, as a relative failsafe, i’d enlisted my mom to call just in case. but the alarm clock worked fine, if it was a trifle alarming, and i was halfway through my coffee when she called.
the morning was a blur – i must have picked up my number and gotten myself organized, because i was standing on the starting line when the gun went off. they started the male pros first, five minutes ahead of us, and the female pros one minute later. my group went out relaxed, a group of six or so of us went through the mile in 5:15. four of us went through two miles in 10:30, and two of us went through three miles in 15:50. i got into transition a few seconds back of the leader, and out onto the bike course in second place. five k in 16:27, thirty-five seconds to change my shoes.
the bike was a sticking point for me- i have ridden my bike, including this race, five times this year. five times, actually, since halloween. and my bike speedometer was busted, the result of aggressive baggage inspectors (“yes, its a bicycle. yes, i am taking it on an airplane. no, i cannot just borrow one when i get there. no, you are not clever enough to figure out how to get the case closed again. yes, you are going to break something, you ham-fisted idiots.” not that i am bitter.). so i decided to try to pace off the guy in front of me, about ten seconds up the road. braced myself for the scores of riders that would soon be tearing past. did i mention i was less than completely confident in my biking fitness? i rode the thirty kilometer bike leg in a state of constant shock, as every mile continued to see me riding in second, a hundred meters behind this mysterious guy. i eventually did get passed, at mile eighteen (ie., one kilometer from the end), which eased the trauma somewhat and i rolled into transition in third place. forty-seven minutes, forty-nine seconds for the bike ride. this was, incidentally, the third-fastest amateur bike time of the day.
you’ll have to understand, at this point, that this was all a little much for me. i had full confidence in my ability to run against any amateur multisport athlete i thought i was likely to encounter. but my bike training has suffered this winter as i tried to learn to run well. and i haven’t raced on a national level in several years. but here i was in a position to win this race, so i changed my shoes and went after these two guys. second transition in thirty-seven seconds (yes, i should work on that, it has in fact been five years since i practiced transitions) and out onto the run course.
i felt ok, if a bit hot, and decided i would go out at a tempo pace and pray that my legs would come around. i could feel that i was going to catch the guy just ahead of me, don’t know why, i just had a complete sense of control about it. figured i would catch him, then worry about the leader. it never crossed my mind that i might not catch him. caught him just before the mile, which i passed in 5:35, and chatted with him briefly. went off after the leader. i was gaining on him, through the two mile mark (11:08), when i started to get cramps. nothing bad, just little messages that i was running right on the edge.
had to mentally regroup at this point. it was like a choose your own adventure book: attack the last mile to try for the win, and risk losing second, and likely third, fourth, and fifth as well; or shut down, consolidate second place, and have no chance at the overall. i made the call to shut down, held my pace through three miles, looked over my shoulder, and jogged the last three hundred meters grinning so broadly my ears hurt. seventeen minutes, thirty seconds for the last five k.
so the summary? here’s a table with my split times, compared first with amateurs, then with pros, then with amateurs and pros combined.
| Run 1 | T1 | Bike | T2 | Run 2 | Total |
analysis: my transitions need work to the tune of about ten seconds apiece. my running needs work to the tune of about ten to fifteen seconds a mile, although i believe part of that will come from racing with faster runners. biking needs work of about nine seconds a mile. most of that will have to come from, cough cough, rmembering to ride my bike occasionally. all told the trip was a resounding success, although i never did get to go to the beach. next time, perhaps.
