Pre-Race Routine:

Got up at 5:45 AM, had my usual breakfast, loaded stuff in the car and headed to the event, which was only 15 mins from my home…very nice!

Event Warmup:

A slow run around 2 block at the event, then some minor stretching. But since I had not trained for 6 days before this event, my legs said “WTF?”. My heart rate was higher than normal for a basic warm up, and in general I did not feel “comfortable”.

Run #1

Right from the get go, I did not feel very good. Around the 2k mark I developed a sharp pain in the bottom half of my right leg. I kept going it it eventually went away. I tried maintaining a 5m/km pace, but fell a little short.

Transition #1

Transitions is an area that I still need to work on. More than 1 min is way too much for duathlons. I believe some of my problems are equipment related since I have regular laces on my running shoes, and plain bike shoes instead of tri shoes.

Bike

As I’ve proven to myself before, the bike segment is my strong point. I maintained a very good pace on the bike & didn’t even feel tired at the end. I even lost time turning around looking for my Garmin 305 that had flew off my quick release. This actually cost me a podium in my AG.

Run #2

Since I didn’t have my Garmin I was flying blind WRT to pace. So I ran, my hamstrings & calfs were screaming for the first 1km. At a few points in the run & felt like walking, but I talked myself to keep running & I’m glad I did. About a km from the finish line I was getting chills which was kind of scary as I never experienced that before. Dehydration is not good.

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