Duathlon Race Report

Official Time: 1:40:37.4
17/35 women
3/6 F3539 (3rd in my age group!!!)
1st Run: 25:06
T1: 2:54
Bike: 44:43
T2: 1:44
2nd Run: 26:10

Last year's time was 1:40:07 so half a minute slower.

Nasty weather was the story of the day. Luckily this was my third time at this race (once in the du and once in the tri) and I've also done the Fall Classic half marathon three times on much of the course, so I was familiar with the course and what it could be like on a wet, windy and miserable day.

The heaviest downpour occured in the two hours prior to my race start, which would be a good thing except that I rode from my house to the race so I was thoroughly soaked in the 30 minutes it took to get to UBC.

There were about 20 people from my club in various races during the day (the UBC race has Olympic, sprint and super sprint tri's, a duathlon and kids races and it's an all day event), so there were lots of people to cheer for and to cheer us on. In our warm up we got to cheer on the earlier heat of duathletes as they finished their first run and also one of our Olympic distance triathletes as he went through T1.

Shortly before the start I remembered that I needed Ventolin, (how many people can wheeze all morning and forget that they can't breath?) which was somewhere at the bottom of my bag in transition. As time was tight, I figured I could do the first run without then find it in T1. Not the smartest plan but early season races are all about getting the dumb things out of your system.

The first run was a bit challenging due to slight breathing difficulties but I had Teresa running with me as she thinks I'm a good pace bunny so it felt more like a fast training run than a race as we were chatting most of the way. I was thrilled to see Joanne, who was in the earlier heat, doing her second run while we were only a few km out as that meant she was having a fast race. This was shortly after I'd told Teresa that I really wanted to see Joanne soon as it would mean she was having a great day so I felt sort of like I'd wished her into view. As soon as I saw her I started yelling like crazy. We saw Colleen about a km behind and high-fived her as we passed. We got to see Joanne one more time and I yelled again, it's hard to know if what I was saying was appreciated as she was seriously focussed on her run, but later she said it gave her a real boost. As we neared transition we saw Chung heading out for the run portion of his Olympic tri looking like a machine as usual!

In T1 I tracked down my drugs and lost a bit of time. I blasted out of transition in an attempt to catch Teresa, not having to deal with medications she had a good head start on me. I caught her and yelled something incoherent but hopefully encouraging.

The wind was pretty heavy on the ride, but the headwind on the downhill meant we we got a push the other way going up. It was fun to be biking hard after so many long, slow, easy rides and I went all out. It felt amazing. I passed a fair number of people and had a few passing me, but mostly I hardly had anyone near me. It got a bit hard on the second lap and I had some difficulties on the last uphill section, at that point I began to wonder if going so hard on the bike was such a good idea.

T2 was significantly faster than T1, this time it was just rack my bike, change my shoes, grab my hat and go. This run was much harder, my legs were tired and felt like they'd doubled in weight. There was a lot of effort involved in keeping my legs moving, no effortless running this day. About halfway through the run I felt like I'd finally hit my stride, then of course the downhill segment ended!

The last km had a short, sharp uphill segment then it was a flat half km to the finish. Just before the last turn, tucked away out of the wind on the side of the SUB, Bronwyn and Joanne were there to cheer me on and give me a good push to the end.

It was a good race but marred by the fact that when I went to pick up my stuff from transition my bike shoes were gone. I had to try to chase down someone in charge to report it to and had to go through about five people before I found the right person, which took enough time that I was thoroughly chilled and in need of food by the time I was done. This really took the shine off the day. I could have ridden home with my running shoes but I opted to scam a ride from Bronwyn as I was tired and cold. I'm hoping the shoes turn up soon. It was, however, a good excuse not to do the 2:45:00 ride Alan had me scheduled to do!

As we were cold and miserable we didn't stick around to watch the club members in the sprint and super sprint races, hopefully everyone had a good day!