Wilson Wet and Wild Duathlon

Race Day! Perfect day, mid-70's, sun, low humidity, tiny breeze. Course, flat and fast (well for some people.)

My goal for this race was quite simple, win. The usual "big shots" were not there, so I figured I had a decent chance. Boy was I WRONG!

Run 1 (1.7 miles): A short out and back along the park roads, with two tiny but steepish hills. I went out strong and felt decent, until the end of the first mile. Then something went just horribly wrong. My energy...GONE! Uh oh...Heart rate was incredibly high, peaked at 223 (if this is even possible) and averaged 192. Something was very wrong (way too high for the beginning of a race.) 1st mile finished at 7:12, .7 at 7:43/pace. I finished Run 1 in 12:34 in 10th place. I was okay with this though, as I knew my strength was definitely in the bike.

T1: :45, eh, okay, I guess, nothing to be too proud of, but I was looking forward to making up some time on the bike.

Bike: (18.6 miles): A very flat course, with only a couple of rolling "bumps". I felt good here, but I held back thinking ahead to the final run. I certainly did not push to my limit, as I had in past races. I finished the bike portion in 53:05/21.0mph, 3rd best bike time, I'm generally pleased with this, but I may have made a mistake here. I certainly could have gained at least a couple of more minutes if I pushed, but really was not sure what was going on with my body. My heart rate was still all over the place, averaging 189BPM (I typically don't average much over 155 on the bike even when going all out.)

T2: :47, not happy with this, I actually stopped ran back to grab my hat, stupid! Regardless of this, I came out of transition in 3rd place, 2 minutes behind 2nd place and 1:30 ahead of 4th.

Run 2 (3.1 miles): Picture this, 18-wheeler cruising down the highway, tires flying off one at a time, and then crashing head on into a brick wall and exploding into a giant fireball. I was running, but I was truly gone. I hoped, in vain, to just be able to run fast enough to hold off the charging racers behind me. Alas, this was not the case, and I fell to 7th. I ran this 5K in 29:07/9:23 pace (ugh!)

Finishing Time: 1:36:21 (7th of 26) My previously chosen "target" who beat me in the Quakerman and then I returned the favor at Tri in the Buff, won and destroyed me by over 7 minutes.

What happened? Well, in a word NUTRITION. I ate like crap all week, while on vacation and it really caught up with me. I started a new way of eating after Memorial Day and it seemed to work quite well; lots of energy, decent weight loss, and improvements in runs and bike races. I'll get more into the specifics in a future blog. However, this week I fell back into the crap routine and paid for it. Lesson learned.