Twinsburg Duathlon

Today was my first ever duathlon. It was a sprint distance so it was a 2 mile run - 10 mile bike - 2 mile run. I decided a while back that I was going to do this duathlon. I realized earlier this week when looking at my previous registration that I estimated by finish time to be 1 hour and 30 minutes!! WTF!!! I truly have NO idea what I was thinking when I completed that registration form. Guess I thought I would have been doing better in my training thus far than I am. Perhaps I ASSumed I would have lost more weight instead of watching the scale go in the wrong direction.

But, it is what it is. I couldn't change it and in the end it doesn't really matter. I know I'm slow so I always line myself up at the back of the pack. That was my plan for today.

Look Mommy!! There's your name, but we're going to point at it so hard that you can't possibly see it in the picture! :)

Let's start at yesterday though. The fam and I went to lunch at Panini's and then went to pick up my packet for today. Mary and Robbie helped me find my name on the Race Participants poster. Pretty cool....and makes for a fun picture for a blog!

I picked up my packet and we headed out to drive the bike course. It was hard to tell in a car, but there was at least one hill that I was afraid of. I was also nervous when I read in the information that there were no road closures for this event. However, I thought back to the Portage Lakes Sprint Tri and I'm pretty positive they didn't close roads for that either....they simply had police at each intersection to help make sure we didn't get hit by cars!

So, this morning I was on my own. My SIL is usually my partner in crime either because she's racing with me or because she's just insane enough to still get up at the crack of dawn to then stand around for hours. But, she went and got sick on me; my husband had to take care of the kids and I'm not one to have them get up at 5:30; so I was going solo. Twinsburg isn't far from me so I decided to leave my house around 6AM. I still ended up getting there with PLENTY of time to spare.



All set up and ready to go...too bad it's only about 6:30AM and the race doesn't start until 7:30!

 After getting my bike all set up, I had an hour to kill with nothing to do. I took a trip to the bathroom and then just kind of hung out at my bike. I ended up talking to a nice lady who was also doing her first duathlon. We were commenting on the fact that most of the athletes looked much more serious than us.

We finally were about to start. The USAT official made her announcement about common penalties and I thought to myself, I don't have to worry about passing people on the bike since I believe everyone passed me during the Tri last year.



Thanks NCMultisports for the picture from your facebook page! There I am, already in the back of the pack.I'm the one wearing the black capris with the We Run shirt (if you can even read that) and the black number belt.

And then we were off - a nice small race that has the official start sound be the "siren" on a megaphone! Immediately I was one of the last.  I run slow. I know this. I'd like to say I don't care, but I do. I'm working on this though. I kept reminding myself that I'm still faster than all the people who were sleeping in this morning! I had my watch set for intervals as usual, but I decided to do new intervals. Since it was "only" 2 miles I decided to set my intervals for 1/2 mile run with a 1 minute recovery. I felt good. I ran all my scheduled run time and came in right at 24 min. Official first 2 mile time = 24:00.4

I walked into transition to give me a chance to catch my breath before getting on Skinny B. I had to change my shoes this time so that's new to me. They didn't break down the transition times in the results, but I think I did pretty well. Got on Skinny B and I was off. The bike was AWESOME! Can you even believe I said that? The first hill was right away and it really was a more steady incline than hill. At that moment I was thinking....why do I do this? I really don't like biking...it's hard...this sucks. But then it flattened out. The course was pretty easy and I was getting some pretty good speed going. I actually passed 6 people on the bike!!! I couldn't believe it! There was one hill around mile 8 that was a killer. BUT, I stayed on Skinny B the whole time! I NEVER got off her. And, for this, I was beyond proud of myself!

Before I knew it, I was done with the bike. Then, I was putting my bike back on the rack when I heard....MOMMY!!! And there was my husband with our two kids. It made me smile. I changed my shoes, took my helmet off and got ready for the run. Official bike + both transition times = 50:55.0.

The final 2 mile run sucked! I was done. I was feeling good right up until I tried to start running again. My legs felt like lead and I felt like I was not moving at all. I kept stopping to walk. I realized that this was really my first "brick" workout of the season (for those who don't know, a brick is when you do 2 things one right after the other...like bike and then run). I was coming to the end of the run and the gentleman who I passed on the bike towards the end was right in front of me. I passed him and hoped I could make it to the end in front of him. At least if I did that I knew for SURE I wouldn't have been last. But, at the last minute he passed me and I had nothing left. I was CERTAIN I was dead last. But, you know what?? I really didn't care. This was a pool of some serious athletes. There didn't seem to be many first timers in the sense of people who are less in shape, etc. Final 2 mile run (more like walk) = 27:38.7

Final finishing time = 1:42:34.1.....I WAS NOT LAST!!! I wasn't even last in my age group (2nd to last). And, I was only 12 minutes and 34 seconds slower than I had estimated, which I think is pretty good considering I was wondering what the HELL I was thinking when I estimated 1:30!

My kids came home with me and my husband left before we did and still was not home when we got home. Weird, I thought.....until he came home......



Roses for finishing! :) I asked him if he got me these because he thought I was upset about coming in last. He said no. But then, he joked later that he could return the roses since I didn't come in last!

So, my first duathlon is in the bag. An instant PR. That's nice and all, but I don't know that I'm crazy about the duathlon. It's one thing to do 3 different sports....it's a whole different story when you have to run the course you just ran! We'll see. I'll probably do it at least once more to see if I can beat my time!

Next up....my report/confession/plan for my eating to get back on track with this weight loss so I can take the FAT off the name of the blog!