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Sunday, February 13, 2011

Chilly Willy Duathlon '11

Love this race! It's become the traditional start to the multisport season here on the Gulf Coast and, in recent years, has brought in a lot of really competitive athletes! This year was no different. I did not get to race last year due to injury and as a previous overall women's winner of this race, I was amped to race again. I know I'm in decent run shape but my bike fitness is really lacking as I really just started back on the bike in the past couple weeks. I've found that having missed the better part of last year with any quality riding, I've lost a lot of strength. Unfortunately, good run strength/fitness doesn't crossover to the bike very well. Oh well, it's only February and a long triathlon season awaits. This morning was chilly as usual and the wind always seems to find us at Fort Desoto! This year, due to a higher number of entrants, the race was split into two waves - under 40 went five minutes ahead of the over-40 year olds. Didn't care for the separate waves as it's hard to race for the overall when you cannot go head to head with everyone but such is life and I don't think it was a factor for me personally. The run is half on pavement, half on sand. Went out really good on the first 5K run, sub-6 minutes through the first mile and getting dropped by another gal in my wave. Whoa! Didn't dare try and speed up for fear of completely blowing up later....and, I couldn't! Just focused on my own race and got to the bike with a pretty quick first 5K in the low 19's. After a pathetically slow transition, I was off on the bike. It was windy and chilly for sure. Had a lot of traffic to ride through from the early wave and was getting passed by a bunch of guys in my wave. Really felt dead in the legs and had a hard time keeping the pace up. Ick. The ride is only 10 miles but deceptively hard after a fast 5K. Finally, off the bike and onto the second 5K and was still running good...until the last mile. I was really dying in the sand! Finished in a respectable third overall (women) and second in my age group! Good note is that I PR'd for this course. Pretty happy about that and with a few weeks of working on the bike, I should get some big improvement. We did sign up for Miami Int'l Triathlon which is 3/20/11, first race of the new 5150 series so gotta HTFU and get in shape! Goal there is just to go hard and qualify for Hy-Vee which is the 5150 US Championship later in the summer (that requires a top 10 finish in the AG). We are running a 5K next Saturday evening just for fun/speed work but I will be on my bike more in the next several weeks. The swimming is coming along - I'm not setting any records but will be where I need to be when the races start. The Dane won his AG in dominating fashion, crushing the bike to get it done. Wish osmosis worked!
Cheers