Columbus, NE
There was lots of races this weekend, Friday Saturday criteriums and a mtb race on Saturday too. Despite lots of great cycling options, I chose to try out a Duathlon this weekend. Reasoning was rather simple, my legs felt ok, but I knew they would disappoint me if I did the mtb race, and quite frankly my weight would disappoint me if I tried the crit. Besides that lots of athletes from GI were headed to Columbus so it seemed like a nice no pressure event to be social at, a win win for the weekend. Also, I got to break out my TT bike and race wheels! First time, I’ve officially used the TT bike and only the second on the race wheels…!?
The Duathlon stated with a 2 mile run, I managed a 7:12 pace, not too bad for a cyclist. It did hurt though, I haven’t done much running since Feb/March… Next up was a 13.8 mile bike, this didn’t go quite as well as I had hoped, which confirmed that my legs would have let me down had I done a bike only event… Most likely, that is, the run definitely started things off in an very unusual pattern for me. Even so, the bike leg went ok, I managed a 22.9 mph average, which was actually good enough to be the 3rd fastest bike of the day. There was several big climbs, one brought me to my knees, which I only crested at 10 mph… That’s a pace killer for sure.
Last leg was the same 2 mile run all over again. This time my pace was still a respectable 7:52 but it felt much worse. Nice thing is that it was an out and back so I could see all the competition and cool enough, I was sitting in 3rd overall and a nice lead on the guy behind me. I ended up getting caught by a coed team, but that really doesn’t count.
So 3rd overall for individuals which was also 2nd in my age group. I was 8 minutes off the leader, which is really quite a gap, but it makes for a fun day of feeling fast!
Excellent results by the rest of the GI crew too, lots of hardware went back to GI that’s for sure.
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