Race Report: Hagerstown Duathlon

The second race of the season was this past weekend: the Hagerstown Duathlon. To quote a friend, the word "duathlon" sounds like something people would say when a doctor has a tongue depressor in their mouth. It's equally difficult to spell properly, and my computer refuses to believe it's a real word, underlining it each time with a red squiggly line.

But I can testify that it's real. Instead of drowning in the water on the first leg of the race, it just means I'm offered twice the chance for digestive pyrotechnics while running. The race was comprised of a 2 mile run, a 10 mile bike, and finished with a 3.1 mile run.

I had a novel plan of sticking with 7:45 mile splits, a 20 mph average on the bike, and 45 seconds at each transition. This should have put me at right about 70 minutes for the race time. Of course, things never tend to work out how I plan them.

Lining up at the start, I quickly settled into the second pack on the run. The alpha-males/females and johnny-tuff guys sprinted out the gates, and I knew better than to try and match them...remember, I had a plan to stick to. The pace felt pretty average, maybe a little fast, but I was pretty surprised when we hit the first mile in 6:15. My first thought was "woohoo, this feels great!", which was immediately followed by "oh shit, this is way faster than I should be going." I slowed the pace down a little, but still came into the first transition almost 90 seconds faster than I planned, in 13:39.


If it's hard to look cool in spandex, then consider this the lamest group of people on the planet

Shoes off, helmet and cleats on...and out of T1 in 35 seconds, which I was pretty happy about. No time to waste energy worrying about the speed of the initial run...it was already in the past.

The first 5 minutes on the bike are usually pure adrenaline. You spend so much energy trying to keep calm and stay in an aerobic zone, and I could feel the nervousness just gnawing away at my strength. So I thought to myself "screw the plan, let's see what you've got." The flat roads of the farmlands surrounding the course only encouraged me to hammer down and pick up the cadence. For the first 7 miles of the bike, I was flying, averaging somewhere between 23-25mph. I quickly passed several of the early upstarts, and got into a good cadence as I began to relax.


"Hello, my name is John, and I wear a helmet"

The bike was advertised as "flat and fast", and to this point, I had no complaints. Well, none except for the guy who drafted me for nearly half of the bike course. I realize that this wasn't a big race, and I am about as far from being a professional as possible, but when someone drafts, they do about 20-30 percent less work than the guy in front, who is shielding them from all of the wind. It's also illegal in most races, and just poor form in most other instances. (I probably wouldn't have even been that upset about it, if the guy hadn't passed me on the run with half a mile to go, looking like his legs were completely fresh).

The "flat and fast" theme came to a crashing halt in the last 3 miles of the course, as we hit rolling hill after rolling hill. Nothing too big to get on the small chain ring, but just large enough to completely screw up my rhythm.

Spinning in to T2, I knew my legs were nearly spent, and I wondered how long I could hold off the cramps. I finished the bike course in 30:10, right on 20 mph exactly (at least something was going to plan!). I was in transition for 29 seconds, and back out onto the roads for the last 5k.

Cramps, ironically enough, would be the least of my worries. After the first mile, my legs felt just fine. My stomach, on the other hand, decided to host a revolution. And not some hippy-fest revolution like they do out in California, when someone wants to cut down a tree. This was more like a 1776 "Hey England, piss off" kind of revolution. By the end of the second mile, as I limped home at 8:00 minute pace, I knew it was only a matter of time before my old friend Mr. Dryheave paid a visit. Sure enough, this happened about 200 yards from the finish line, directly in front of a horrified race volunteer. "Are you OK??" she asked. "Yea, I'm surprised it waited...BLEEEECH...this long to...BLEEECH...happen." Her facial expression could only be described as "shock without awe". After wiping away any remnants of "revolution", I strode triumphantly towards the finish line, noting that not a soul had witnessed my digestive issues, since they had occurred around a corner from the finishing stretch. Hooray.

I crossed the line in 70:27, only a few seconds more than my goal. Had I not stopped to ralph, it's pretty likely that I'd have crossed the line almost exactly where I'd wanted to. But no regrets...the human body was not made to eat protein gels, give a maximum effort for over an hour, and not have a few small speedbumps, right?

Results:
16/75 overall
2nd place, age group