Here We Go

Duathlon Nationals is coming up this weekend. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve raced this race. I’m pretty excited to return to racing a national level duathlon race. I’m even more impressed that over 500 people signed up for a duathlon. Best thing is it’s only 10 miles from my house. Nothing bad about sleeping in your own house the night before a race.

There are several big guns entered in my age group. Continuing my undefeated streak (2-0 yeah, I’m a masters bad ass!) since entering into the M40-44AG is going to be hard, if not impossible. But I’ll try to du it.

We’ll have to see how it goes. My hamstrings seem to be better. Missing all that training on the run can’t be a good thing. The cycling I feel is going fairly well. I’m putting up some good power numbers. Hopefully with my rather aero position I can take advantage of the false flats and wind to generate a fast split on low watts. Although generating higher watts then my last race might be the smart thing to do. I’d clean my bike before the race, but since I’ve only ridden it in two races this year, it’s pretty clean, or at least not dirty enough to warrant me cleaning it. It’s turning into a ride my TT bike only in races year I think.

My only concern is the run. It starts up a f*cking hill. For at least a kilometer. Straight uphill. I have no idea what the RD was thinking except maybe generating slow run times. That course either goes uphill or down hill. It’s going to be a quad buster for sure on the final run. I think fast times = a sexy race. Maybe it’s just me, but I really don’t think races should be about who can slog uphill the best. It’s probably just me eh?

On the plus side there are several Accelerate 3 athletes racing. Hopefully we’ll all turn out good results.

Total Bullshit

Or another title could be the BS Call of the Day.

Today was the third race in the Tucson triathlon series. Since this race takes place in a pool there are 10 waves. The RD made a bullshit decision any referee would be proud of. After eight waves had already gone off the RD banned swim skins for the remaining two waves. That’s right, in the middle of a race, the RD said wear them and get DQ’d. Several people in waves 1-7 wore swim skins. The RD basically unleveled the playing field for the fastest two waves of racers. Complete bullshit in my opinion.

I didn’t let that stop me from posting one of my slowest swims ever for this race. No sir. I got lapped not once but twice by the fastest swimmer in my heat. Yikes! But that’s ok. Hopped on the Transition and right away I started reeling people in. In just under 10k I had ridden through the field and into the lead. By the end of the bike I was about 1:15 up on second place. (AP 254/NP260). On the out and back 1.5miles into the run, I saw the gap was :35 on second place and started freaking out. Holy crap that dude was running fast. My mental math told me I was going to get run down if I didn’t pick it up. Took me a few seconds to realize I should double that gap. He was headed out and I was headed back. Bad math skills. I should be spanked.

At the end of the day I won the race, won the 2010 Overall Series Championship and earned some bonus money. And it’s only day 2 of my 3 day weekend!