Runnin to my Bike - Duathlon

May 4th was the 'Cinco Du Mayo' Duathlon at the Hummer Lot in Davenport, IA. My spanish isn't perfect, but I believe the event was a day early than it's namesake.

Due to the nasty winter weather, I was sort of forced to cross train on my treadmill in the basement. I didn't have any real goal in mind as I ran in my basement, but I was steadily building up my running pace and mileage. At some point, it clicked that I was a good runner again, oops. This could spell trouble for my cycling season...

No worries, running is sort of boring, and the weather is now perfect for cycling, so I avoided a near castostrophe. However, I thought I would try and hang on to my running fitness just long enough to compete in this duathlon.

My new Trek TT bike arrived Wednesday, so everything was working out well. I had just enough time to practice riding it before the event (more on my TT bike and some action photos to come later).

Duathlons, for me anyway, are bike time trials, with an annoying run up to the bike, and then an even more unbearable run across the finish line. This was a 'sprint' duathlon so it was full gear for a 3k run, 17k bike and 3k run. The running portions don't really 'help' your bike time, but once your heart rate subsides from the run, you can actually get a pretty good clip going.

So, how'd I do? I rocked it out with a 2nd place overall! While I was about 10th or so after the run, I passed everyone on the bike except a guy from the Univ. of Iowa Triathlon team who actually was in the process of setting a course record. I was really nervous that I would get passed on the second leg of the run, but my gap on the third placed competitor ended up being large enough that I held on to 2nd.

There was a lot of good competition there. Not really any cyclists that I could recognize, but the University of Iowa brought up about 8 men/women from their Triathlon team, and they were very strong. There are also many regional multi-sporters who compete in this event, as it is the first real race of the season for triathletes and duathletes.

I am still going to run once in awhile, because I think my VO2 Max is improving because of the cardio work-out I get from running. I won't overdo it, I understand I need the weekly mileage on the bike to hang on to the Cat 3 caliber of racing.

The new 'Muscatine Multi-sport' club is having training races the second wednesday of may, june and july at saulisbury rec center, 6pm. These will help keep me in shape for the du-state du and august and harvest hammer in september.

Photo above is by Joe Mann, thanks.