2007 Great Pumpkin Duathlon

On 10/7/08 I completed my first duathlon race which was an interesting experience. There were two distances to choose from, a sprint (5k run, 12 mile bike, 5k run) and an olympic distance (5k run, 24 mile bike, 10k run). I chose to do the longer distance because most of my races this year have been sprint distances of varying length and I wanted to push it a little further.

The weather started out great for the initial 5k run and I took it a bit easy finishing in 22:24 for a 7:13 pace which felt pretty good. The bike leg started out alright but the humidity and temperature were both climbing and after the first 10 miles my stomach started acting up and not feeling the greatest. The actual bike course was really boring and surprisingly slow, though that could have been due to the fact that I wasn't feeling well for the second lap of the course. I finished the bike leg in 1:15:35 for a pace of 18.3 mph which was a bit disappointing.

By time I was starting the final run leg the temps were in the upper 80's with very high humidity and I wasn't feeling well at all. The course was primarily criss-crossing grassy fields which made it a bit boring and tedious since it's very difficult to see bumps and holes in the ground when you're running on grass. Grass is my least favorite running surface for that very reason, I would much rather run on a trail where I can see the roots, rocks, holes, etc that I need to dodge. Since I wasn't feeling well after getting off the bike I decided to take an energy gel just before getting to the water station at mile 1 in hopes of keeping my energy going for the rest of the run. I made it about 1/2 mile after the water station and then puked. Sadly puking didn't make me feel any better and I had to finish the last 5 miles feeling pretty sick and partially dehydrated. The run course was terribly psychologically too in that you had to run past the finish line 3 times before you could actually run down the chute, it was entirely in the sun which also took a toll, and there were very few people in the race so, after passing a couple of people and getting passed by one guy, I was alone for most of the run which also made it boring. That 10k took me 1:02:07 to run putting me at exactly a 10 minute pace which is SUPER slow and hopefully the slowest I'll ever run in a race.

There were 27 people that did the long distance race and I finished 17th overall and 3rd in the 20-29 age group with a total time of 2:41:39. I was very glad to be done with that race and I can honestly say that there is almost no chance that I'll do it again next year because the course sucked so bad.