Cary Short Course Duathlon (2.5-mile run/17.65-mile bike/2.5-mile run)

I hesitated to write this report right away because I am not in a very good place about this morning’s race. But, in my day job as writing teacher I often tell students that it is important to write “where you are” and “what you know”—even if you are not where you want to be, and you feel like you don’t know much. I am taking my own advice.

The start for this race is kind of a mess. Strike that: it is a complete hot mess. Everyone lines up on the narrow trail around the park to start together (long and short course together even. Last year, they split us up by race, which made for a slightly more efficient start). There is also no start timing mat, and despite the fact that the race directors tell faster folks to head to the front, there is no real sense of where that is because the space is so silly. So, I ended up starting behind a crowd of causal joggers and trying to weave my way to a better spot once the race got going. For a 2.5-mile leg, this is an unfortunate waste of time because it took me a solid quarter mile to settle into a pace that I was happy with. At this point, it was 7:30 (Side note: who has two thumbs and never thought she’d put the words “settle in” before 7:30 pace? This gal.)

I wanted to keep that pace for a long as I could because I knew (since I did this race last year) that there were two uber-giant hills at the end of leg and that I’d need to back-off significantly when I got to them. And I did, in fact, drop to about 8 for that last half-mile. So, in the end, the official pace for Run 1, with all the aforementioned “slowing” factors considered, was 7:58 (2nd in my age group!). Last year, my official pace on the leg was 8:23. I’m happy, therefore, with the progress—especially given this year’s slower start. Even in my current state of mind, I can give myself that a 25-second/mile improvement over the course of a year is something I need to just go ahead and be proud of.

Then there was the bike course, and this story takes a bad turn. My dirty little secret is that I really don’t like cycling. I kind of despise it, in fact. I used to like it, but somewhere along the line I just started to hate it. It’s expensive; it’s hard to talk to friends when you ride together; and it’s very weather- and time-sensitive, which as a working parent, I have less-than-zero tolerance for. So you are probably thinking, “Gee, JLa, maybe if you changed your attitude you might improve your performance.” I’m working on it; I promise. But for today, the bike leg just demoralized me. The weather was chilly (low 40s) and breezy (race stuff was blowing all over the place), so this made a challenging, hilly course even tougher. People I’d schooled on the first run just kept sauntering past me, and I just fell apart mentally. I kept thinking: “Go big or go home? I choose go home.”

I was able to pull myself together by focusing on looking for horses and cows to count (6 and 3 respectively) and planning what I was going to write in this race report, but I was beyond relieved to pull into T2 and the second run leg. As anticipated, Run 2 was a little slower. I had what I call “the googly legs” after getting off the bike, so my pace for the first quarter mile was, according to the Garmin, about 8:45. I gradually moved myself closer to 8:15 (which was the slower end of my probably unrealistic goal pace for the second leg), and again, I had to back off a bit for the ending hills. Based on my Garmin reports, my pace for this leg was 8:30; last year’s official Run 2 pace was 8:55.

I actually have no official splits for the cycle or Run 2 because apparently my timing chip didn’t work after the first transition, so the race results just show me leaving T1 and then finishing the race. Oh well. Seems a fitting mishap for this experience.

In the end, my overall time was 1:51:36, about 3 minutes slower than last year. Part of the reason this time causes me such angst is that it is the first time (at least that I can remember) since I started seriously running and multi-sporting that I have not improved from a past race time. I know, I know, it’s really unrealistic to expect a PR in every race. Still, the clock is there; it cruelly taunts us sometimes. Bright side: I always eat cake on race day, and a PR is not a requirement for cake consumption.

Takeaways: I need to decide if I am going to invest in the training equivalent of couples' therapy for my relationship with cycling. I have already registered for the Triangle Tri in July, so perhaps I’ll try to spend some QT on the bike and make a call after that race. Running wise, this really reaffirmed my excitement for the shorter races as well as my commitment to keep pushing on the speed and tempo work.

Bonus: This was the first race I’ve been to in the past 6 months that actually had perfectly ripe bananas rather than inedible neon green ones (can anyone actually eat those and live to talk about it?). Mega props to the race organizers on that one.