Charlotte Duathlon: Wakeup call

Let me first talk about the name of this event.  It’s definitely NOT in Charlotte, it’s in the outskirts of Waxhaw over an hour from the center of Charlotte and a good 45 minutes even to get into the outskirts of Charlotte.  That being said the even was in a very nice area at Cane Creek Park.  I did a bunch of things that I would never recommend doing right before a race:  changing my fit, swapping saddles, and not having ridden the bike I was racing on in about 6 months.  As it turned out the fit and saddle changes felt good, but not something I would recommend and something I typically try avoiding.   

Race was made up of a 2 mile run on grass and dirt (and some mud with the rain we had during the week), an 18.6 mile bike and the same 2 mile run.  Seeing who was at the race I knew there were some good athletes, but no one that would run away with the race and thought I had a good chance to be in the mix to win or place on the podium.  Run started out well (everyone went out REALLY fast, nothing new with that), was running about the pace I was trying to just under 6 minute mile pace, the leaders were pulling away some, but were certainly still within reach.  Got back to the transition area and was feeling ok, but felt like I had worked pretty hard to keep the pace I was looking to maintain, but It was an off-road run on slippery ground.  Got on the bike and after about 5 minutes knew it wasn’t going to be a great day:  I wasn’t able to maintain 250 watts, and was working hard to average 220, not that this is terrible, just not how I hoped to ride.  The rest of the bike continued like this, I was able to focus and work hard, but I just wasn’t as powerful as I thought I should be.  Something that I think there are a number of reasons for:  not training much for longer (10-20 minute intervals on the bike), not having ridden in an aero position during training much at all in almost 1.5 years, and not being used to riding outside (all of my riding has been on my Epic EVO 29er or on the trainer).  A 18 mile bike leg when you’re not really around anyone (I was barely around anyone for much of the bike ride), gave me a  lot of time to think about what was going on and it was a real wake up call.  I definitely need to work on some things for my bike training:

-Doing more longer bike intervals while training

-Riding in an aero position more, this will also help during climbs on the mountain bike (being able to generate power from a more closed hip position).

-Ride outside at least occasionally to be more comfortable riding on the road and the slight differences there are compared with riding on the trainer.

Got off the bike, felt ok, certainly not great and finished up the run fairly solidly, not great, but given that I struggled as much as I did on the bike pretty well.  When I got finished I was very disappointed, not in how I raced (I felt like I got about as much as I could out of the day), but in my fitness.  Fortunately after thinking about the race and talking to Sakshi about how I had done, I felt a lot better:  it wasn’t a good race but I still managed to finish 6^th overall out of about 150 and 1^st in my age group in my first race of the year.    I also learned a lot from the race as well that will help me continue to improve.  And even with a lot of room to improve on I was still able to average about 23 miles per hour for 18 miles.