Sunday morning I woke up relatively early (for a Sunday morning at least) and headed down to Haines Point to try my hand at the final DC Tri Training Duathlon. I've never done a duathlon, and I've only ever done one real brick workout which was over a year ago when I was training for the Pittsburgh Triathlon. So, needless to say I had no idea what to expect; though I do know I've gotten a lot faster, at least on foot over the past year.
There was a good group of folks out; I'd guess at least 30 started though don't quote me on that. We all basically leaned our bikes up against trees and benches, pulled on the running shoes and lined up at the exit of the bus parking area near the point. I lined up about mid pack but quickly made my way out and around the majority of the crew once we started. I figured I might be going out to hard but I wanted to push things a little bit and soon I was solidly in 4th overall with 1 and 2 setting a blistering pace and trailing third by just a few steps.
I continued to pace off of the runner in third until I was gradually passed by another guy who then moved on to pass the guy in front of me. This got me a bit more motivated toat least keep my fourth place spot and I picked it up, passing the one and then trailing, with a slightly widening gap the new third place the remainder of the first run. This was probably one of my better 5k runs with a pace of what I'm guessing will be just over 6 minutes per mile.
The transition to the bike was ok, though I didn't really press to hard to be fast. I kept the intensity pretty high and kept my eye on the guy ahead of me. We did the long loop, all the way down to Independence and back around the point three times so I got to see how far behind the leaders I was each lap. The top two again were flying, though I think I kept them at a somewhat consistent gap for the majority of the bike. I felt pretty good, though the feeling of the run then bike is definitely a bit different then the swim then bike. The glutes were certainly feeling the brunt of the additional pain. The gap between myself and third remained fairly constant, though I don't believe I made up any ground.
The final run started pretty poorly with more calf cramping. I need to figure something out to deal with that since for the second time in a row I had to stop and message a leg so it wouldn't seize up. Once I got it worked out I cruised along the rest of the way, making sure no one was catching me but also knowing I wouldn't catch anyone ahead of me either. I definitely could have given the second run more had there been some motivation but still it was a good run.
Overall I'm very pleased with the result for the day. I've got some serious work to do before I can hang with the leaders out there but I gave a solid effort and I feel like I produced a good result against some veteran competition. I'm eagerly (read: obsessively) awaiting the final results which should be posted on the dc tri site soon so until then I won't know exactly how things went by the numbers. Will post up some data bling (sorry, no powertap here) as soon as it is available.
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