Saturday, May 21, 2005
Spring Classic Duathlon 2005 results
Spring Classic Duathlon info
Spring Classic Duathlon 2005 Photo Slideshow
THE SHORT VERSION:
I finished, 92nd out of 93, in 2:23:36 (so I came in at under 2 1/2 hrs, which was my absolute goal, but not at 2:10, which was my standard of perfection ie. 10 min miles running and 15 mph riding.) And I was right... it hurt... (in other words, fun in a bizarre masochistic way.)
THE LONG VERSION:
As always, couldn't sleep the night before a race (why I get nervous, when I'm not actually competing against the other participants, I'll never understand.) So I fell asleep around 2:30-3 in the morning and the alarm went off at 5:30. Wahoo.
Got over the the park at 7:30, picked up my packet, and got my bike and gear stowed in the transition area. Also attached a timing chip to my ankle via a velcro band... Martha Stewart, eat your heart out! Then I hung around for 45 minutes waiting for the race to start... walked down to the lake and took some pictures... walked around and marvelled at the fact that many of the bikes are probably worth more than my car is at this point in its 271,000 mile life... looked at all the skinny ripped athletes and both me and my bike felt out of place, old clunkers that we are. :-) Guess it's good that there are people like me around the make the serious athletes and the biomechanically blessed look even better...
After that, it was just a race, albeit one where I had to keep changing physical and mental gears. Run for 21 minutes (course wasn't too bad, but a couple of sadistic hills and a lot of running on grass... I HATE running on grass, you can never tell what the footing will be), then bike for 42 min (lots o' hills, but also a couple of "woo hoo" downhills, and the part in the park was pretty), then run again (for 13 minutes... yup, it was starting to hurt, and there were still 2 legs to go, so I couldn't just say the heck with it and cut loose), then ride again for 43 minutes (I'd swear they snuck in more hills! But no more biking after that, so I pushed all out) and finally run for 24 minutes. (Well... I walked all the hills. No juice left in the legs for running uphill. I did go all out on the level sections, not that all out was all that fast at that point.) Needed the guys at the finish line to remove my ankle timing gizmo... somehow velcro was beyond me at that point.
The last two legs I thanked all the monitors out on the course, shook the hand of one guy who I saw a whopping five times during the runs and thanked him, and joked around a bit with most of them to pretend I still had a sense of humor about the whole thing. Really, those guys have the most boring job in the world. Wait around for 2 1/2 hours for people to come by so you can either hand them water or point which direction they should go. Exciting...
Legs are still tired (big surprise) and I popped my right knee about 1/4 mile from the finish line during the last run, so that's griping like crazy right now. Guess it doesn't bounce back overnight like it did before I blew it out a year and a half ago. Stayed awake through the wedding Ann and I went to Saturday afternoon, as well as the reception, though I did fall asleep for half an hour on the ride home... Ann says she thinks that's why my neck is killing me today, I think maybe I fell asleep in some strange position and then slept like a rock last night, putting a serious kink in it... so a sore knee and a literal pain in the neck are the two aftereffects.
So the big question is...
will I do the fall classic (2 mi/10 mi/2 mi/10 mi/2 mi) to see if I've improved over the summer?
Maybe... the course isn't all that interesting, and it's a lot of repeating loops, which I get bored with very quickly. If I do decide to do this again, I suspect that will be it... I don't see this becoming something I want to do over and over like Indian Ladder or Leatherman's Loop. But it might be interesting to do the one in September and see if I've improved. Have to see what else is going on around that time... there are one or two other running or biking events in September I might want to try, and they may prove more interesting than answering the whether or not I can outdo myself.
Oh, well. If you've survived the long version and all my ramblings, hope you found something of interest. The next race for the lone member of the AMAI Trailrunning Turtles team is the Summer Solstice 14K down in Minnewaska Park near New Paltz, 3rd week of June... unless I go over the Greylock the Sunday before and do the Greylock Trails 5K. Anyway, Summer Solstice is a definite, Greylock a maybe, and more rambling race reports are assured.
JMH
