Black Diamond Off-Road Duathlon
Saturday, Oct. 22, 2005
2005 Black Diamond Offroad Duathlon results
Black Diamond Offroad Duathlon info
2005 Black Diamond Duathlon photo slideshow
If nothing else, these weekends should be teaching me to be flexible in my planning, since things have rarely gone off the way I expected them to.
This weekend I set a new record for earliest rising to get to a race - 2 AM Saturday morning with a departure (from Albany) time of 4 AM to reach Victor (just east of Rochester) by 8 AM. The original plan was to drive out to Rochester Friday night. Unfortunately, this has been the week from you-know-where, sleep-wise, and Friday it became very clear that I WAS NOT driving out that night... I would have fallen asleep while driving. So instead I went to sleep at 7 PM and got up at 2 AM.
(FYI there's very little traffic on the Thruway at 4 AM on a Saturday morning.)
About 45 minutes out from Victor, the rain started. And stayed. I believe the announcer said it was 42 degrees while we were waiting to start. Cold and wet. What fun. I went with the "freeze my butt off" approach and took off my sweatpants and windbreaker before the start. Needless to say the bike leg was a little chilly.
For once no one said anything about my knee braces! BUT I did get a new comment - twice I heard variations on "You came all the way from Albany to do this race?" I guess it was mostly locals at this one.
So after the usual pre-race stuff (some of which involved the really nice race director talking way too much about the course - I kept wanting to holler out "We're freezing our butts off! Just start this thing so we can run!"), off we went on a 2 mile run through Fishers park. First on muddy trails through the woods and then on a loop around a field. Halfway around the field there was a cub scout pack manning the water station... boy were they enthusiastic. And apparently I made their day by stopping to take their picture. (They thanked me on the 2nd running leg.)
Anyway, back into the woods and back the way we came... finished the run without popping the ol' knee, and hopped on my bike. I then spent a while cursing out the race director, who had said the bike sections were almost entirely flat, because the Auburn trail sure seemed like it was a long gradual uphill heading in that direction. (But then again, on the way back it ALSO seemed uphill, so my "up/down" sensors may have been waterlogged or frozen. Maybe it was just that my legs didn't want to push my heavy ATB after the run.) After a few miles on the Auburn trail (an old railbed turned rec trail) we headed off into another park, this time for a muddy ride on a dirt road and around a field.
(Maybe I should change my alias from "jedi_turtle" to "muddy_turtle"... hopefully the next two races will be dry!)
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Then it was back out the Auburn trail to the Lehigh trail (another converted railbed) and a short road stretch. I don't know who ordered the headwind for the last mile - that made the last bit of biking really tough!
After that it was back for another round of the trails in the park, except that they hurt more 2nd time around and it was raining harder, so things were getting pretty slippery. But I pushed through to the end, finishing in a pretty decent 1 hr 22 min. (I was expecting more like 90-100 minutes, but apparently I made good time on the bike.) All the volunteers were really nice - they had an amazing number of people out on the course (and that wasn't including all the police, firemen, and EMTs they had out there.) Afterwards I found someone to snap a picture of me - wet but done!
AND since I was already wet, I rode part of the bike course again to take pictures of it... I'll post them on webshots later this week (as well as the pictures I took during my first loop through the running course.)
Now I just have to see if I can stay awake until Ann gets back from Utica...
Next week - the Hairy Gorilla Half Marathon in (grumble) Thacher Park. Apparently, the volunteers will be in costume (since Halloween is the next day) and the finish area will be set up to look like a graveyard (that would be much more appropriate if it was an ultramarathon... or that killer race I did two weeks ago... or the Greylock Half Century ride!) The director's e-mail also said something to the effect that runners should keep their eyes open, because there might be animals in the woods attacking them - of course, if anyone in an animal costume attacks me, THEY might be the ones in for a surprise... (I won't wear the AMAI logo at this one... but I am considering running with an escrima stick strapped to my back. Or maybe my cane... that could always come in handy if I pop my knee, too!)
JMH
P.S. As I was riding my bike in the Pine Bush Thursday night, I had a wacky idea for a ninth strenuous weekend which would get me my long run through the Pine Bush... I have to calculate some distances though and see if it's doable (ie. could I do it in under 3 1/2 hours.)
