Race Report - Howdy-DU Duathlon

Today I ran the Howdy-DU duathlon at Berry Springs Park near Georgetown, Texas. It is a perfect location for a duathlon, with a running trail one and a half miles long and smooth roads for bike racing, with the added benefits of little traffic and few hills.

Today's race started at seven AM with a short speech from the race director. Then we were off. First we did two loops of the running trail in the park. The trail consisted of concrete, dirt, board walk, and rock.

I started out at a fast pace: about a 9 and a half minute mile. After about a half mile I started thinking that I had better slow down, since I had a long way to go before the race was over. So I slowed down to about an eleven minute pace.

The next part of the race was the bicycle ride. It took about a mile to get my legs working. They don't like going from running to biking. Especially my hamstrings; all I could do was press down on the pedals. If I had ridden the first lap as fast as I rode the second lap I would have averaged close to twenty MPH. (But of course I didn't, unfortunately.) It was a nice course.

I made a major mistake at the start of the bike ride. I was planning to grab a couple of Cliff Bars from my equipment stash at the change point, and eat them while I rode. I had them ready at the transition to put in my back pocket; I just forgot to do it.

The second three mile run started out well, but about two miles into the run I was regretting not having taken my Cliff Bars. I ended up walking about half the last mile.

I am still trying to get my Garmin to give good results for a multi-sport. I set it up for simple distance and time run. I recorded the entire race, which is better than what I had last time, but it doesn't show what I am doing at each stage of the race. Another thing to work on...

In the end, I won third in my age group. The results can be found here.

Here is the Motionbase account of the race.