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.

Wednesday Night's Bike Ride at the Veloway

I went to the Veloway last evening for a bike workout, as part of my duathalon training. I was not able to get anyone else to come with me -- my usual biking buddies were preparing for the fourth of July weekend. (Some are getting ready to travel and others are doing parties.)

So I had ridden about one lap when I noticed that a rider whom I had passed earlier had started wheel-sucking behind me. Then, when we started up a hill, he fell behind. So I slowed down to to let him catch up, and we started talking. He turned out to be Lyman Grant, Dean for Arts and Humanities at ACC, a good friend of Light and Bob German.

Lyman started biking about two months ago and is planning to ride in the Hotter'n Hell Hundred towards the end of August. He has been training on the new tollway out east of Austin. It sounds like an ideal road for riding. He says the traffic is light, shoulder smooth, and the hills are not too bad. His longest ride so far is a little over fifty miles. Way to go in just two months of riding!

When we parted I told him that my group would normally ride on Wednesday nights about 6 PM and he was welcome to join us. I also told him that over the next month we might not be meeting too regularly, what with vacations, travel, and other summer things. Hope we meet up again; Lyman's abilities seemed about the same as mine--a good riding buddy.

Here is my Motionbased charts:



I have not been very good at posting my exercise for the last week. Larissa has been visiting and I have changed my schedule so that I am running in the morning. I do a lot better when it is cool, I am rested, and I have eaten breakfast. Here are the morning runs I've done: