My first duathlon-Xterra Last Stand Race Report

Race day! My alarm started going off at 5:15 a.m. and after hitting the snooze button a few times I finally got out of bed. And then I promptly woke up Scott. I have to admit that I felt a little guilty waking him up as he went to a friends concert the night before and didn't get home until 2 a.m, but oh well. I was so nervous about the race that he had to go :-) 

Once we got to Ft. Custer I registered and gathered all of my stuff for the transition area. I found a great spot for my bike that was near the exit and away from the other bikes. My little sister Toni (she did the triathlon) found me in the transition area. When she saw my bike she asked how I got such a great spot. "I took it," I replied. Rookie!!! Apparently it doesn't work that way. Toni told me that the spots were already designated so I had to move my bike between a lot of other bikes. 

I spent the rest of the time trying to figure out the transition area and finally gave up. I figured I would just follow whoever was in front of me and hopefully they would know where they were going.The promoter had us line up across the beach and told us that the duathletes and triathletes would be starting off together. He estimated that the top people from each field would enter the transition area about the same time. I'm pretty sure my HR was about 150 bpm standing still at this point.

Finally the air horn blew and we were off. We had to run across the beach, hit a paved road, and then enter singletrack and then run across the beach again to the transition area. I was going back and forth with another women across the beach but then slowly pulled away on the pavement. I think my coach probably wanted me to run a little slower at first but I was already out of control.

The top two female triathletes were out of the water and in the transition area about a minute ahead of me. However I was able to take the lead on the bike pretty quickly.  I was hoping to gain a lot of time during the bike portion but my body felt like it was in shock. I caught up to a few guys and promptly followed them the wrong way down the trail. Oops...so much for following people! It cost us maybe a minute to backtrack but that was enough time for a few other women to pass me.  I ended up racing with another female who was super strong on the bike.  She seemed to know the course much better then me so I stayed on her wheel for about half the course and eventually I was able to pass on a small climb. There were some NASTY crashes in front of me and I had to dismount and run a few times. Just as I finally felt normal on my bike we were back to the transition area. Dang it!!! I wanted to keep riding.

"Do not ride past this line...Do not ride past this line"

My transition the second time around was a little faster but still really slow compared to other people. Scott yelled at me to go catch the guys in front of me and I was off and running across the beach for the third time! BTW...running on sand...not that fun!

Running through transition. PS. No, I'm not wearing a white t-shirt under my tank!

It was a lot more fun once I was running on singletrack and the first mile went by really fast. At the two mile mark things started to hurt though. It was our first brutally hot day and my feet started to feel crampy. And then anytime I hit a hill my calves started to cramp. Uh-oh. I've cramped on a bike before but never to where I had to stop.

Finally I hit the turn-around point and had a little over a mile to the finish. I had no clue how far back the 2nd place female was but really didn't want to lose the race in the last mile. That would be un-fun! However a mile seems really freaking long when running :-)

With a half mile to go I hit pavement. The sun was beating down on me and just as I was running past a bunch of spectators my entire right leg and foot cramped up so bad that I came to a complete stop in front of everyone. I had a brief moment of panic that I was going to have to crawl to the finish but luckily I was able to shake it out and push the pace to the finish line. Not only was I the overall female winner of the duathlon but I got second out of the guys!

Completely exhausted....

Afterwards I went straight to the lake...the water felt amazing!

The best part of the race was being able to hang out with my little sister, Toni. She does triathlons all the time but this was her first Xterra. She had a great swim, good bike but felt horrible during the run. She had the flu the whole week leading up to the race, and I can't imagine how bad she must have felt running in the heat. Ugh!

Happy with my race :-)

I had WAY more fun doing this race then I thought that I would. I was out of my comfort zone the entire time and had no clue what I was doing during the run. I was expecting to completely blow up the entire time! If only there were Xterra duathlons that had much, much longer bike portions. I think I would like those even more :-)