Duathlon Nationals

Yesterday I raced my second duathlon race ever. First one was in 1991 or 1992, and I vividly recall it being an awfull experience. I think that it was partially a XC race.

Well, yesterday was done on flat road which is a decent surface for "serious" biking. My preparations for this race included a disasterous Bike-Run x 4 workout couple of weeks ago. For instance, after that workout my running has mostly been a pain in the ass. And nothing else.

Then on last Wednesday morning I sneaked out for a early morning tempo ride (20km in 33:40 = 35.6km/h) during which I used aerobars (which I got to borrow from Ile) for the first time in my life. Based on this base training I dared to face 44km bike ride with 10k "warm-up" and 5k "cool down".

As fun as it was, the race itself was a pretty long (2:11:44) performance which included 3.5 minutes of sad examples of bad transitions both from run to bike and bike to run. But I took them as a hands-on learning experience. On the other hand, they might have prevent me for achieving higher podium spots than the AG bronze which I earned.

Next up... recovery.