Knowledge is power, so knowing who you’re racing against is generally a good thing. Knowing that your closest competition is likely to come from someone whose 10k PR is 3 minutes slower than yours? That leads to a lot of confidence.
The thing that I love most about races run by Set Up Events, other than the great organization, timing, and police support, is that they post the entire list of entrants for a race on the race page and keep it updated as more people enter. This is more than likely so that people can check that they are entered, but it also serves the purpose of letting athletes see who they’re up against.
On Thursday, I looked through the list of entries and searched for past results for everyone. Some had raced more than others, and some obviously had more pertinent results to the event at hand, but for every competitor I managed to find some information about a previous race. Given that there were only 44 people on race day, and even fewer pre-registered, checking everyone’s past results wasn’t a particularly lengthy task, but it certainly made me that much more confidant at the start.
The Two-Twenty-Two Duathlon was organized fairly late with registration only opening a few weeks ago, hence the small turnout, but it served as a good opportunity to get a race effort in on the bike before Powerman Alabama next month. In that sense, the extreme bike-bias in this race was very much a good thing. The race started with a 2-lap 2 mile run, followed by a 21 mile bike, and finished with another 2-lap 2 mile run. The run legs were actually about 2.08 miles by my Garmin, and confirmed as closer to 2.1 miles by the race director.
The start was chilly, so I decided to wear arm warmers. Despite that, I still had the fewest clothes on and most of my fellow competitors were wearing long sleeved tops or jackets. I took off from the line with every intention of taking it easy for the first mile, but I also didn’t want to risk having not built up enough of a lead to be within striking distance on the second run if someone blew by me on the bike. I flew through the first mile in 5:37, and had probably already built up about a 30 second lead. My second mile of 5:47 brought me through two miles under my goal of 11:30, but the little bit extra added another 25 seconds to make my first run split officially 11:50. Still good enough to have a 1:25 lead into T1. With a reasonable transition, having removed my arm warmers, I extended my lead to 1:36 heading out onto the bike course.
Starting out on the bike I knew I had to be somewhat conservative, as a race effort over 21 miles is no small task. After all, that’s just 3.8 miles shy of an Olympic distance bike. At the same time, I wanted to build as big of a buffer as possible before anyone could have a chance to eat into my lead. The first 10k of the bike dropped in elevation significantly more than it gained on climbs, which probably helped to contribute to my 23 mph average over that distance. Before the race I had a goal of around 56 minutes for the bike, which would allow me to finish the race in about 1:20:00. 56 minutes would require 22.5 mph, so I was well on pace, but still had a long way to go and the hills were yet to come. The next 10k had several large climbs and my pace dropped to 21.4 mph over that stretch. Little did I know, even at that speed, I was rapidly riding away from the chase group. Around mile 11 I made my second turn of the course to head back towards transition. Immediately after the turn, I hit the steepest hill of the course and dropped to the small ring to maintain a high cadence. After making it to the top and turning left once again, the road began to flatten out slightly and I picked up the pace slightly to 21.7 mph for the third 10k. Every so often, when there seemed to be a long enough stretch to see a few minutes behind, I turned to see if I could see anyone chasing. I never did, and soon I’d find out why. My last 2.4 miles to transition averaged 22.6 mph, but I was probably desperate to get running again. My T2 wasn’t particularly stellar, but it got me out onto the run again under a minute.
Back on the run course my legs felt pretty tired, but as I learned in Myrtle Beach, even on tired legs right now, I can run sub-6 miles. My first mile out of transition was 5:51 and second place had yet to come off the bike. I could feel the win by this point but now I secretly wanted to finish before anyone else even got off the bike. With about a third of a mile to go, second and third place finally arrived to T2, I had built my lead on the bike to a whopping 10 minutes, and with my final mile of 5:45, negative splitting my second run, I crossed the line a full 12 minutes and 27 seconds before second place.
At the end of the day, I walked away with my first ever overall win in a multisport event. I missed my goal of 1:20:00 by 2:48, but I was 1:27 slower on the bike than I had hoped for (despite having the fastest split by 7:15), I took an extra 34 seconds between the two transitions than I had accounted for, and the extra 0.17 miles of running added another 49 seconds. My overall time of 1:22:48 does set a reasonable course record, though, and I can’t be too disappointed with a wire-to-wire victory!
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