Powerman Alabama Race Report

Long course duathlons hurt. That’s what I came away from Powerman Alabama with. Then again, this race in particular hurts all the more thanks to the 3600 ft. of elevation gain over the 80km course.

When I picked up my race packet on Friday afternoon, I was happy to find out that I would be a single digit number for the first time ever in a large race! For the most part, it seems that athletes were numbered by their estimated finish time so I knew I’d be in the hunt for a top 10 finish as I had hoped.

The plan of attack for this race seemed rather simple; cruise through the first run, negative split each lap on the bike, and attack the second run. On paper, or in my mind, that plan seemed like a good course of action. In reality, the hilly nature of the course and sheer length of the race made it very difficult.

The run course seemed to be slightly short (two 2.87-2.88 mile loops by my Garmin) and with 2km of single track trail on each run it didn’t favor a fast pace. I came through the first lap in 18:04 and followed it up with an 18:25 that got me up to 5^th place entering T1. With a 40 second transition (that would have been even faster had I not had trouble stuffing gels in my pockets), I moved up to 3^rd place heading out on the bike.

On the road, I was only truly on the same time as those aged 34 and under, so it was hard to tell where I really was at any time. About 4 miles into the bike leg I was passed and dropped to 4^th, still in good position but I had to keep pushing to stay there.

Usually on the bike I’m passing a lot of people I started with who are much faster swimmers than I am. Here, though, the only people I was passing were those in the shorter race, or those I was lapping in my race. I finished my first 20km lap and saw my split of 33:44 come up on my computer. Just about right on the pace I had hoped for after lap 1. The course was a simple out-and-back with really 6 major climbs each loop. Heading out on lap 2 I knew I was just 30 seconds or so down on 2^nd and 3^rd place ahead of me. My second lap came in at 34:00 (but was slightly shorter due to the distance to transition), and my final climb was actually 3 seconds faster than the first lap. 40km came by in 1:08:03, not too bad given the frequent climbs! My final lap was painful and pretty lonely as I had mostly open road around me, but I pushed on for a 36:11 to record an official 60km split of 1:43:59.

Out onto the second run and I was still sitting in 4^th place overall on the road; or trail, as I quickly hit the single track again, this time to go uphill for 1km each time through. After 10 minutes of running I was approaching the turn around on the run and saw 2^nd and 3^rd place again no more than 2 minutes ahead. Unfortunately, all the will in the world won’t make tired legs go any faster, especially on hills. I came through the first lap in 19:53 and thought I could maybe negative split to run under 40 minutes. At the top of the run course for the final time I was now just a minute back from 3^rd, but 5^th place had closed the gap on me to just 30 seconds. With half a mile to go, he seized 4^th place on the road from me, but having started 6 minutes behind us, he ended up second overall. I crossed the line in 3:02:29 which held up for a good 7^th place finish, My final run was 40:35 but gives me a little bit of confidence heading towards the Boston Marathon in 3 weeks that I can still run fairly well after 2 hours and 20 minutes of racing.

In the end my splits took the 5^th fastest first run, 10^th fastest bike, and 10^th fastest second run, so I can’t be too disappointed. I’m happy with my bike split given the hills and knowing that my next longest bike leg this year will only be 40k I have the confidence that I can attack the bike leg.

Congrats to my Sport Factory teammate, Jeremiah Mitchell, for taking the age group win over me by about 1:30. It was a great feeling to stand next to each other on the podium in matching TSF shirts.