Race Recap: Nation’s Duathlon

Yes, this is a couple of weeks late.  I don’t even caaaaare!

Also, disclaimer – while I enjoy writing race reviews and talking about training, etc….I am pretty much your standard *middle of the pack* racer.  I’m not fast by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m not slow either.  I like it that way.  This race was done on very little training (sorry coach, I did exactly what you said NOT to do and only did our scheduled Wednesday and Saturday trainings – it was summer and I quite literally can’t take the heat).   Well, I did run a few days a week but ONLY swam and rode the bike with the group.  Butch is a bitch (Butch is the name of my bike).

Reading Get Off My Internets for most of the weekend has made me aware that I should be all – yknow, I’m not an expert on anything that I post here, not even burritos (that’s a lie, I know my burritos) – so don’t take anything I say seriously.  And do not as I do.  Back to it…

Now, in case ya didn’t know, the swim portion of Nation’s Tri was CANCELLED the day before we left for DC.  See my post about it.

So, we started out in the corrals in gear of our choice.  I opted not to wear a helmet, which turned out to be a mistake (more in a sec).  We ran in, jumped on the bikes, I tossed on my helmet, ran out of transition, and dove headfirst into a pile of mud – not a joke…there were volunteers yelling “pick up your bikes!”

I jumped on the bike and started having a nice ride, we rode past some of the monuments and out onto the Clara Barton Parkway.  I felt like my helmet was really loose and couldn’t figure out what was wrong.  I kept tugging on the strap, but I’d toss my head around and it felt totally weird.  So finally I reached up and felt around – I had that bitch on backwards.  The headstrap inside had done a switcheroo on me, which had never happened, and I just tossed it on.  You can get disqualified if you ride your bike without a helmet on, so I pulled over, readjusted (a teammate rode by me and yelled my name and she was in my age group so I knew I wouldn’t be far behind).  Hopped back on and kept going.

From then on I was the totally annoying girl saying things like, “Gosh, it’s so nice out today!” which IT.TOTALLY.WAS. so shut it. This pic is when I was about to dismount at the end of the 25 miles….see the sign that says SLOW?

Time to start the run.  Luckily there isn’t much you can put on backwards in that part.  My legs felt all noodly from the bike so I started doing intervals (4 min run, 1 min walk), then changed it to 3 min run, 30 sec walk.   I seem pretty happy about it even if I look like hell:

The run was hot and I really had to pee – thank goodness for the porto in the middle of it!  Also, it was a little disheartening to be running through a park where people were starting their daily jogs – they looked so fresh and I felt tired!  But then Patty caught up with me and was ready to rock.  She said, “No, listen.  We are going to finish together and have an awesome finisher photo so you better pick up the pace.”  So I did.   Photo credit to Jessica!

We rocked the last mile and wanted to puke crossing the finish, but man did we get a great finisher photo!!

Here we are with our medals (and ice towels), feeling pretty smug.

My DC friends told us at brunch right after this (totally had a 15 minute transition at the hotel, are you impressed?) that we probably should NOT be swimming in the Potomac anyway.  And it’s true, once I got there and saw the current and the debris and the fact that it looks like chocolate milk, I wasn’t so disappointed.

Would I do Nation’s Tri (or Du) again?  The short answer is…eh, I don’t know.  I loved the team experience and all of the people I met and seeing DC pals.  And of course the course (heh) is great and the weather was nice, but overall I didn’t have a TOTALLY AMAZING race experience – though I guess the same could be said for the San Diego Marathon (still need to write that recap).  At the end of the day it was fun and, let’s face it, these days it doesn’t take a whole lotta arm twisting to get me to do an event – especially one for LLS!

Feeling inspired?  Why not donate to the cause – use the button in the sidebar or this here link.  I’ll do the hard stuff, you just give your moneyz to blood cancer research!  Win-win-win.