Shamrock Duathlon

Last Sunday I raced the Shamrock Duathlon. It consists of a 5k run, then 28k bike, followed by another 5k run. The race setup was great. The weather was perfect. They had these great bike racks that you simply place your rear wheel in so it is clean and simple and everyone has the same amount of space. I do a little .5 mile warmup, one last trip to the bushes and I line up near the front.

I looked at the results from 2007 and noticed they had a clydesdale division so I register for that division and notice the winning time and person that won. I know who the guy is and I spot him at this year's race too. I know he is a pretty fast guy for us clydesdales so my game plan is to keep him in sight.

The gun goes off and he takes off......too fast for me. I tend to take the starts conservatively at first because everyone goes out too fast. It takes a few minutes for my HR to get up into my race zone, and to stabilize at a sustainable pace for me. So, I get into my zone and I start to pass a lot of people that go out too hard. That guy is one of them. I don't look back and I don't worry about him. I passed a few others that normally are faster than me. I guess I was running well. Sub 20:00 for first leg. Faster than I expected. I wasn't sure how I would feel today because I rode 4 hours just 13 hours ago. My legs were tired. Onto the bike and so far so good. I settle into my zone, steady on the climbs and push the flats, and take in some gatorade. A few guys are passing me which I wasn't happy about but I wasn't going to push too hard because I still had to run again. Here comes my guy......he passes me. I step it up a bit to keep in contact and end up re-passing him for a little bit. Then, a large downhill comes so I get into my position and all of a sudden, here comes a high speed wobble.....oh crap. I was moving at this point and my front wheel was seriously wobbling. I thought I was going down but I controlled it. Here comes another downhill and the wobble is here again.....oh crap. This stinks. I resign myself to riding the downhill very conservatively in order to stay on top of my bike and let the other guy go. There was no way I could keep the gap close. If this didn't happen, I would have pushed harder to keep him in contact. And, if I didn't ride 4 hours the day before, this would have been much easier too.....oh well. Maybe I can catch him on the run.

Glad to get off the bike and start running. I shouldn't have a wobble problem here. I start out slow to get my legs under me to see how they are going to do and so far, so good. I settle into my pace and with about a mile to go, I see the other guy and I'm closing. I finish strong but didn't catch him. I needed another mile or two and I would have caught him. He finished ahead of me by about 30 sec.

I get a massage, hydrate, and eat a bit. The results go up on the board and I look at my name and see a 2:00 penalty....thats odd. I ask the official what it was for and she tells me that I racked my bike on the wrong side of the bike rack. I laughed in her face and asked her if she was joking. She laughed too and said that a bunch of people received the penalty. This is the part of the sport that gets me angry because they have different governing bodies that have different rules and every race is set up differently. It knocks me from 2nd to 3rd in my category. I would have been 35th overall out of 254 finishers.

Overall, a good effort.

I sold my race wheels 2 days later so now I'm shopping for a new set again. Tubulars vs. clinchers is my great debate now.