Refocusing

Today confirmed everything.

Today was the Batavia Triathlon/Duathlon.

Ryan and I found out earlier in the week that we made the Worlds Team for Duathlon which takes place on September 22nd in Nancy, France.  The overall winners of Powerman Alabama automatically qualified and the rest of the athletes chosen were resume based.  I thought for sure with all of the girls that beat me (thanks to my lovely slow bike split!!!) would be chosen over me, so I honestly forgot about it.  Until Tuesday when the Worlds team coordinator called me.

At first I was planning on not accepting; if I got a teaching job, there's no way any school would let me take that much time off (two days) and, more importantly, Ryan deserved a spot wayyyy more than I did, so if he didn't make it, then I shouldn't have either.

Luckily, Ryan got a call the next day saying he was chosen as well:)

So.  Here we are.  About 15 weeks out.  Ryan had signed me up for the Batavia Duathlon because he does the Tri and also works the event for PowerBar.  I haven't ridden my bike since I banged my knee (too much pain), so about a month.  Well, I guess all of the time off worked out alright for me because I ended up doing just fine.

The Batavia Duathlon consists of a 2mile run, 14.7mile bike, 4.1mile run.

GOALS: my goals were to go sub 12 for the 2mile run, average 20mph on the bike and be sub 6:20pace for the 4.1mile run (at the time I hadn't calculated what that needed to be for total time). And I wanted to win.

WHAT WENT DOWN: The duathlon had two separate "heats"...presumably a "fast" heat that started right at 6:30am and a "slow" heat that started at 6:35am.  I only say this because of the dramatic difference in how the races started.  Bibs 100-175 were in the "fast" heat, bibs 176+ were in the "slow" heat.  I was bib 191.  A fellow pro duathlete was racing in the "fast" heat and said I should see if I could just start with them (my thoughts exactly as everyone knows it's easier to run a race when someone is pushing you to test your limits).  The race director said I couldn't because of the way they set up the race.  So I literally ran the first 2miles alone, just trying to catch as many people as I could from the first group.

I ran a 12:05 for the 2miles.  Not what I wanted, but for only running 21 days at this point and having one speed session in that 21 days, I'm okay with it.  Plus, I ran it all alone and then had to weave through a few clusters of people on my way back.

For the bike, this is where it got interesting.  Since I had NO idea where I was in terms of place (all of the faster females were in the first group), I knew I had to just hammer it as best as I could on the bike.  I surprisingly did just that.  After struggling to clip in (yes, I seriously struggled), I powered up the first hill and immediately started catching people.  I was pretty pumped.  I decided my new goal (in addition to the 20mph goal) was to not let anyone pass me.  The tricky part in this was that the triathletes were trickling into transition to get their bikes as well....some of these being SUPER fast bikers.  However, with my two goals in mind, I just kept a positive attitude and cruised along.  At one point, I was riding 28.6mph!!! Woo hooo!!! My first 5mile segment, I averaged 20.6mph...nice.  New goal was to stay around 21-22mph for the next 5mile segment...until we went into the wind and up a few "hills"...20.9.  My remaining 4.7miles were over 21mph average, so I ended with a 20.8mph average.  I'll take it.  Oh, and only one person passed me. Two other guys tried to, but as soon as they did, I repassed them without looking back.  The person who did pass me must have been maintaining the same speed the whole time because I consistently saw him the same amount in front of me...and eventually passed him right away on the second run.

The final run went well.  I missed the first mile, but the second mile was a 6:06 (yeah!) and the fourth was a 6:24 (yikes!)...overall average of 6:18.  I'm not sure why, but I was pretty disappointed in that.  I still can't figure out why that doesn't make me happy.

The best part of finishing was printing out my and Ryan's results.  We had both won overall for our races!!!!!

At the awards ceremony, Ryan received a Timex GPS Watch for winning the Tri and I received a Bell helmet (really nice I guess) for being the overall female Duathlete (12th overall).

Even though it was great for us both to have good days, I'm much happier about the fact that we are both HEALTHY finally.  Ryan's back (hurt while jumping on trampolines) and my knee (door issue) are better and we are finally ready to start this season!

Hope everyone who raced today stayed hydrated!!!! That's the most important thing that we all seem to forget about once in "race mode".... enjoy this hot day :)