The Mt Rainier Duathlon is a little local race I’ve done 3 or 4 times in the past ten years, most recently 2007 and 08. The Long Course is a 5.18 mi run/ 28.8 mi bike/3.8 mi run. The first run has two short but steep hills around the end of mile 3; the bike is two loops, flat farmland for 6 miles, then a 600′ climb, followed by a 2 mile false flat (climbing another 100′), and a screaming four mile downhill. I’ve always used it as a test of early season fitness, but this year, I signed up about ten days ago thinking it would be a sharpening race for IM St. George next week.
It also happens to be a race where I can get all the admin mistakes out of my system. Once, leaving T1, I kept my running hat on, neglecting to switch to the bike helmet. I road back to T1 after about 0.5 mi. Another year, I forgot my watch. This year, I made two flubs. First, I got the wrong day, so I had a dry run of 40 minutes to the course Sat AM, and got to return again this morning. That was good practice at working on balancing the nervousness with the calmness needed for a good race – I got to do that twice! Then today, I found I’d left my Joule @ home. Luckily, I’ve got a Garmin 310XT I’m using for the first time this year, so that was helpful to ride off the power from that watch.
About 4 days ago, I got the pre-race email, and found out this race was declared the USAT National Long Course Duathlon Championship. That threw me for another loop. Being hyper-competitive, if something is a “Championship” or otherwise some kind of a big deal, I like to prepare myself mentally for it, which means working on self-talk for 2-3 months in advance. My self talk for this race was to try out my HIM pacing and running off a hard bike, not to go for some trophy. It took a couple of days to get out of the Big Deal headspace back into the training space, but I got there by race morning, and got to meet all the other folks in my AG, none of whom were local.
The weather and the road surface were the biggest factors here. In years past, the flatland portion and hill climb were chip seal, which is maybe one gear slower for me, as well as being chattery. But! the road has been newly paved, smooth asphalt all the way, a dream surface. Plus one for the home team. On the negative side, the weather, which was perfectly clear and sunny when I left home near Puget Sound, was all cloudy and threatening to spritzle rain. This ride is at (and goes into) the base of the foothills of the Cascades. So the wet air from the Pacific hits the mountains, forms clouds and rain, when things are sunny in the cities of Tacoma and Seattle 15 miles to the west. The false flat and downhill on the first bike loop were quite wet, and the 50F temps didn’t help. Luckily, I’d chosen to wear EN arm warmers, and my EN full length zip jersey over my suit, so I was OK. Then I took off the shirt and pulled down the arm warmers for the second run.
I was most interested in two things: comparison to previous years, and my power/pace/HR/cadence numbers for the various legs.
Year Run #1 Time/HR Bike Time/HR Run # 2 Time/HR
2007 37:33/147 1:37:45/124 28:03/142
2008 38:07/145 1:33:26/132 27:13/141
2013 38:33/142/96 1:37:55/119 29:25/136/94
Comparing the two loops of the bike, I was a minute faster on the second, almost all of that in thde first 5.5 miles.The IFs for the various bike segments were right where I wanted them: first 5.5 miles: 0.72/0.77, Hill 0.826/0.82, downhills 0.67/64, a. Just about the way I plan to ride in the HIM next week. Overall VI was 1.06, with 1.0-1.02 when the downhills were taken out. Lotta turns on this course – 16/29 miles. 1400′ total elevation gain.
Comparing the run paces on the final leg from year to year, 2007/2008: 7:25/8:08, 7:49/8:11, 7:31/7:23, 7:12. 2007 was about 0.1 mi shorter, so the comparable overall times were 28:03/28:50, or a 2.7% drop, compared to a 2.4% drop in the first run.
I find it interesting that my bike times now and six years ago are the same, but with a 4% lower HR – better aero position, helmet, disc cover, and better road surface are probably the key, not improved fitness or speed! And my first run shows a 3.4% drop in HR, with a 2.4% drop in speed. That is probably the effects of age, my friends, 0.5% per year. I can tell you all the runs *felt* the same year to year, meaning I was working just as hard, except for the last run this year, when I started out 30″/mi off pace, and then finish hard the last two, trying to imitate an HIM run.28:50,
Oh,yeah, almost forgot … I got 3rd place in the US National LC Du Championships. Luckily, the winner beat me by nearly 15 minutes (my time was 2:50), so I have no illusions about actually being able to compete in this crowd, no matter how I had approached the race. But nobody older than me went faster than me!