MaxTrax Duathlon

What a strange trip this was... MaxTrax was this past Saturday and I had planned on doing it for months until I was diagnosed with a stress fracture at which point my early races became more tenative. I finally bit the bullet on Wednesday (three days before the race) and entered. I had my training wheels on and didn't really want to race with them since the course was pretty flat and I could benefit greatly by switching out my wheelset for my race wheels (old ass Spinergy Rev-Xs... but hey, they work). Tony tried his damnest to adjust the derailleurs properly but I only have an 8-speed cassette on those wheels when my bike is desperately crying out for me to get a 9-speed one instead. Needless to say I had some trouble when I went out for a ride the following day. I ended up getting stuck in my big ring with only my house key to attempt to adjust the derailleur... note to self: house keys were never meant to make bike adjustments. I had what is arguably the most difficult training ride of less than 30 miles I've had in life. My quads were yelling at me to throw in the whole time...

I took a trip to Walt's the following day to get things sorted out because I really didn't want to take my chances on race day. Luckily when I called Walt's Curt Kippenberger answered and said he'd have the time to take a look (even though it was last minute). When I got there, he looked at me and asked if I had wrecked recently (I had). Well, turns out that my rear derailleur hanger was bent pretty bad and he let me know that I shouldn't be riding on it at all. So he decided to attempt to bend it back into place letting me know that there was a 50/50 chance that it would snap in half. Walt's doesn't carry Cannondale parts but he was sure that Cyclextreme would have part. They didn't. So Curt drove home where he had some old C'dale parts but to no avail. In the end, his wife ended up driving to St. Louis and picking up the part which Curt then replaced on his day off (Friday). In the end, the bike was race ready for Saturday morning. Thanks Curt!

On to the race...I had never competed in a duathlon before and thought I would really miss the relaxing swim warmup at the start of triathlons. However, it wasn't all that bad. It felt completely different from a triathlon though. I've never not competed in a swimsuit before so this was an odd feeling. Anyways, I competed in the short course which was 1.5M, 7.5M, 1.5M. According to the timing guru :), my splits were 7:00, 19.5, 7:50... the course was definitely short and just to be safe I'll go as far to say that I should probably add about a minute to each of those splits (except for perhaps the bike which seems pretty accurate). The first run felt exactly like a cross-country race and I treated it just like one. I started out quick so that I didn't get bogged down in the masses and have to battle to pass people on a trail that was decently narrow. I was in pretty good position from the start and probably should have slowed down a bit but hell it was my first duathlon. I was leading until the very end of the run when Diane Hood passed me... oh well. Tranistion was weird... I didn't have my shoes clipped in like I normally do so running in my shoes felt kinda strange. Off on the bike, I felt pretty good. The bike did its job, I just need to work on fine tuning the motor a little more. I never caught up to Diane but I didn't get passed by any women either. The second run sucked. I think I could have run just as fast as I had but it was the anxiety of already having run the damn loop once and not wanting to do it again... so I was almost a minute slower pace wise but I don't care. I got ended up coming in 2nd overall. I'll take that...