Somehow I let the stupid part of my brain make decisions for the rest of me the weekend before last.  I had planned on doing the Battle of Burlingame 6 Hour MTB race, but I knew I also needed to work on dealing with transitions for the upcoming Half Ironman.  It just happens that there was a duathlon just down the road from me than is known as being good for first timers.  Well the duathlon had a start time of 8:30 am, and the Battle of Burlingame XC race, not the 6 hour event, had a start time of 2:30 pm, so why not do both!

Race of Rams Duathlon (First race of the day)
The race was a 1.5 mile run, 14 mile bike and then a 2 mile.  This was the first duathlon I had ever done, so I was not really sure how to approach it.  

I decided to go out easy on the first running leg and was a little surprised at the end when I found out I had run a 10:46.  That was a 7:11 pace and 19th fastest run, which is not something I would have ever expected.

I felt really good on the bike right from the start. so I decided I would push a little on the first lap and see how I felt at the start of the second lap.  I was picking off other riders here and there so I was pretty sure that I had a good ride going.  At the end of the first lap I was still feeling pretty good so I decided to go all in on the second lap and just buried myself.  I was pretty sure that it had been a good ride when I hit the transition and there were only 6 bikes hanging there.  The result was a 43:46.5 bike leg that was good for the 5th fastest bike leg of the day.

I didn’t want to ruin what was turning into a good race on the last run so I went for it.  The second run was an out and back that was all uphill for the out part.  Almost immediately I had three runners go by me, and at the turn around there were two people right behind me.  I managed to sort of hold them both off to the finish.  Okay one passed me and then I managed to stay with her until the last 100 meters where I passed her back.  Net result for the second run was a 14:41.3 which worked out to a 7:21 pace.

My overall time was a 1:11:37.5.  That was good for 11th overall and 1st in my age group.

The Battle of Burlingame (Second race of the day)
I went out to warm up before the race and was not real impressed with the hill at the start, until I found out that the course was pancake flat.  That pretty much told me that there was nothing left in the legs and it was going to be a real long race.  I put in a good hard effort for about the first 1/2 a lap and then decided that I needed to just back off and try to finish.  On the 3rd lap someone passed me and said he was surprised I was still even out there after racing in the morning.  My only comment to that was that I didn’t really think the pace I was riding at really counted as racing.  That was maybe not the most polite thing to say being that he was just catching me at that point.  After a quick laugh he more or less paced me to the finish.  My finishing time was 1:38:53 which was good for 14th.  I was a little surprised by my lap times.  I figured they would drop off really bad after the first lap.  The second lap was only 2 minutes slower than the first, and the third lap was actually 20 seconds faster than the second lap.

This may have been a really good race course and I would love to try it again without the dead legs.  Maybe next year if these two events do not fall on the same day.