Last weekend Denelle, Christy, Dave and I all journeyed down to Richmond to ride the National Championship Off Road Duathlon. The Run course was a 5k loop that you ran a total of 3 times. To Start you did it twice, then you got on your bike, did 30 K of riding, and came back in for another lap on the run course. The Run started fast, a runner from Virginia Tech was off like a shot and managed to drag a bunch of the elite field with him. The initial pace those guys were setting was in the high 4 minute to low 5 minute per mile range. I played it smart and held my pace, let those guys go and knew I would see some of them again during my part of the race....the bike leg. On completing the second lap I was into the transition to grab my bike and gear up to rock the Richmond James River Trail system. I had elected to use my Carbon 9.9 Hardtail for this course....proved to be a good choice.....fast fire road type sections broken up by single track that had lots of hard brake and then acceleration corners. I was able to really pop it hard coming out of those corners and even through the rocks and roots that were on the course, the carbon of the Hardtail took out the sting and kept traction for me both up and down.
The bike leg was FAST. I averaged right at 14 mph for the course and completed the 30K in 1:20. During the course of the ride I pulled back a bunch of the awesome runners and they got to watch my backside for a short time until I pulled away....of course in that final 5 k run I got to see some of them again....I guess I should do some running to train for these things at some point.
Overall the Team did well,
Denelle took 2nd overall for women and 1st in here age group.
Christy Won the Women's Sport Race (had shorter run, ride and run distances.....really appealed to me after the fact)
Dave took 14th overall in the Men's Race and 3rd in his age group.
I took 10th overall in Men's and 2nd in my age group.
This weekend is the LODI 12 hour race. The team has been busy gearing up for this one. Lights are charged, bikes are tuned, Trailer is 75% prepped to go. We are gonna field a powerful team for this one, all in Solo categories.
Jeremy, Ted, and Kevin are all gonna race single speed solo
Denelle, Dave, and I are all gonna race Geared solo.
Support is gonna be provided by Shannon, Dad, and John Cox.
The Bike Factory Racing Compound will be ready to rally......even if the weather turns south on us.
1 comment:
It was great seeing y'all out there. And I don't care what you say, you're a helluva runner.
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