Giddy-Up Horsey

Saratoga Springs, NY, known primarily as the town to visit during the summer if you're a horse racing aficienado, played host to a very different group of athletes this weekend - the duathletes and weekend warriors who came to participate in the first ever Saratoga Duathlon, a 5k/28k/5k event. The 5k runs wound through a very hilly course on the campus of Skidmore college, while the bike portion of the race consisted of a 4-circuit flat loop through the adjacent neighborhoods. The strategy for this race was to run the opening 5k as though it were purely a 5k running race, and then attack the bike and survive the final run.

Things went pretty much according to plan today - at the sound of the gun, the first several lines of runners (myself included) hit the course at full clip. Running along the course trying to stay on the shoulders of the guy in front of me (who was setting sub-6:00 min/mile pace), I allowed myself to open things up as much as possible, despite the numerous climbs and decents. When the road turned upward, I switched to an ultra-fast cadence to keep my momentum going and to save my legs a little bit. When the road turned downward, I did my best to lean forward into it, relax and let gravity give me a little help for once. But at about 4k I was already starting to feel blown from the effort. Thankfully, it was right about at that point of the course where things leveled off and turned relatively flat-to-downhill all the way into T1. As the field spread out in my wake and the thump-thump-thump of the other 100 or so runners behind me completely vanished, I found myself crossing the timing matt into T1 with an 18:50 5k, sitting in 18th place overall. Supremo.

Out of T1, the legs were surprisingly okay as I pushed myself around the first lap of the 4-lap course. Because this race was not USAT sanctioned, there were no officials on the course making sure everyone adhered to the no-drafting rule. As such, I passed a lot of people who had a funny perception of what constituted "three bike-lengths", as they were practically team time-trialling thier way around the course! I hid my grin through my gritted teeth, knowing I was passing them on my own and into the wind without the benefit of a draft. Another rather comical part of the bike course was how, despite having race numbers on our clothes and on our bikes, the "officials" responsible for recording lap numbers insisted we shout out our race number every time we came through the lap line. So as I'm big-ringing my way up this false-flat once every 5 miles, I'd be greeted by cheering spectators and a woman holding a clipboard screaming: "Call out your number!!! Call out your number!!!".

Pushing through the final kilometer of the bike, I took in a gel and got ready for what I knew would be the last big push of the day. Oh yeah, the gel... Mental note, Carb-Boom gels have the consistency of water whereas my usual fuel, PowerGel, is more like pudding - so firmly squeezing the gel pack is not neccessary, unless you fancy wearing the gel instead of ingesting it! Anyway, T2 is always sort of interesting and is so different than T1. During T1 there's so much adreneline from the start of the race and so much relief that the first run is over that I tend to just float right on through and onto the bike. But during T2 I always end up having to have a little talk with myself: "Self, I know you think you should be done with this race right now, but in fact, you actually have another 5k race to do". Self typically responds: "No thanks". And so begins my inner conversation which lasts for approximatly 20 more minutes.

Out of T2, there was one runner in front of me and two in back of me, all about 30 seconds apart from one another. After the first 1k, I realized there was no hope in catching the runner in front of me, and I could hear the runner behind me catching up to my pace. He and I ran shoulder-to-shoulder for about 3k before he slowly started to pull away in the final 1k. Keeping the gap as narrow as possible, I stayed on him the best I could and wound up coming in within 5 seconds of his finishing time - putting me 12th overall in the race, 2nd in my age-group.

In all, it was another fantastic race - and an exceptional day of training. I met my primary goal of running the first 5k as a running race with little concern for what effects that may have caused on the bike and last run. Given the hills of the run course and the fact that we're just coming into June, a sub-19 5k is spot-on for a multisport race. As the weeks progress, we'll be looking run sub-18's in the sprint triathlons and ultimatly trying to go sub-36 in a pure 10k later this year. So stay tuned.

Thanks for reading.