Phew!

The night before the race, as I'm getting ready, I keep thinking to myself if only I had two more weeks, I would definitely be more ready and in better shape. And the other thought was why the hell is our start time at 10:50am and why the hell does this have to be the first weekend where the temperature hits the mid 90s (when so far we haven't sniffed the mid 80s until this weekend). Hell, when I worked out outside on Wednesday, just 4 days prior to the race, it was in the 40s... So, I did the only thing I can do at that point which was to focus on keeping myself hydrated.

On the day of the race, I get out and there are tons of people... all looking like they are in kick ass shape. Seriously, I haven't seen a collection of athletic looking people like that since track meets in my college days. As my friend cleverly put it, "it is the national championship of duathlon." Good point. Why did I sign up for the championship event instead of the shorter version??? I mean I know that is what I do but man... why oh why.

Well, all said and done, I was able to complete the race. It was insane tough though. I was literally running on empty from about 16 mile mark of the bike. A funny thing did happen early though... 1.6 miles into the race (10k run), we come to the train tracks... and there is a train crossing... literally, we were stopped for 6-8 minutes (depending on when you got there) and the race officials had to come out to issue the official ruling (keep in mind that top 4 from each age group qualifies for the world championship in Sept so some of them were very fired up about this). I think the official ruling was that they are going to take 8 minutes off the race chip time. Well, getting that out of the way, the race continued.

By the time the 10k portion was done, I was actually feeling fatigued. This is not like the Monument 10k race where there are thousands of runners, some slow, some fast. All these guys were fast... hell, so were the girls. Well, another thing I learned was that I'm slow on my bike. Which makes sense since I just bought my bike few days ago... But that's where everyone broke away from me for sure... I mean I was kinda behind after the run but I imagine that I had to be the slowest guy in my age group on the bike. Around mile 8 into the 24 mile bike portion, my calves were starting to cramp up. And again, by mile 16, I was running on empty. I was just doing everything I can to keep pedaling but it was also not a flat course and my quads were burning as well.

The last 5k run portion is actually kind of a blur... I know that I was glad I was off the bike... just different muscle group I guess and it helped... a little. I was so happy to finish though since that was my goal. I don't know my official time yet (not posted on the website yet) but that's secondary, at least for this race. I'll just have a baseline of what to shoot for next time. And yes, even though I felt like death, there will be a next time. I haven't been this proud of myself in a long long time!!!

Oh and once you complete the race, they give you a "finisher's mug" and of course, Richmond Tri Club has a party with pizza from Papa Johns, burritos from Chipotle, and beers (Miller Lite and Yuengling). One free beer for race participants - man, Yuengling out of the finisher's mug tasted especially good!!!

Some picture dump:

Start Line