I just realized I hadn't posted anything about the duathlon down in Opelousas last Sunday, so I guess I better get on with it. This was the state championship for Louisiana and consisted of a 2-mile run, 16-mile bike, and 2-mile run...actually kinda short for a championship but you take want you can get. I felt it would work for me.
This was the first time I can recall that I went to a race expecting to do well, instead of hoping to do well. In the past I would be pleasantly surprised if I had good results in a race and not too disappointed if things didn't work out. But I really wanted to do well in this race and I made it a point not to make a big deal of it beforehand to prevent putting a jinx on the whole thing. I didn't do anything special in the final week, treating everything as normal, and deciding to wait until race day to register (and that's another story right there).
My first and second runs averaged 6:54 and 7:12 per mile respectively, which is way faster than the 7:45-8:00 average I usually train at. I guess that shows that fast training is a bunch of bunk, hey? Rightttt. My second run went really well, much better than I thought it would. When I did the Dustbuster Duathlon back in January, my second run averaged 7:54 per mile and I was suffering. Not this time. I just kept pushing it and worked to take as large a stride as I could. My bike didn't appear too good when you look at the numbers, but it was actually a pretty good ride. The course was challenging, had some rough spots, a couple of good hills, and a wind we all had to deal with. The top contenders only had average speeds about 3 mph faster than me, so I wasn't disappointed at all. I was 47th coming out of the first run, and moved up to 33rd at the end of the bike so I definitely made progress during my ride. Only one racer passed me after the turnaround of the bike and I dropped him like a bad habit on the second run. Only two guys passed me on the second run...that's okay, they were much faster than me. They were just slow on the bike leg, probably two of the 14 people I passed during the ride.
In the end, I finished in 1:15:25 and got second place in the men's 50-54 age group. I lost out to first place by only SEVEN seconds! I remember seeing the guy in front of me during the run and I was closing the gap on him the whole time. But, from the back, he looked too young to be in my age group so my only interest in him was to catch him to move up one more spot in the overall. I was 27 seconds behind him when the second run started but only took 20 seconds out of him. If I had known who he was, I would have done everything I could to chase him down but the race organizers didn't provide age group markings.
I finished 32nd overall out of 141 finishers. I was happy with my result and effort although winning my age group would have been really sweet. I expected to do well and I did. Boy, wouldn't it be great to be that confident ALL the time!?
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