Arbour Lake Duathlon, June 25

Duathlons are truly amazing. They hurt like crazy and make you dig really deep. It is a very similar feeling as cross county running. The duathlons I have been in, for the most, are on very challenging courses and tend to be very technical. Last October when I was at World’s in Australia, there was no flat section on the bike course except for the transition area. World’s this year in Cornerbrook will prove to be no different.

Arbour Lake Duathlon is a challenging course, albeit not quite as tough as World’s last year. The run course for the 10k and 5k are identical. For the 10k, it is 4 laps of climb, climb, climb, recover for 150m, then hammer down a hill, run a flat 200m, and do it all over again. For the first 10k, I ran with my friend from Edmonton tucked on my shoulder for the first two laps and then she decided she would through in a surge on the downhill. As such, the last two laps was me catching her and surging on the climb and her catching me and surging on the downhill. It was great for the spectators, not so great for my legs.

Nancy and I entered and exited transition together. Grabbed our bikes and mounted them pretty much together. The bike course was 4 laps of 10k.
The course is tough consisting of lots and lots of climbing with wind. Nancy is an awesome cyclist and I knew that it would be tough for me to stay within range to make up the time on the second run. I cycled hard but she made up a good 4 to 5 minutes on me. Coming off the bike I tend to be stronger than Nancy, but would require less than a minute between us to make the time up on the 5k run. She had me.

I ended up second overall and second in my age category. Nancy happens to be the same age as me. Overall I feel I ran really well and my bike was solid. I am still working on gearing with the new bike but it is coming along. I picked up my race wheels on Thursday so this was the first time I used those. I have this to say about the bike and wheels now….NICE!

I already had a spot for World’s in Cornerbrook and am happy that Nancy will be joining me. It will make for lots of fun at World’s. I was given the opportunity to take a spot for World’s in Hungary in May, 2007. Triathlon Canada made a last minute decision on this being a qualifying race as it is unlikely that there will be a race in Canada prior to May for qualification. I wanted to go to Austria in the spring anyway. So now I can just tie this into my plans. Vienna is only 1.5 hours away by train to where World’s is being held in Hungary.