God's Country

So, God's Country. Well I guess I am a little behind. My first actual race of the season was nearly a month ago, I'm not really counting Bonebender as a race.

So, the week leading up to the duathlon at the Lawrence River Trails I was without my normal training equipment and regimen. This, of course, being my commuter road bike and my 20 mile a day commute. On my way to work I noticed some excessive sway/give in the bottom bracket of my early 80's Steel Centurion road bike. Once I arrived at work I found that this was not due to a bent BB spindle, like I'd hoped, but rather from a half inch crack in the lug at the bottom bracket. I'll have more info on this later.

So with my normal riding routine screwed up I switched my training to running during the week. This would serve me well at the duathlon, however, it was really too little and much too late.

I chose to do what I said I wouldn't do again and that was go out and have a few and a few more drinks the night before the race. I didn't get to bed until around 1:30am. So waking up in the morning was really fun with the little sleep I got, not to mention the hangover. Why do I do this? You need a good nights sleep and adequate hydration to truly have a good race and I know this. Ah well.

After waking up and attempting to rapidly replenish my fluids lost to alcohol Karen and I headed to Lawrence. I got registered and got the bike and me ready for the race. I set up my gear in the transition area and got the 411 from the racers meeting. At this point, 15 mins before the start, I wasn't really feeling any better than when I first woke up. I've raced on my bike hungover many times before, but I've never ran a race hungover. This would be new.

I'd never done a duathlon, but I have run and biked many races so I figured this would be similar. After all was said and done I decided that it was similar enough to be totally doable. It did take a little time to get a rhythm going once I got on the bike after the run, however. Other than that it wasn't bad at all. I felt fine after about the first half mile of the run so I don't think my poor preparation hurt me too bad, but it certainly didn't help.

I just have to work on my running if I am to do more of these. I spent the entire first lap of the bike part trying to pass people that had passed me during the run. I also need to work on being more aggressive in my passing. There were numerous times that I stayed back behind someone, or a group of someones, way too long because I was too cautious to pass. Granted, I saw some people passing a really bad times and places, I just have to find a happy medium. After all, it is a race and passing is part of racing so you have to take a few chances here and there if you want to win. Hopefully, though, I can get ahead enough at the beginning so that my passing and being passed is kept to a minimum.

It was a good race even if I was a little disappointed in my 11th place finish. My 20-29 class is pretty competitive, but I had hoped for top 10. Marcus kicked some butt with a 2nd place finish in the 20-29 class and 3rd overall. Congratulations Marcus.

Stay dirty.