a goal
I’m going to do a duathlon. Or a few. Road and off-road. Since I have to start somewhere, I’ve chosen the Fredericksburg Off-Road Duathlon (F.O.R.D.) Series race #2 on June 21st. I would have done race #1, but it happened in April, and I’m pretty sure I had a lot of other stuff going in April. I also hadn’t really decided that I was going to do a duathlon. So now that I’ve posted my goal on my blog, there is no backing out of it. As a matter of fact, it means I can’t skip out on actual training either. I chose this particular race because of the short distance (in other words, not an endurance event). It’s been a while since I ran, so I’m easing back into it, but I also wanted to do an event that isn’t too far off in the future. I haven’t decided whether I’ll do the beginner or the advanced category, but since I’ve never done a duathlon (or even an organized running event) I think I’ll start with the beginner race. I’ll decide at that point whether to do the advanced race for the third race in the series.
I started “training” this week. I did a 2 mile run (yeah, I know you runners are laughing at me right now) and that was enough for me. Actually, it was really a 1 3/4 mile run since the first 1/4 mile was a brisk warm up walk. The run itself wouldn’t have been too bad except for two things: 1. The only option I have to go running is to run uphill first. And then I can choose to immediately run back down a steep hill (and over to a hilly, but not steep, road or go up another hill. I decided to go uphill (because how bad can that really be?), and then my choice was to go uphill again, and then either uphill or uphill. Crap. After all those uphills, I had to go back downhill. This was harder than the uphills, and I seriously thought at one point that I would lose my footing and fly through the air. 2. Our chip seal roads are highly crowned or insloped or something, more so than the roads that were in our Kansas City neighborhood. This is probably due to the fact that mountain roads need to be built differently than flatland roads. That’s my guess anyway, I actually don’t know a darn thing about building roads. Anyway, my ankles and legs did not like the camber of the surface. I am also used to trail-running where I have a softer landing for my apparently sensitive feet. I guess I can complain about that run a little more: the socks I was wearing weren’t very comfortable, even though I’m sure I wore them before without any problems. So basically what I’m saying is that I have a little work to do before I’m going to be very successful with this duathlon thing.
I’m feeling confident about the bike part though, so I guess that’s good. I’ve been getting a few good road rides in every week, and I’m feeling stronger and less out of shape each time. Next week I’ll start posting stats (miles/speed) for each run and ride, even if they are not very exciting. This is mainly so I can keep track of what effort I’m actually putting into this duathlon thing, and I figure if I’m good about regularly posting stats then I’ll stay motivated to keep on track. I’ve been saying I’m going to do a duathlon (specifically off-road) for at least a year now so now is the time.
I’m fully open to suggestions, if anyone has any.
At least the uphills are pretty:
Sorry for the bad photo, it was completely the wrong time of day to take a decent photo with my point and shoot.
Great, now I have to go find a cross race to enter now ; ). I didn’t have practice this week, so I better get out there on my own a little more! Looking forward to reading about your progress.
At least you will have more than a month to prepare yourself for your first ‘cross race! I registered for the race last night since it was $20 cheaper to do the “early bird registration”, almost half off of the race day price. Well, now I really can’t back out!