Oakdale Duathlon

Last Saturday I opened up my 2014 multisport season at the Oakdale Duathlon. Normally this is a low-key, friendly little local race and I wouldn't be too concerned with the results, but this year I was actually feeling a little bit of pressure leading up to it because A) it was my first race as part of the Gear West Development Team, and I didn't want to race like a bum my first time out, and B) I just dropped a brick of money on a new bike, and I'd just feel stupid doing that and not racing well.

I'm very happy to say that I exceeded my own expectations by several miles by finishing 2nd to DKT (close enough to actually see him cross the finish line!) and breaking the old course record by almost 3 minutes in the process.

The Pre-Race Jams

I've been jamming the latest Stray From the Path record a ton lately. These guys get shit on by a lot of internet critics for sounding a lot like Rage Against the Machine.  And well... they do, complete with wacky guitar noises and strong political opinions, but I fail to see a problem here. I mean... say you went to Outback Steakhouse, and instead of the usual Outback-quality steak they offered to send the busboy down to Capital Grille for a to-go order and hook you up with that instead, but still charged you the regular Outback price. Would you enjoy your delicious steak and leave a generous tip? Or would you sit there loudly complaining to everyone within earshot that the steak was marginally better that one time 14 years ago when you got to eat at Captial Grille for real?

That's actually a pretty poor analogy because the real Capital Grille is still serving up steaks, whereas the real Rage Against the Machine hasn't released new music in 14 years, but whatever, you get the idea. This shit goes hard, put it in your life.

Run #1

This reminded me why I wasn't too sad about doing zero duathlons in 2013. IMO there is nothing worse than running hard from a cold start (and yes, I did like a 25 minute warmup including some reasonably fast stuff... it's never enough). That feeling is just pure barf. I find running much more enjoyable when I'm nice and warmed up from a leisurely swim and a good hard bike ride.

Dan and DKT took the start out really fast, and within the first minute they were about 10 yards in front of me, Bennett Isabella and Nate Hoffman. I led our little pack for a minute or two before Nate started to bridge up to Dan and David, which took him alarmingly little time. Bennett slipped a few seconds ahead of me as well somewhere around mile 1, but I managed to limit the damage and kept him there for the remainder of the run. Nate put a little bit of a gap on David and Dan and led the charge into T1, with me and Bennett a little less than a minute back and the next guys maybe another minute behind. Looking at the results that's a very solid run for me, but at the time I felt pretty deep in the struggle and was thinking more about staying in front of the guys behind me than catching the guys in front of me.

Bike

This race marked the first time I had really ridden my new bike. Of course I put in a few training rides prior to racing it, I'm not a complete idiot, but everything always feels a little bit different during a race (at least for me anyway). Getting into my shoes was an adventure because the base bar on the new ride is about 40mm lower than the old ride, but after that...

Not enough O's in smooth. I'm still not familiar enough with the bike to slam it into corners the way I could on my old bike, but I'm sure that will come. If not, who cares, because for the 99% of the time spent not turning on a typical triathlon bike course the new ride is a definite improvement.

I passed Bennett about 1/2 mile in, then caught Dan on a fast downhill section around mile 3 or 4. At that point it looked like David and Nate were still pretty close together maybe 30 seconds up the road from me, but it seemed like the gap was shrinking. Nate gradually fell off David's pace as I closed the gap, but it still took forever for me to bridge up there. I finally caught him just before going into the town of Lake Elmo, a little bit past the halfway point of the course. I tried to kick it up a couple notches as I went for the pass, figuring I needed to drop him with some authority and build up a minute-plus gap in the remaining 7 miles or so of riding if I wanted to have any chance of staying ahead during the 2nd run. That seemed to be working and also had the interesting side effect of also closing the gap up to David.

I thought for a bit about parking it 10m back and staying there for the remainder of the ride. If you're coming into T2 on David's wheel you're probably in pretty good shape. But it's not every day a weekend warrior such as myself finds himself in the position to pass DKT during a race, so I kept the effort ridiculously high and went around for the pass, stayed out front and led the way into T2.

I botched the 2nd transition pretty badly by not getting out of my shoes in time, so I had to do a very n00b-looking complete stop at the mount line to unclip and then waddle to my rack in my cleats. I'm sure that cost me a few seconds, but it turned out inconsequential in the end.

Run #2

The 2nd run was pretty typical for me in a duathlon in that it felt like absolute garbage but didn't look too bad in the results. As expected, David passed me about a minute in and gradually pulled away. I wasn't sure I had enough time in the bank and peeked behind at every turn expecting to see Nate and/or Dan closing in on me, but nobody was ever there and I crossed the line in 2nd, roughly 30 seconds behind David. As expected, Nate made up a ton of ground on the run and came in 3rd about 30 seconds behind me.

So needless to say this one has me feeling pretty good going into the 2014 season.

RESULTS

2014 Update

Well whaddya know?  Another winter has come and gone during which I posted exactly zero updates.  Although that's probably for the best.  Anything I may have written this winter would almost certainly have spun off into a rant about how soul-crushingly awful our weather is.

For the one or two of you keeping track of such things, you may have noticed that there has been a change in the banner ads to the right.  Starting this year, I'll be racing as part of the Gear West Bike and Triathlon Development Team.

This is a tad bit bittersweet because I have nothing but good things to say about TCMC, Dan Casebeer and everyone at Grand Performance.  It was actually a pretty tough decision to go elsewhere.

So that being said, why Gear West?  For me the thing that sets GWB&T apart from the rest of the pack is the degree of support they give to the local racing scene.  I'm not talking about individual support as in setting up racers with bikes and gear.  Bikes are a commodity.  Every shop is ordering out of the same set of catalogs.  They'll all be perfectly happy to take your money in exchange for a bike.

I'm talking about support of triathlon in the upper Midwest on a macro level.  Which shop's mechanics are out there wrenching in the transition area at 5AM?  Gear West.  Open up that drawer full of race t-shirts.  Which shop's logo is on 90% of them? Gear West.  Which shop completely breaks down their sales floor one night every fall to host the Minnesota Multisport Awards, only to have to put the whole thing back together to open up the next day?  Gear West.  I could go on, but you get the picture.  In terms of number and quality of local races and depth of competition, the Twin Cities area is inarguably in the top 5 nationally.  Gear West is a huge part of that.  In some alternate universe where GWB&T does not exist, there is still triathlon in Minnesota, but it is a mere shell of what we enjoy today.

Oh, and if you're just looking for a place to get your stuff, Gear West kicks ass at that too.  Go out there, walk in through the front door, past all the road and MTB stuff, hang a left at the counter and go into the back room.  I'm willing to bet that there are more high-end tri bikes in that single room than the rest of the shops in Minnesota put together.  Hell, look up.  At any given time there are more tri bikes hanging from hooks on that ceiling than most shops move in a year.

Speaking of bikes.  This currently resides in my garage...

That's a 2014 Trek Speed Concept 9 with Di2 11-speed.  I'm far too lazy to put the race wheels on (or clean my garage) to snap a picture, but believe me it's ballin' out of control.  Due to our remarkably shitty weather I've ridden it on the road a grand total of twice, but I can pretty confidently say...

On the subject of weather, it turns out if you go south and west of here it gets much, much better.  To that end, Tiff and I recently spent a long weekend in Vegas.  While there I rented a bike from a local shop and got in 3 pretty solid days of riding.  It's amazing how much more fun riding a bike is when you don't feel like the entire Earth is trying to fight you.  But the real highlight of the trip was making friends with one of the locals... 

 

That's a Gopherus agassizii, also known as a desert tortoise.  He was just chillin' in the center of a bike path.  I debated for a while whether or not I should move him off of the path, but in the end I decided not to.  The nearest road was a couple hundred yards away so he really wasn't in any danger sitting there.  Plus I remember reading somewhere that they sometimes void their bowels when picked up, which in addition to being somewhat gross can actually prove fatal to the tortoise if it can't find a water source relatively quickly afterward, which is an obvious problem in a desert.  Judging by this thing's size he's had a good 30 years to hone his survival skills, so I'm sure he's doing just fine.

2014 Race Schedule

If you want to jam a squirrel into my spokes, here's where you'll need to be:

5/10 - Oakdale Du

5/18 - Gear West Du

6/1 - Buffalo Olympic

6/7 - Liberty Half

6/22 - Best of the US

6/29 - Lake Waconia Tri

7/12 - LTF Tri

7/19 - Duathlon Nationals

7/20 - Heart of the Lakes Tri

8/9 - Age Group Nationals (Olympic)

8/10 - Age Group Nationals (Sprint)

8/17 - Pigman Half

9/20 - Leadman Bend