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