Auburn Long Course Duathlon
National Championships
National Championships
After my stellar 16th place age group finish in the short course duathlon national championships at Richmond, I was looking forward to a race which suited me a bit better; the long course duathlon national championships. I'm much more an endurance animal than a raw speed animal.
A word of explanation; under USAT rules, short course duathlon is the Olympic or international distance (with no drafting), and tends to favor (really) fast runners. The format for short course this year was a 10k run, a 40k bike leg, and a final 5k run to end it off. The long course is very similar to a half-Ironman race, and was run concurrently with the half-Ironman race at Auburn. The distances were a 3k run, 56-mile bike, and a half-marathon.
I had entertained some (apparently imaginary) thoughts that I might be competitive at the short-course distance. While the outcome wasn't horrible (there was only about 3 minutes separating 7th place from 16th), it wasn't great. The good news is that I got the last roll-down spot for Team USA at the short-course world championships later this year, which Lynda and I will both be attending.
As regards to this race, it lived up to its billing as World's Toughest (actually tough-tough-tough), but my (unofficial) time of 5:48 for the half-iron distance was good enough for 2nd place in the national championship for my age group (55-59 years). I ended up about 4 minutes short of winning. So, I was pretty happy. I not only scored my first national-level podium, I also scored $750 in contingency money from Hammer Nutrition in exchange for wearing their kit while finishing second in an age-group national championship (with, I hasten to add, my PTC hat firmly clamped upon my head).
As regards the course itself, you may have heard some description or talk about it before. My race started with a brisk 3k run, taking a little over 13 minutes, before going to the bike. This footrace was about half on paved road, and about half on mildly-rutted single track. I treated it as a warm-up.
The bike course was designed to sap the strength from your legs with about 6,000 feet of climbing over the 56 miles. For the most part, there wasn't much in the way of any long or sustained climbs; overall the course gained about 2,000 feet of altitude over the first 35 miles, and gave back about 1,000 over the last 21 miles. Yep – it ended up about 1,000 feet higher than it started. The course was mostly a climb, followed by a descent, followed by a higher climb, etc. The roads were mostly lightly-trafficked, a good thing since they weren't closed. Some of them were also rough (ouch). Some of the climbs were steep; there were a couple of 12%ers in there.
This was followed by the run leg, which takes my vote as the most miserable, difficult half-marathon I have EVER run by a wide margin. It wasn't so much that it gained and lost a lot of altitude over 13.1 miles (roughly 2,600 feet, according to the race web site), but it was because much of this distance was on a wide variety of crummy surfaces. I ran not-inconsiderable distances on loose sand, loose gravel, and horrible deeply rutted rocky single-track, some of which was almost impassable due to erosion; some of which was very steep, and some of which was sloping down to, and bordered by, steep drop offs. Some of the steep descent sections slowed me to a walk simply for safety purposes.
So – the course was tough. You've heard that already.
So ends my first race in Auburn. It was tough, but rewarding. It's possible that, had I done everything right (and not crashed three weeks before the race, missing an important week of training), I might have done better. But, as mentioned before, I'm happy with my first national championship podium and the financial rewards (thanks, Hammer!).
Now, I really have something to train for next year.
