Three weekends ago I travelled up to Tyler, TX for the Heartbreak Duathlon. Not something I would have ever heard about but the cycling parents told me they were going so I thought I'd give it a shot. Of course, Alan's trash talking further inspired me to go.
The race was on Saturday which meant I had no opportunity to ride the course which was previously described to me as "flat, smooth and mostly downhill with a persistent tailwind". The race consisted of a 2.5 mile trail run, followed by a 10 mile mountain bike ride, followed by a 2.5 mile mountain bike ride. I had been running but I wasn't sure how I'd do with the trail running/racing since I'd never run a race before. The first run was good, 19 minutes 24 seconds, good enough to leave me around 10th. The bike was interesting, I started out strong and passed a bunch of people all the way up to 2nd place. I couldn't quite hang with first and he pulled away. Not really wanting to totally destroy myself before the second run I backed it off a bit. With about 2 or 3 miles to go I got passed by the guy in 3rd. He pulled away a bit but I kept him in my sights. The second run was ugly, definitely tough to run after all of that but I had work to do. I took off and not long into the run I passed the guy in front of me putting me into second. I played some mind games with him which was kinda fun and then I kept pushing. Pretty soon I couldn't see third place anymore and I was split between killing myself to see if I could possibly catch first and playing conservative and just finishing as best I could. Not willing to decide either way I mixed harder efforts with slightly easier efforts. A couple times I saw the guy in first but I couldn't tell how close he was and I never ended up catching him. I took second overall by 1 minute and 14 seconds.
The race was tons of fun! Makes me wonder about Xterra...
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