Mission Accomplished!

What a day!

The race is over! YAHOO!! It was awesome. This week is usually the hottest week of the summer. Not this year! It has record lows! Perfect race weather in my opinion. I think it was in the mid 50's to 60's for the race. Perfection!
Ok, on to the day's events.

The first 2 miles was FAST. My pace ended up being around 6:40/mile. Craziness. We started on trails that went uphill ( of course). We ran 1 mile out and then turned around and ran a mile back.

I finished and got my bike gear on . I ended up using my CamelBak hydration backpack ( total geek) because I cannot get the hang of getting the water bottle out of its holster without dropping it ( way geekier), so this would have to do. I was happy to notice that at least 4 other people use this method! I think I might just stick with the hydration pack from now on. It does what I need it to do--it stays put!

The bike was tough. I knew it would be, but I seemed to struggle a lot more than I thought( or seemed necessary)

Is that a hill I see? Is that another one? Oh look, there's a hill. UGH. It was awesomely difficult. I got passed by so many people. It was rather discouraging, but I got over it and plugged and chugged away. Little did I know that I was riding most of the 18 miles on a FLAT and LOOSE tire!! I am so grateful that the thing waited until the end of the bike portion to unlatch from the bike. I wonder how I would have done on a good tire?!?! I guess I will never know. It's over and done with now. I will try not to dwell on it to much....*sigh*
After the bike my legs were pure mush. I had no idea how/if I was going to run 4.5 miles. I ran my bike into the transition station, lifted the bike up to hook it on the rack and off flies my back wheel. The whole thing. It's not even my bike. I was stunned. The owner of the bike was near ( cheering me and his wife on) and told me it was "ok", I also heard him say to someone else

" hahaha, it's her first du!" Glad somebody got a kick out of that mishap!

So the 4.5 mile run begins. I felt as if I was running through sand. Oh, that's probably becuase I was! What a way to start (again) trials and hills -it was like De ja vu. My last 4.5 mile pace was just over 8:00 per mile. I did not expect to do that well on the last run so I am really pleased with that time.

I placed 6th ( out of 12) in my age division with a time of 2:02:02 ( I should play the lottery with those numbers). I was 55/84 overall for the duathlon.

I am very sore already and I need to take a nap.

I can't wait to do this again next year!