The multisport race season starts around here with the Icebreaker Sprint Tri down in American Fork in late March. It's a 300m pool swim and I would rather *not* do a triathlon with a pool swim (for many reasons; one of which is I'm slower so it would take an hour before I even got IN to the pool ...) if possible. Thankfully, they had a duathlon option (apparently new this year) and since I like duathlons and haven't done one in far too long, I chose that.
I'd been watching the weather for a while and rain was popping in and out of the forecast, but thankfully race day was dry. Chilly and the breeze kicked up by the finish, but dry.
Even better is that the hubs was off and could take pictures.
In our normal fashion, we got there early. But the duathlon also took off ten minutes before the triathlon did, so there was that. There only ended up being a handful of us - they announced eight, but there were nine or ten of us who lined up to start.
It was high-40s, low-50s, maybe? Totally warm enough.
The Bike:
The bike course was two loops on the bike and one on the run. Two older guys took an early, early lead and then three of us women kind of spread out. There was one in front of me that was far enough in front that depending after turns, I lost sight of her and the woman behind me I ended up getting about a quarter mile ahead of, as well.
But, thanks to not a lot of people being out there ... I somehow missed a turn somewhere and got about a mile off course. How I missed the cones I don't know - was it when I took a drink? did they somehow not exist? - but yeah. I eventually caught back up with the race, but UGH.
Coming back up into transition after making the CORRECT turn on loop two.
Time: 48:23
T:
I was obviously a bit annoyed about the bike snafu, but oh well. Still had to run, so I got ready to do that.
Time: 1:38
The Run:
Heading out.
It was a bit rough going the first mile - especially because it followed the bike course and that first mile or so had some hella nasty hills. Some of the speedy people from the tri also started passing me, too. But all I could do was keep one foot in front of the other and so I did.
About halfway through, I did try a maple candy (basically straight maple sugar - bought them up in Maine) to potentially test it out as marathon fuel - I think, as long as they're a lot fresher and not half-crystallized, they'll work.
Even though the race does end up going downhill which helps things out, I did solidly negative split the run (which my Garmin had being just short of a 5K).
Coming down the hill that takes you to the field to the finish.
Crossing the finish.
Time: 32:16
Overall Stats:
Time: 1:22:16.93
4/5 gender (so few so not a separate age division)
5/8 overall
The bummer of the matter was that I was only a minute behind third and like two behind second so if I hadn't gotten lost and rode an extra mile on the bike course (anywhere from 3-5 minutes) ... but alas.
Still got my pancakes. Not quite as good as Flippin' Flapjacks, but is anything?
Mmm, pancakes.
Race yeti ... which did the funniest pre-race announcements. Translated, of course.
Second TriUtah race and they do a good job. I think I have one or two potential other possibilities by them on my race calendar as well ... including doing Brineman again.
