White Rock, New Mexico. This Duathlon (link), in a suburb of Los Alamos, had two options: the "fat man" course, which was a 10k run, 40k bike, and 5K run, or the "little boy" course, which was a 4K-15K-4K.
(Yes, that's right, they're named after the atomic bombs)
I chose the latter. Why? Because the bike was highly "techinical"- this is my new word of the week. It's a fancy triathlon/cycling term for "curvy". It was also extremely hilly. It was also extremely beautiful. Holy cow, people who live out there are lucky to live in such a beautiful place. I'm lucky for getting to run this great, well-organized race out there. The race bag was a good one - a LS Technical Tshirt, gel, Endurolytes, and some sort of energy bar. It had milk in it, and since I'm vegan, I usually donate my unused energy bars to the school nurse where I work. You'd be surprised how many kids come in after 3 hours of school, complaining that their stomach is queasy and they have a headache, only to find out
they skipped breakfast and lunch that day. I also donate my little shampoos to the nurse. We also have kids that have no shampoo at home. (Consider this when you're trying to figure out what to do with your race and hotel freebies).But anyway. I digress. We also got a neato running hat at the end of the race for filling out a survey about the race. Both the technical T and the hat had the same log on them, that you see in the upper left of this post.
I started off with a run that felt pretty good. The weather was gorgeous, crisp and WINDLESS. (I was enthusiastic about that) The run left Pinon elementary and wound throught a residential area, looping back to the school. The bike included a lot of hills and curves, as I mentioned, and at one point, a climb that made me want to throw up. I survived, though. Nor did I pull over to rest, as I was tempted to do. At one point, I was ready to go screaming down one of the hills (not really "screaming" but riding fast) and pass another rider, when a car passed me and then filled in the space between me and the next rider. And there I was for the next mile, breaking behind this idiot who didn't want to pass the next cyclist, but was going slower than I was! By the time next hill loomed, the car went on, leaving me with little momentum for getting up the hill. The last run I was pretty whooped, so I did a one-minute run/one-minute walk thing, considerably slower than the first.
The whole things was a blast, though. I would definitely do this one again, and definitely recommend it. I'm not sure how the whole altitude thing works with you folks that train at sea level, but I train about mile above, so it wasn't a problem for me.
- Results: 1st place, Athena
- Time: 1:42.
- Funky smell rating:
(nothing but clean mountain air) - Coolest siting: a 7-year-old, running the "little boy" course with his mom. He finished!
- Hotel: the closest one was a Fairfield Inn, pretty decent.
- Food: Go ahead and skip the Pizza Hut right next to the hotel. They seem to have some personnel/work problems. As in their personnel don't want to work. Our pizza, a veggie-lovers with no cheese, took 45 minutes.
