Strava data for [Run] (17:46.0); [Bike] (25:01.7); [Run] (15:59.1)
The Brown County YMCA organizes the Firetower 15.3 duathlon in beautiful Brown County State Park, this was the second running of the race. Last year I came second to Greg Fraze who was using the event as a build up to his Duathlon Worlds competition (he got silver in his 35-39 age group), this year I had talked Quaff ON! team-mate Danny Fisher into competing and Greg made a return trip to defend his title. It was sure to be a hard race!
The race with Danny was going to be interesting since he's a significantly better runner than me and we both figured it would be close, all hinging on how much Danny could limit his losses to me on the bike section with very little training. He seemed to think there was no hope, I however, was worried - training or not, great athletes like Danny have so much inherent fitness and mental discipline to work through the pain it was no-way a "done deal" in my head.
We made a family weekend of it, camping in the state park on Friday night (even though it's only 15 miles from home!), this made the early start easy for me. After a Skratchlabs recipe baked egg bite (see below) I simply rolled down the road on my TT bike to complete registration and get my transition area set up. The race isn't a huge affair which is nice in one way - no lines for sign-on, plenty of transition area space with no fighting for places on the racks, but it's also something I hope will change as the organizers persist with it as an annual event and work on promotion to attract more people. The 5k pavement run, 10 mile pavement bike and 2.2 mile trail run course is challenging for people wanting a hard race, but safe and manageable (with no swimming!) for first time multi-sport participants. The final trail run is a really fun twist to the traditional duathlon format and takes advantage of the amazing trail network and challenging terrain in the park.
The first part of the race unfolded pretty much as I had expected. Fisher was gone off the front in the 5k, and after the first mile or so it was just me & Greg Fraze running about 5 secs apart (Greg ahead of me) all the way to the turn. I felt pretty good with the pace (about 5:45/mile) and in the second half of the 5k closed the gap on Greg to enter transition only 0.6 secs behind him - Danny of course was long gone, having run a 16:29 5k, he was about 1:20 ahead of us. Closing the gap on Greg gave me some confidence as last year he was pulling away from me.
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| Making the turn in the 5k run |
The bike section is quite technical, downhill with sweeping bends to a pivot turn, then climbing all the way back to the start / finish area which you ride past to re-trace the 5k run course making ~9.9 miles in total. Greg has killer transition skills and opened up a gap as we set off to chase Danny Fisher down. Just as we got going, Greg missed the first turn but quickly rejoined, still ahead of me after a trip over the grass! I passed Greg with a surge of effort on one of the short uphill sections but I knew it would be tough to open any significant gap on him. It wasn't until the turn that we finally got sight of Danny, who was, by that time about 20 secs in front of us. I finally made the catch as we climbed back towards Hesitation Point, to be honest I was getting worried about how much effort and how much distance it had taken to recover the time loss from the run. It meant that I had about 4.5 miles to build a big enough cushion to avoid being caught in the second run. Having completed the climbing, the road flattened out and started to feel more like a traditional time trial, I found the legs to turn a bigger gear and pushed on towards the turn, and finally the transition area for the second time. I only had 10 secs advantage over Greg and his superior transition skills meant that once again, I was following him out onto the final trail run.
Coming off the hard bike effort, my calves cramped as soon as we started to run and the first mile of the trail is almost entirely downhill over rough terrain giving no respite to settle into a stride & shake out the cramps. Having Greg clearly in sight the whole time was pretty much the only thing which kept me going at this point! After about half a mile the cramps eased and I started to feel a more normal running gait come back to me whenever the path leveled momentarily. The second mile of the trail is, you guessed it, almost entirely up hill with some brutally steep sections. Each time we attacked one of the steep pitches, I felt I was taking some of the gap back to Greg and by about 2/3rds of the way up the hill I'd closed to only a couple of seconds - this was fortunate as I saw him go off course again and was able to call out to him the mistake (although I was so short of breath, I was worried that my feeble "yell" hadn't been heard). He quickly rejoined just behind me and I didn't know what to do - I hadn't earned the lead on merit and I didn't really want the race decided by a simple mistake. I eased up just a bit but on the next steep section, the sound of Greg's breathing dropped away and with a quick glance over my shoulder I saw a clear trail behind me, I had maybe 3 secs gap. The final section of the trail climb is ridiculously steep, simply maintaining forward motion is a challenge let alone anything that might be considered running! I knew this was coming and had saved something for the final effort (as the Strava data shows my heart rate peaked at 176 bpm) I stayed on my toes and tried to spring with each step as I climbed, finally breaking out onto the level trail with 0.2 miles to the finish and the win. Greg finished 2nd and Danny came in 3rd, a minute behind me having run the trail 40 secs faster than me. Quaff ON! team-mate, Erin Webb also had a great race, coming in 5th overall and first female.
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| Tim, Danny & Erin - Quaff ON! |
It was great to win the race, having such a close battle with Greg made it more fun, but also made me try harder in every part of the event - it was a shame that he went off course, I'll always have a question in the back of my mind if I would really have caught & passed him on the final steep pitch of the trail but there's no way to know that - all I know is I put it all on the line, gave my best and had a great time being tested by both my peers and the terrain.
The race with Danny, which we'd debated over several pints of Busted Knuckle in the preceding weeks shook out like this:
5k run - Danny beat Tim by 1:17
T1 - Tim beat Danny by 0:17
10 mile bike - Tim beat Danny by 2:19
T2 - Tim beat Danny by 0:32
2.2 mile trail run - Danny beat Tim by 0:40
Equipment:
Shoes - Saucony Kinvara with elastic laces
Bike - Mercian TT bike (all steel frame, 26" front wheel) - retro still works!
Nutrition - Skratchlabs Lemon & Lime hydration mix; Baked Egg bite for breakfast (Skratchlabs Feedzone Portables recipe here)
