Lake Junaluska Duathlon 4/9

First local multi sport race of the year, and I was excited! The weather was perfect and the course was beautiful. We started out the run around the lake and I tried to put some distance between me and the current long course duathlon national champion female Gail Kattouf. I had a quick T1, and was off on the bike with a decent lead. The bike was hairy at times with the traffic and the motorcycle escort I was following. Lets just say it wasnt ideal! It was difficult to keep up the pace when I was all alone with nobody in sight! Not used to that. Coming back towards the lake the escort missed a turn, but I saw the arrows on the road and made the right turn. I wasnt sure if I had gone the wrong way, so I stopped and waited for the bike to come back and lead on.

After traversing some sharp turns and steep hills I made it back to transition and was off on one more tour of the lake. I still couldnt see anyone behind me, so I was able to take it a little easier than the first run. Coming in right behind me were Andrew Stenberge and Gail Kattouf. It was a super fun morning, I wish I didnt have to rush off to Chattanooga right after I finished. 4 hours in the car isnt my first choice of activities after a race. Shout out to Mike Lahm, back in the saddle buddy!

Check out all the race photos @: http://paulchristopher.smugmug.com/
Thanks for the photos Paul!

Group rides have started!

Join us for group rides 2nd and 4th Mondays of each month at Hearns 5:30pm. Rides will be 1.5-2.5 hours at a recovery pace(13 to 16 mph average). There will be climbing as this is Asheville. Routes will usually go up town mountain or elk mountain. See you at the next ride on April 11th..

Du the farm Duathlon, Savannah GA

What a great day for a race! Yoko and I were down in savannah to visit her sister and I found this duathlon on the Savannah track club website. It was a 5k trail run around a really nice lake, then a fast and windy 10 mile bike, and then another 5k on the same course. I started out with a pretty decent lead after the first 5k, but local guys Ryan Williams and Brian Shreve were going to make it interesting on the bike. At the turn around I saw Ryan had made up a good bit of ground on me, but I had a feeling if I could get off the bike first I was in good shape. After following the police escort back into the farm area, I hopped off the bike and finished up the 5k. It was a super fun morning, great volunteers and a fantastic place for multi sport events. I am going to be in Charleston which is only an hour away on the date of the triathlon, maybe I can make it for that as well!

coming back from the bike. I wish I could have gotten a little more of a draft from the cop car! maybe next time..

done!

Top 3. Me, Ryan Williams and Brian Shreve respectively.

M

Black Mountain Marathon

I happened to be looking at my workout schedule for the upcoming weekend on Thursday, and was contemplating when and where to do my scheduled 22 mile marathon training run. It was going to be my longest run ever, and I was a little nervous about doing it as I have a sore knee and shin and havent run this week. Then I remembered about the Black Mountain Marathon and Mount Mitchell challenge on Saturday. I knew some people who went out to watch last year, so I was thinking about riding my bike out there and doing likewise this year. But wait! Maybe I could just run the marathon, knee and shin be damned! If I did decide to do it, it meant I could take the next couple of days off from running, which sounded pretty good to me. Maybe by Saturday morning I would be close to healed up! Great idea right?! Right?

Saturday morning rolled around and the nerves were in full force. Was I going to hurt myself really bad? Would I know when to call it if that started to happen? Could I even run 26 miles without complete and proper training?

The race was paired with the Mt Mitchell Challenge, a 40 miler to the summit of Mitchell then back down. We all started together in Black Mountain and headed up past Montreat then on some really great single track. The views were absolutely stunning! And I was feeling fantastic! Ah, 6 miles in anyway. It was great fun chit chatting with fellow runners and trying to figure out if my pace was good, and where I might be at in the marathon. After we exited that really nice section, the trail became a bit more difficult. Loose rocks and roots, gravel and standing water were mainly what the trail consisted of. More like your normal trail race, but this was a marathon or a 40 miler! The danger of twisting an ankle, or worse, doing a face plant were ever present. At an hour and a half I started to look for the marathon leaders to come screaming past me on the way back down to black mountain. It was at this time I tried to eat my first of three(I was hoping) energy gels. It was really tough getting it down, but I did it and washed it down with some water from my hand held. I was so happy I had a bottle with me so I didnt have to stop and get water. Perhaps I should have had some energy drink though...

I saw the leaders of the marathon coming back down, 2 of them, so I knew I was close to the turn around. Then I saw my buddy Mark Ledyard calling my name and I knew I was there. There were a few faces I knew at the turn around on the parkway, it was cool. I glanced up to the summit of Mt Mitchell and thought, man I am glad I am not heading up there! I ran into the turn around aid station and said, "what do I do now?". Monica Curwen said, "Go back down!". So I did. Its all downhill from here! Or thats what I THOUGHT anyway. And I was in third as of then. Feeling really good because I know I can get down some rocky trails pretty quick. I started hauling down the mountain calling out to the racer still coming up. Man I was feeling great! Well, almost. That gel I took was threatening to find its way back up on the jarring of the trail.

After a couple of miles down the trail, it leveled out a bit and I noticed I wasnt alone in third. Damn! I also noticed my energy was flagging alarmingly. Oops. Maybe this wasnt such an awesome idea after all. Me and the guy with me traded the lead for a couple of miles, him getting a lead on the flats, me pulling ahead on the steep sections. But then he told me we werent heading down the way we came up on the soft single track, but down another gravely switchback section AFTER we ran 2 miles of flat trail. And thats where my hopes for getting on the podium slipped away.

I knew I didnt have much in the tank, and definitely not on some flats. No gravity, no way. He pulled ahead and I was alone. All alone. My brain wasnt functioning as it should either. I came to the last couple of miles on the road back into Black Mountain and I started to think I was off course. There was nobody in sight either direction, and though there were flags to follow, I was thinking those were the flags for the course on the way out. By this time I was jogging at best. 9+ minute miles probably. I ran a mile or so and finally saw a guy and asked him if I was on the course, and I was. He then helpfully pointed out I had 12 more minutes to go. "Oh No! There is NO WAY I can run 12 more minutes!", I either thought or said. I put a really scary grimace on my on my face, head down, and kept going. I looked behind me, and inexplicably, there was no one there. Could I somehow still finish top 4? Yes. Barely. On the way around the lake to the finish two guys finally did come up behind me, but I somehow found enough to kick it in a little to hold them off. Right after crossing the line a had to liberate the gel that so badly wanted freedom from my belly. Whoa! A marathon! And a tough one to boot! Thank you to all the support volunteers out on the course, you guys were awesome! I had a fantastic time, for 20 miles anyway!

Triathlon Training Clinic this Thursday!

Our Hearn's Triathlon Racing Team was featured today in a Mountain Express Blog for our upcoming Triathlon Training Clinic this week. Check it out!

If you would like to attend the event, you can sign up here on our Facebook page.

16 mile marathon training run/2nd place at Asheville on Bikes(AOB) tourist trap alley cat! (best day ever!)

Easily one of the top 5 days in all my life. No kidding. Lets start with the weather. It was 50 by 10am! When I started my run at noon it was near 60! Shorts and shirt sleaves weather, which is what I wore. I met my buddy Jeff Hope and we headed up the trails above UNCA, then down to Beaver lake and around. We parted ways at Jus Runnin where I stopped in to get some water and thanks Norm for my new Nikes, which are working out great. I then headed up town mountain and finished off the run with 35 minutes at marathon pace.

Now the real fun began! 10 minutes after returning from my run, Yoko and I got our town bikes out(mine is a viscount converted to a fixed gear circa 1976 I built up at hearns a few years ago) and headed downtown to the asheville on bikes alley cat bike race. The weather was absolutely unbelievable! Mid 60's by this point. We got there with not quite enough time before the race started to get food. Yikes! I need calories! But its all good, I had a gel on my run, and we were going to have to drink a beer somewhere for points I was sure. So there are about 20 or 30 teams all decked out as tourists on all different kinds of sweet bikes. It was amazing. The organizers give us our packets containing all of our destinations and bonus point possibilities and we were all off in different directions! We had a good plan from the start, or should I say, Yoko had a good plan. My mind wasnt working so well, I needed food! Long story shortened, we had an absolutely great time riding all over the city and beyond on such a beautiful day. People were out everywhere enjoying the weather. There were a couple of brain teasers that I had no chance of doing given that my brain works sporadically to begin with, and less so when I am bonking hardcore. But Yoko did an amazing job with those, and we got all of the bonus points! All told we raced around for over 2 hours and did nearly everything on the list. I even went up to the Grove Park Inn and got a picture at the big fire place. We just kept looking at each other and exclaiming what fun we were having and how great the weather was! We came on back to Asheville Pizza and had a nice dinner and waited on awards. What do you know? We got 2nd place! Thank you AOB, keep up the good work! Look forward to the next event you guys put on..

Double Brick 2*(30 min bike + 3 mile run) by ryan.madamba at Garmin Connect - Details

Double Brick 2*(30 min bike + 3 mile run) by ryan.madamba at Garmin Connect - Details

Yesterday was my first day on the track at Amboy Rd for 2011. It was a good one, did a double Brick workout. Starting with warm up then going into 15 minutes at 140 HR, 15 minutes 150 HR, then transition to 9 laps on the track about 3 miles of running. The run was supposed to descend or go faster each mile (3 laps). Then we did it again this time the run ascended pace each mile.

The graph on the Garmin link shows HR and speed over time. You can see the transition from bike to run and run to bike when there is a dip in speed, HR also goes down during transition.

I was happy with this for the first one of the year, and I am looking forward to doing again in the coming weeks to analyze the data. Essentially this was the bike, run leg of an Olympic distance triathlon broken. With about 12 weeks till St. Anthony's I will plan to do this about 8 times before the race it helps with transition and getting the legs ready to run off the bike.