This is Part 2 of 3 of my Cary Duathlon 2010 Race Report. Part One is about how I split my head open on the way to the race. Part three is about my trip to the Urgent care to get stitches.
Overall I had a great race and was pleased with my result. My paces were not up to par with my former Ironman self, but I put out a good solid effort both mentally and physically.
Official Results:
Run 5 miles: 44:54.5, pace of 8:59
T1: 1:18
Bike 31 miles: 1:39:22.7, pace of 18.8 mph
T2: 1:01
Run 5 miles: 47:37.6, pace of 9:32
Overall: 3:14:12.9
I got first Age group. There was a 47 year old woman with a finish time of 2:39 and placed top three females. Wow! I hope she just races duathlons! I placed 17th overall female out of 25. That’s not so good.
My impression was that I had run the second run segment alot harder and faster. I guess that’s the fatigue factor.
Run 1
The run course consists of 1.25 miles out and back, repeat. That makes several opporunties to scope out the competition. I started out at a moderate pace on the first run. I was pretty much dead last. Ginger had told me not to go out too hard in the first run, so I listened.
At the first aid station, I saw the high school girls who had patched up my head. I pulled up my visor and asked them if they saw any blood on the bandage. They said I looked fine. I said “Thanks” and ran on.
As I approached the first turnaround, lots of super fast women were on their way back, several seemed to be my age. One chick in a purple shirt was way ahead of me, and running super fast. Everybody I saw was running super fast. Except me. That was a bit of a blow to my ego. But I stuck with my plan: keep it moderate. I finished the first run segment in 44 min and change. I was happy with a sub 9 pace.
Bike
I got on my bike and started going pretty hard. I had my Garmin on my bike, and occassinally looked at my heart rate. It stayed around 155ish. I passed alot of people. I imagined I was the redpill – not just that I took the redpill – but I WAS the redpill. I imagined all the people I passed were agent Smith. That was a fun game.
On one hill fairly early in the bike, I shifted down to my small chain ring and dropped the chain. That happens to me alot, and sometimes I can shift back up to fix it while riding. Not today. I had to dismount, fix the chain, then get back and start riding in the middle of a hill. Dang, that sucked. After that, I stayed in my big ring the rest of the ride. It forced me to stand on some hills. There weren’t too many climbs on this course, but a few hills made me wish to use my small ring.
About half way I passed three women who were around my age. I was clearly a much faster biker, so was not too worried about them passing me back. A little bit later, I passed the purple shirt girl. She had 47 on her leg. I dubbed her “purple pill”. She was a solid biker, and I recalled how fast and hard she was running. So kept up a hard pace on the bike after that, to put as much distance as possible in front of her.
About 500 yards ahead of me was someone with a white shirt. I figured it was male because I could not catch them no matter how hard I tried. I later learned that it was $Bill.
The last ten miles were tough. I watched my average speed. It stayed around 18.6. I tried to make it bump up toward 19, but it stayed put at 18.6. I got off bike and had moved up to the middle of the pack. I felt good.
Run 2
I started out first lap moderately hard. I tried to keep up good form. I thought of my Red pill mantra. I knew I had to hold off purple pill.
I must have over-hydrated on the bike, because I had to pee really badly. I ducked into the woods at the first opportunity and peed. As I squatted in the woods doing my business, I watched people run by. Luckily, I did not see purple shirt girl. I probably lost about a minute there.
I continued on my way, trying to keep up a solid pace. A few minutes after the turn around at mile 1.25, I saw purple shirt girl. She didn’t look quite so fast this time, but I was still worried she might catch me. There were still plenty of miles left.
During the second lap, I started pushing harder. “Don’t think you are fast, know it.” Purple pill was not gaining on me. I was no longer worried about her. And I was every so slowly gaining on a new target: yellow shirt girl. I kept a steady eye on her and tried very very hard to pass her. We were about the same pace. At one point, “I thought I can’t do it.” Then I thought “Yes I can do it. Know you can do it.”
Yellow shirt stopped to grab water at the aid station at mile 4.5. I breezed through that one quickly and gained a few yards on her. I decided to skip grabbing water at the very last station. It was then that I passed yellow shirt girl. Just 1/2 mile to go. “Fast fast fast redpill redpill redpill“. I almost puked at finish line.
Post Race
After the race I found my friend Tom and hung around chatting with him and his fast running buddy named Wayne. Tom snapped my picture of me with my post race recovery drink: Slimfast. I used to carry Boost in my car for recovery, because it is packaged in a spoil proof ready to drink container, and it tastes okay warm. Ginger told me about Slimfast, which is basically the same thing, and it’s CHEAPER, so YAY!
Tom, Wayne and I were talking about heart rate monitors and garmins. Wayne said he never uses anything for training or racing. He pointed toward his chest and said “I listen to this”. Hmmm, very interesting point, and it obviously works because Wayne is very fast. Tom and Wayne both placed in their age groups. Congrats!
Awards
Tom took a photo of me receiving my award from Debbie. Debbie is the woman who had given me my packet and told me to go see Brent about the cut on my head. She had cheered my name several times throughout the race. It made me feel like she was keeping an eye on me to make sure I was okay. Debbie congratulated me and said I did great despite my war wound! I just wish I had a good war story to go with it!
|
-->  |
Tags: badass, duathlon, injury, split head
My first race of the season was quite an adventure that involved a trip to Duke Urgent Care center for some stitches. I’ve decided to break this race report into three blog posts. Part one is about how I whacked myself upside the head. Part two has all the details of the race. Part three is about my trip to the Urgent care center.
Splitting my Head:
I was super excited to be doing my first race of the season. On my way to the race site, I remembered that I hadn’t had any coffee yet. I love coffee. I need my morning coffee! As I drove toward Cary, I was keeping an eye out for a gas station. I had given up hope of finding one as I turned onto Green Hope School Road, which led into more rural territory. But…to my great delight, there was a gas station right around that corner! I parked my car and noticed the sign said “Organic Fair Trade” coffee. I thought, yay, not just crappy convenient store coffee, but I found GOOD coffee. I was psyched!
After getting a large coffee, I was excited to get back on the road. In my excitment, I rushed to open my car door; and I smacked it hard against my head. I was stunned in pain for a brief moment. Then I was angry at myself for such stupidity. I went back into the store and filled a napkin with ice. I put that up to my head, thinking to reduce any swelling. I removed the ice pack and saw blood on the napkin. Oh crap, I thought, this is going to be worse than just a goose-egg bump on my noggin. I found a ziploc baggie in my car, and went back into the store to fill it with ice. Then went back out to my car.
Finally, I looked in the mirror. Holy shit, the cut was deep and wide and I knew it was going to leave a bad scar on my forehead. I was only 10 minutes from the race site, so I held the ice bag up on my forehead, and continued driving on my way. My plan was to go straight to the medical tent and ask them if I should race or go to the emergency room. There was very little blood, the initial pain was gone, and I felt fine. My primary concern was how quickly I needed to get the wound taken care of to minimize the scarring.
I didn’t see any obvious medical tent when I arrived. So, I went to the packet pickup tent. Luckily, there was no line. I got my packet and asked where the med tent was, pointing to the gash on my forehead. They said they were still setting up their medical tent way over on the other side of the site. I guess most injuries happen DURING a race, not before! They told me to go talk to Brent, the race director.
As I turned around, a couple of guys noticed the gash on my head and one of them said he was a sports medicine trainer, or something like that. He said I was definitely going to need stitches. I asked him what the window of time to get stiches was, and he said 12 hours. He thought that if I could get someone to put butterfly tape over the wound to hold it together, I’d be okay to race.
I went over to the finish line area, and found Brent, who is also a sports medicine trainer. His advice was the same. He added that he was concerned it might start bleeding as my heart rate rose, so suggested I find an elastic band to wrap around my head to add gentle compression. He found his kit and asked some high school athletic trainers to patch me up.
After that, I went and set up all my race gear. I met a bloggy peep named $Bill who took my picture and another bloggy peep named Mike who I’d seen at Beach2Battleship. Always so nice to meet friends at the races. I was feeling great, full of energy and excitement to race. I forgot all about my head wound.
Tags: duathlon, injury, split head
Do you remember that line from the movie “The Matrix” (Youtube link)?
The terms blue pill and red pill have become a popular metaphor for the choice between the blissful ignorance of illusion (blue) and embracing the sometimes painful truth of reality (red). – Wikipedia
I got to thinking about red pills and blue pills today because I took a Nyquil pill last night for some allergies. 
It looks just like the blue pill from the movie. Nyquil makes me very sleepy, well into the next day. I blew off my normal Sunday morning run because I was feeling so sluggish. After going to church and out to lunch, I still didn’t feel like running. I made all kind of excuses why I should just skip running today altogether: “I’m still too sleepy. I ate too much for lunch. I am working full time, and it’s just too hard to keep up a decent training volume. I’ll never get back into shape. So why bother trying. Blah blah blah blah blah. “
I finally made myself head out the door to run at 3:30pm. Those negative thoughts were still going through my mind. I was expecting a crappy workout. I was still feeling very tired from the Nyquil. And then I started to convince myself that I can’t possibly expect to get back to my former speed while working full time. That I need to just accept where I am now, and be okay with it.
Then I thought, I’m not going to let a stupid little blue pill ruin my workout. That made me think of the movie. And that the blue pill excuse I was inventing in my mind was the easy way out. The way to just be lazy and accept things as they are and use working full time as an excuse to not working hard at my training.
The red pill is the path of pain and hard work – it represents the blood, sweat, and tears that it takes to achieve great results.
I choose the red pill. Bring It.
BTW, had a great run once I started thinking about the red pill 
Tags: hard work, motivation, red pill
I rode my bike today, 51 miles altogether. It was hard, windy, hilly and cold. I wanted to be done after about an hour or so. I pressed on, determined to ride three hours in preparation for the Cary Duathlon. I felt out of shape and kept wondering how on earth did I ever do an Ironman! That seems like a lifetime ago.
At the bottom of Borland hill, I saw some chickens cross the road. A rooster had crossed with the hens and was trying to herd them back to their yard on the other side. It was an amusing scene, so I turned around and went back to snap a picture of them.
The hens were busily eating something underneath a mailbox. I stood there, camera in hand, for three minutes while they took their good old time grazing. Finally, they went back across the road. So the answer to the age old question: “Why does the chicken cross the road” is “to find food”!
I tweeted “Why” with this picture. Definitely worth the 3 minute wait to snap that picture! A nice memory of my ride today.
It’s the little things that make squeezing in workouts a little bit easier.
I’ve been meaning to do this for weeks, and finally went to Walgreen’s at lunch yesterday. I bought an extra set of makeup to keep in my gear bag. That is just one less thing to think about when I pack up for my early morning swims or my lunchtime runs. (Do you like my Beach2Battleship Gear bag?)
Another thing I was thinking of is to pack a separate gear bag for running and swimming, because I need different things for those days. Then I guess I would leave my extra make-up kit at work. Hmmm, yeah, I like that.
I also have been leaving my bike shoes, riser block and trainer in my car for the Tuesday evening spin classes at Inside Out Sports. That way I only need to pack my bike and clothing on those days. But my husband keeps taking my trainer and riser block to use them. Grrrr. I just need tell him he has to put them back in my car because they are mine and that’s where I keep them!
