Warning: Settle in, this is a LONG post… LOL
If I’m going to race elite, I gather that there are a few things I needed to do. Eat like an elite? Hmm…sure, I’m giving that a try. Train like an elite? Whatever that means, sure sign me up! Train in the desert of Arizona in February to escape the arctic tundra of Philadelphia? Check! And from the looks of previous year’s impressive results…I need to do the Desert Classic Duathlon while I’m there!
The 2010 Tri3Sports.com Desert Classic Duathlon was a fantastic experience for my first professional race and a great way to cap off a week of training in relatively mild Arizona weather. The race is held just north east of Phoenix where I conveniently have family who are more that willing to put up with me for a week. 
The venue itself is the rural and very beautiful McDowell Mountain Regional Park. The park itself is a huge swatch of scenic desert complete with jackrabbits and wide variety of beautiful, spiky, painful plants including huge Saguaro cacti. The park has a host of desert trails and sandy washes to run in with varying topography flanked by picturesque desert mountain peaks.
Race morning brought the anticipation of my first professional mustisport race and also brought a drenching desert rainstorm. Despite the intermittent hard rain showers, everyone at the race seemed pretty upbeat. (It is a duathlon in February after all.) If nothing else, adverse conditions make for a great icebreaker. Arriving at the transition area, I walked to the elite athlete’s rack (SWEET!) and looked for an open spot. Ahh, here’s an open spot… right by a huge puddle. I guess that’s why it’s empty, but I figured that it wouldn’t matter much to me once I get racing, since it’s pouring and I’ll presumably be completely soaked in a few minutes. (Side note: it always makes me smile when I see people with bags tied over their bike saddles. If you are at a triathlon, presumably your saddle will eventually get wet. If it is raining at a duathlon, won’t it also soon get wet? Besides, I train in the rain and snow all the time, my saddles seem to take it in stride.)
Anyway, this is now officially a pro race report and not social commentary… so I assume folks want to know the details of my rack setup. (Admission: I used to drive to races just to watch the pros make transitions. I found this very helpful.) For short course racing, I’ve found that less is more. Leave the running visor in the bag, etc. Begin ritual: The bike goes on the rack, hung by the saddle, bars facing towards me. (If it’s really windy, I rack by the handlebars for stability) I check my gearing, recheck for tire pressure and then make sure no brake rub. Next, I check the cyclocomputer and re-zero it. My helmet goes upside down on the aero bars; open side up, front facing me, with straps hanging on either side. I take two or three helmet dry runs to make sure it goes on quickly. (OCD? Yes.) On the age-old question of shoes on/off bike: for me this depends on the race venue, the weather conditions, and if I’m feeling saucy. Today I was not feeling particularly randy, so I put my shoes on the ground since it is raining, very cold, and because well, it’s the desert and who knows what is on the ground here. (Side note 2: This is a comment about the desert and it’s spiky flora, not the performance of the race crew. In fact, the race crew did a fantastic job with a challenging venue. The day before the race I made small talk about living in Solvang, CA vs. Boulder, CO with a super nice guy who was single-handedly sweeping the transition area free from debris. This guy turned out to be none other than the most photographed (perhaps most famous?) triathlete of all time Chuckie V. How cool is that?!)
ANYWAY, no fumbling with shoes at 20+ mph today for me, thanks. Just a clippy-cloppy, awkward looking run punctuated by a full-stride cyclocross mount and I’m off at full speed. With that all set up, I looked around and noticed that the women’s pro field took up most of the elite racks and just about every famous female pro I could think of had showed up. I personally don’t like the term and find it a bit offensive to women, but the term “chicked” did come to mind more than once. Not going to lie.
Yikes, I haven’t even gotten to the race yet! With my running flats now on my feet as well as my race belt securely fastened, I set off for a warm up. A fifteen minute slow jog and about six 100-meter striders later and I was at the start line of my first pro race. The gun went off and Chris Foster made a move in the first like, I don’t know, TWO FEET. He took that first mile out at a rather pedestrian 4:55 or so mile, with me sitting on the back of a 4-man group of what were now spectators, about 10 seconds back at the first mile. That’s about 5:05 mile. ON SAND. Yikes, too fast., so I backed off a bit. I was also feeling prematurely winded in that first mile. This was a struggle all week. I had been feeling like I wasn’t getting enough oxygen during my training runs, so I looked up the altitude. Philadelphia: 39 ft. Phoenix: 1,130 ft. McDowell Mt. Park: 2,200 ft. This doesn’t seem like much to me, but all I know is something was not quite right. Whatever the reason, I felt fully asthmatic and was wheezing by mile two! Still, I remained composed, tried to keep up a solid pace and came into T1 not too far down on the chase group.
On the bike, I made up two places in the three-mile ascent out of transition. I tried to get into a rhythm but I could feel the pain that comes with limited cycling volume of a Philadelphia winter. PAIN I say! The course climbed out of transition on a windy park road and then descended for about another 4 miles out of the park. From there, it’s a dogleg left turn onto a fairly smooth and rolling rural road to the 11-mile turn around. The wind was fairly light, but noticeable going out to the turn around and seemed to change directions a few times. Or maybe we changed directions, I don’t know, I was seeing double now. The turnaround was the only time I saw the leader and chasers. Sidenote 3/Tip 1: In both tri’s and du’s, turnarounds are a fantastic place to get information. Check your watch as you pass the leader, and then look at it again at the TA and double that for your deficit. Also, make note of the time from the TA to your chasers for a scare or a smile. By this point, the leader was up by about 4 minutes on me and at that point and the closest racer to me was about 2 minutes up. Also, I had about 30 sec on 6th. If you know me, you know I like to ride, so I decided I needed to get going now matter how I felt and see what happens. This was indeed painful, especially since once I made it back to the park and turned right, I had a 4-mile climb coming. Yikes! I remember thinking how much it burned and that I was nearly throwing up. That doesn’t usually happen to me, so I knew I was digging really deep. Ahh, February!
The three mile drop back to transition was a welcome reprieve from the burn of that climb, but by now I realized at full speed that it was not only raining, but I was now REALLY COLD! Coming into transition, I reached down and unzipped my shoes and couldn’t quite feel my feet. The volunteers were yelling “dismount, dismount!” as I was rolling towards them trying to get my numb feet out of my pedals… I replied with a “believe me, I’m trying” and got a lot of laughter from the crowd. I loved it. People too often take this stuff too seriously. I definitely like having fun with it. So I did manage a smooth entrance to T2 and ran on icy stumps to my rack. T2 for me was kind of comical since I couldn’t feel my feet. It felt like slow motion! For the techies: I like to use Yanks on my racing flats. I just stretch them on and go.
The second run in the desert classic I suppose is what justifies the use of the word “Classic”. The 2.7-mile trail run packs a lot of challenge into a pretty short distance. The run starts out on paved road and then turns down a sandy back road to a parking lot. From there, you veer off into the desert into what amounts to a rather windy walking path. However, at full speed this path is fairly challenging since it winds erratically through lush (and pointy) vegitation, rugged desert washes, deep sand, mud and rocks. There is a defining feature on this run, that comes in the form of a perhaps 100 foot, lung-busting steep rocky climb followed by a similarly tricky switchback descent. I kept thinking that this is setting me up perfectly for the few Xterra and off-road races I’ve planned for later in the season. -Super fun. After coming back down, the run returns to the parking lot and then back up the roads to the finish. From the hill climb, I saw all of my competition, both well ahead and well behind. I kept up a hard effort despite being alone, but I was again wheezing loudly and I didn’t really have any incentive to kick, even if I could.
I crossed the line 5th elite in 1:29:49, which was about 3:30 off of 4th place. Obviously, I’d like that margin to be much less, I always want to maintain contact with the group and be in the mix. But I was happy with my rookie debut race. The wheezing is concerning, and is something I will monitor. But this was not a problem in training back east or in a local Philadelphia-area 5K where I ran 16:00 a few weekends back, or now as I ran this morning in Philly. So logically, I have to attribute it to the environment, travel, altitude, or gremlins. We shall see…. but still, to run 5:22/mile for 3.5 miles on wet and sandy desert trails in a duathlon in February? That’s more than acceptable to me. This was a great way to kick-off my rookie pro season and spend some time training and vacationing in Arizona!
Jenkins Hollow Climb (0.85miles, 260ft ascent, 5.8% average grade, 10% max grade)
