Geulp Lake Duathlon

Report from John Roden
September 1: Guelph Lake Duathlon, Guelph Lake Ontario

We pointed the caravan north this weekend for the Guelph Lake Duathlon in Ontario, Canada. Things started off a little disorganized as I thought the race was on Sunday, like they usually are and realized kind of late in the week that it was on Saturday, so we had to shuffle things around a little and well I was hoping for that extra day of recovery from my repeated attempts to pound some more speed into my recalcitrant legs, but no mind. We camped out right at the park where the race was held. The race attracted maybe 700 people total, with 160 in the duathlon, which is pretty big around here.

I rode right to the start from our campsite after making a double batch of waffles and blowing the circuit breaker a few times trying to also run to coffee pot, which is why they call it roughing it in any event. I arrived a little late, but got all setup and jogged around a little before and tried to stretch my banged up legs. The first run was 2K, which is really short and painful and I managed to finish in about 20 something place, not a great start to the morning. The bike went really well, 30K of gentle rolling hills with lots of people spread all over the course. I was passing people like mad and by the last 10K things were pretty quiet and spread out. In any event, I had a nice bike ride, the one pro triathlete who won the triathlon was faster, but I was second fastest, which I'll take.

I got off the bike and parked next to another dutahlete, I asked him if we were leading and he reported another runner was already ahead of us and said "nice ride" to which I thanked him, while silently doing my sums on the odds of beating him in a 7K run after he soaked me for two minutes in a 2K run.
So, off we went and I dropped a place before we left the transition.

The last 7K run was just awful, I managed to drop to 6th. place by degrees, making a consummate mistake in the last K of not knowing the finish circuit and attempting to kick to catch 4th. without realizing I had a K to run after we passed by the finish line aaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggggghhhhhhh. So I dropped a couple in the last circuit while I was utterly blown from my bone-headed and futile attempt at a sprint.

This running hangs like a giant stone around my neck, but I will continue to work on it. After two nights of camping, we packed it in, the kids were pooped and so were mom and dad...

This first picture is funny, I'm trying to figure out who is coming up behind me and if they are in my race or a triathloner, it was a long day out there...