Race Report- 2015 Chilly Willy Duathlon
3rd Place Age Group Finish!! Wooyoo!! Yeah, I was surprised also! Usually the men 30-34 age group is extremely stacked with fast athletes! But, fuck it, today I took 3rd in the AG!
On to the race report! What a difference training actually makes! This time last year I completed the Chilly Willy Duathlon in 1:37:34. I shaved nearly 20 mins off that time finishing this year in 1:19:52; and with some wind resistance on the course. I felt like I ran the first 5K a little too conservative, but after the fact I think I ran it right where I needed to be. I threw down a 24:28 5K up front, then averaged out 20.1 mph ride on the bike and finished off with a negative split 5K on the back end of 23:54. Hands down this was the most solid finishing 5K I have ever ran in any multisport sprint race over the past 5 years.
Something weird happened with my chip not being picked up while entering T2 coming off the bike, which is why the official results show no time for T2 and my bike split is all jacked up. Thankfully the timing mat leaving T2 did get me, which gave me an accurate second 5K. Then on my Garmin I forgot to hit the lap button to change for T1 and the start of bike course, so even my Garmin is a little off for some of the splits. This is the first multisport race I have used the Garmin 920XT with and I am flat out impressed with how the data is represented within Garmin Connect. In fact, I read that no other device currently is able to represent the entire race like Garmin can.
I made the race open to the public through Garmin Connect, which is best viewed on a computer or at least a tablet: http://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/687834074/5
If I had actually hit the lap button for transitions properly, the data would be near accurate. Obviously, I did not have a 1.6 second T1! LOL But, Garmin used to throw the three different sports into their own activities and the transitions would simply disappear to limbo because you would never see those outside of the watch. Now everything is perfectly thrown into one activity that is extremely interactive. You can click on the overall or the individual sports and view all of the data associated to what you selected. Either way, I am not going to go any further into the functionality of the 920XT as I plan to have a separate write up on it in the coming weeks.
This race went perfect in my opinion; in terms of prep, nutrition, and of course the execution of the race itself. I experimented with two different nutritional things for this race which I think worked really well for me. For starters, my pre-race drink- I pretty much mixed a shot of espresso with 1 1/2 scoops of Hammer Caffe Latte Perpetuem (aka “Perp”) along with 24 ounces of water. I ate my typical Hammer Bar first thing in the morning and then drank the Perp mixture up until 10/15 mins or so before the start of the race. It not only taste great, but the Perp packs a massive 54 g of carbs (only 7 are sugar) and 7g of protein. The second experiment was for the liquid on my bike. The night before I heated around 8 ounces of water and then mixed in 1 tbsp of sugar and 1/4 tsp of salt. The heat was mainly to quickly/easily dissolve the sugar and salt. Once at room temp I threw that in the fridge for race morning. Race morning I mixed another Hammer product, HEED, with my homemade sugar/salt concoction and roughly 16 ounces of water. HEED is a great electrolyte drink mix, but it has only 240mg of salt and 2g of sugar. So with my mixture I think it makes the absolute perfect drink on the bike. This race was not necessary at all to even have a drink like this, but I wanted to test it out in a race situation. Starting at the Olympic distance and further I think this drink would be perfect!
At the end of the day I am extremely satisfied with my results for this race. And a 3rd place AG finish was a completely unexpected result. Which also won me a free pair of Boston Bill polarized sunglasses. With continued training I feel I would be able to easily shave another 5 minutes off this exact course within one month. I’m the most motivated I have been in a very long time for training and racing. I owe all of it to the St Pete Running Company and Outspokin Multisport Team!
