Early morning found me racking my bike in the transition on the racks labeled 30-34. Both guys and girls were racked together and before long our rack was full of bikes. This had me worried as I knew only three people from each age group would qualify for Long Course Worlds. I noticed dozens of guys racking their bikes in my section so I knew there would be plenty of competition in my age group, what I didn’t know at the time is that a lot of them would be in the sprint race so I really wasn’t going to be competing against all of them…
At 7am the race started and I headed out for the 9.3 mile opening run. I started out two or three rows deep and after running around 6:00 pace for a while, I settled into a comfortable pace I figured was around 6:45. Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought this through very well, so while I checked the calves of any runners who passed me to verify they weren’t in my age group, I couldn’t be sure of the ages of the runners ahead of me. I realized I should have started out in front and then I would know exactly how many guys 30-34 had gone ahead of me after the start…
Since the run was an out and back, once runners started passing me heading back, I kept track of where I was at overall and when I finished the run I figured I was around 27th overall. After a quick transition, I headed out on the bike. Things felt good on the bike and I started passing people right away. I continued to pass people throughout the ride, but things started to feel a little rough. Throughout the second half of the ride my calves and thighs started cramping, I was beginning to realize how painful it can be to run 9.3 miles and then hop on a bike and pedal hard for two hours. Finally, after passing 19 competitors, I pulled into transition. I quickly surveyed the rest of my section and saw three other bikes, was I in 4th place in my age group? I started my second run and quickly realized I wouldn’t be chasing anyone down, both my Achilles were hurting and I was doing everything I could to ignore the pain and run/hobble. Since I knew I wouldn’t catch anyone, I could only hope that one of the bikes in transition was a short course duathlon participant that hadn’t cleared their bike out yet.
I had intentionally taken the first run easy knowing I had to face this second run, but I hadn’t counted on my Achilles hurting like they did. So while I had hoped to run faster for my second run, I ended up running considerably slower. I had figured I was somewhere in the top 10 going into the second run, turns out I was in exactly 10th and in the final mile of the run I was passed and dropped down to 11th. Finally I reached the finish in a time of 3:15:26 and once the results were posted I saw I had finished 3rd in my age group and had qualified for the 2007 ITU Long Course Duathlon World Championships. My race hadn’t gone as well as hoped, but my goal had been accomplished so it was all good in the end…
Run1 Pace T1 Bike MPH T2 Run2 Pace Total Time
Ernest Rigdon III 1:06:16 7:07 0:44 1:43:21 22.0 0:35 24:31 7:54 3:15:26
Brad