Plus, a gauntlet of sorts had been thrown down…Dave and his adventure racing teammate Kent Keegan wondered out loud if anyone (like me, for example) could break a 40 minute split for the bike course and while I stayed upright and tried not to glance down at the armored glove laying at my feet, Rick and Kim from Sierra Adventure Sports and Boot Camp Chicks quickly picked it up, handed it to me and said “Sure, he can.”* So, while it wasn’t my main objective, this “race within a race” seemed to be on and while I had no idea how fast I could ride the course, I knew that a wet, sloppy trail wasn’t going to make my time any quicker. 

Luckily, the rain held off and come Saturday morning we had picture perfect racing weather…cool in the shade without being cold and warm in the sun without being hot. Like I said, earlier, Rick, Kim, Lisa, Georgie, Laureen and I had come up to ride the course earlier in the week and I knew it was going to be fast and fun. The distances were short (1.5 mile first run, 8.3 mile bike, 2.2 mile second run) and yet Dave had managed to fit a little of everything into the course...flat, wide, nicely graded fire roads, tight twisty singletrack, a couple of short but steep “pound it out climbs” and some semi-technical up and down sections with hairpin switchbacks. Oh, and several, “Wow, I’m going 25-30 mph…Oh sh*t!, I need to make a 115 degree turn right there,” surprises that pre-riding the course let me know were coming, just not well enough to know where. 

After a nice warm-up with Windy, Vickie and Kim, we got some quick instructions from Dave and the race was underway. I must admit, going in, I had a conditional plan. If, after the first run got underway, I was in the lead or felt like I could be in the lead, I was going to hold back a little and run the first leg fairly reserved.

#1 That’s always pretty good strategy in a duathlon where it’s usually the bike and the second run that decide it and #2 I still had that 40 minute gauntlet I was carrying around with me and I was willing to give up a couple of seconds on the first run if I felt like it would take a couple of seconds off my bike split.

No matter what, I knew racing at an elevation of 5,000 feet, I had to be patient for the first couple hundred meters or I could blow myself up before the race really began. Bob Badget jumped out to quick lead and got a small gap on me during this time but I was in second and felt like I had a small gap on the next person behind me, so I felt pretty good. Unless Bob started accelerating away from me, I could keep running at a…definitely not relaxed but steady enough to count as reserved…pace. Behind me, my Big Fish teammates were also settling in and doing well as Windy and Vickie were motoring along just a few steps behind me. 

After a quick turn onto some super fun single track, I pulled up on Bob’s shoulder and ran there for a while. “Is that you Dave?” he asked. I said it was and he told me just to give him the word and he’d let me by but I told him the pace was good and I was trying to save something for the bike. Another 400 meters later, I glanced back and noticed that someone was gaining on us, uh oh. I asked Bob if I could go and he stepped aside to let my by. I picked it up just slightly and pulled into the first transition with a small lead.

Like several of the adventure racers Bob races with, he wears toe cages rather than clip-in pedals on the bike. Personally for me, it’s not worth the loss in power and control on the bike, but it does make for a quick transition, so though I was first into TA, I was second out. I don’t however, have an easy excuse for why Jason transitioned so much faster than I did. Jason Lamoreux (down from Alaska) was the runner that I noticed gaining on Bob and me when I glanced back over my shoulder and while my late run move had put a little more distance between us again, his quicker transition put him right on my shoulder as we started the bike.  

Meanwhile, just a minute or so later Windy and Vickie pulled into TA. The one piece of advice I had given to Vickie was “Don’t save anything for the bike.” since, of course, Butch would be doing that leg while Vickie would have 40 minutes or so to rest and recover. (Yes, advice like this is why I command those big coaching fees.) So, she and Windy had both knocked off the first run and were out of TA (well, Windy and Butch were out of TA) ahead of all but Bob, Jason and me.

At the first good area to pass, Bob pulled aside slightly and let Jason and I go. The next ?? minutes (I’ll keep the 40 minute challenge in suspense just a little longer) were a rush. The bike course was a blast and I don’t think Jason and I could have been more even on the bike. At first I thought maybe I could get a gap on the climbs but I quickly had to throw that idea out the window. At this point, I think the race went slightly tactical…only the strange kind of tactical where you’re both going all out as hard as you can. You see, even if Jason could pass me, it wouldn’t really be in his best interest to do so since the tight twists and out of nowhere turns meant that it was a little easier to ride the course ride behind someone. On the flipside, where I could have TRIED to make a bike racing type attack to get away from him, it didn’t seem to make much sense for me since we still had another 2.2 mile run to go and I thought if I didn’t blow myself up, the run was in my favor. All in all it made for fast, tense, fun racing. 

When I suffered a very minor crash on a downhill switchback near the end of the course, Jason passed me; but I was back on my bike in seconds and we came in with the same 1 to 3 second gap we’d had the whole bike only with him in front. The thing that I didn’t count on was his making me look like the tortoise from tortoise and the hare again in the transition area. Though we came in together, by the time I was ready to go (and I really didn’t have a bad transition; it wasn’t perfect but at least average) Jason had opened up a 25 meter gap on me. 

It usually takes me a couple of minutes, especially after pushing as hard as I’d been pushing on the bike, for my legs to come back once I start running again off the bike. I must admit, during that time, when I was trying to pull back that 25 meter gap when I said to myself. “Second isn’t bad.” And the thing is that while I definitely wanted to catch Jason, it had been such a cool RACE that it would be hard to be upset just because I’d had such fun. Still, that didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to go down without a fight. 

About ½ mile into the second run, my legs started to unlock and while I had to push a lot harder than I did the first run, eventually I started reeling Jason in. We were on single track climbing a slight uphill and by the time the trail opened up into a wider fire road, I was on his shoulder. As we started downhill I realized that I could definitely put some time on him running down the hill and made the kind of move that I didn’t dare try to make on the bike. 

I kept pushing all the way through the finish line and held on for a nine second win. The thing is that Jason and I had pushed each other so hard during the race that we both blew away what Dave had projected for the course (around 40 minutes for the bike and 1:03 for the whole thing). My official time was 58:23, including a gauntlet raising sub-35 minute split on the bike. I doubt racing by myself that I would have broken an hour. 

The best news was still to come. Windy breezed to the woman’s overall and (as I predicted) was fifth overall. In fact, her final time was closer to mine than it was to the second place woman. (And if you take out her bike to run transition, she also biked the bike course in under 40 minutes.) Butch and Vickie, meanwhile, kept pulling away the whole race to finish first in the relay division by around 8 minutes over the 2^nd place team (an all male team to boot). 

So, all in all, it’s hard to imagine a better day of racing…a beautiful day, a fun course, great racing and a BFC Racing sweep. Thanks to Dave and Tracy Sewell, all the volunteers and of course our excellent sponsors. And to think I was worried about a little bit of scattered rain.