Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Second place

That's second place overall, in the team event. There were only three teams, so it's not that big an accomplishment, and the team that beat us consisted of a 12-year old and a 15-year old. My partner, Kevin, said (quite seriously) that the race would come down to how much he held me back. He hasn't been on a bike in at least 5 years (and I think it may be more like 10), so he's certainly not in top shape. As it turned out, he was right about holding our time back. I finished the first 2.5 miles in 15:58, approximately 90 seconds ahead of the next runner, and 6:23 pace. Kevin's cycling leg was 47:10, approximately 4 minutes behind the eventual winning team's cycling, which gave them time to catch up. My second running leg was in 17:48; a 7:07 pace for that second running leg. That put me thirty seconds behind the 12-year old who won the race.

The third place team had a pretty good cyclist--36 minutes for his cycling leg--and someone who was apparently running her first race. Their cyclist was the first of the relay team cyclists to finish, even though his partner was about 4 minutes behind us.

The course was a killer--at least the running course was. There were two pretty good sized hills, and one small hill, all in the span of 2.5 miles. The final hill was a little shy of a half mile long, and it came at the end of both of the running legs, with the transition area/finish line at the top. The cycling course was a flat out-and-back, and the riders had the wind at their backs for the second half of the leg.

Our overall time for 5 miles of running and 20K cycling was 1:21:32.

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