I threw my disc wheel (yay), which I had tried out at the track a few days earlier for the first time, along with all my other gear in the car and made the drive without incident. Having a cool new piece of equipment such as a disc because it provides much motivation for the race.
The thing is definitely darn fast. Its maiden voyage at the track was a good time. My legs felt like complete mud, but my speed was still at least what it would have been with fresh legs and standard wheels. Above all, I noticed how much its momentum carries up slight grades. I was a little worried to feel how much of a difference the weight penalty of a disc, but I don't think there really is any. Towards the crest of the home stretch on the track, it helped keep my speed up quite significantly. I knew that on fresh legs, decked out in an aero helmet with full-on race motivation, I would fly.
Anyway, I got to the race site, picked up my packet and set up transition. All seemed to be in order, save for the fact that it was about forty degrees at seven in the morning! There was beautiful weather all week long, but a Saturday storm blew threw and took all of the warmth with it. There was only a high of mid-fifties for the day.
Thankfully time went by quickly and before I knew it, I was jumping into the heated outdoor pool awaiting the whistle. My shivering was nearing an uncontrollable level, so the whistle couldn't come soon enough.
After about the first hundred of the 500 meter swim, my lane partner started to pull away. I knew the race was young and the bike and run would be where I could make up the ground that I needed to, but I couldn't help but feel a twitch of concern. But there was really no need. He must have gone out harder than he could hold at the start, because I quickly caught him and started to put time between us. I came out of the water in third. I passed second place on the run to transition and passed number one during transition so I came out in the lead. To make a long story short, that was the race. But if you've ever read this blog, you know I usually tell the long story, so here it is.
I drove down on the pedals to get up to speed as quickly as possible, the disc wheel grinding beneath me. I settled into my aero position and noticed that there was a pace vehicle in front of me. This made me very happy because when there is a pace car, you don't really need to worry about getting lost; just chase the car all day.
For some reason, I barfed at about mile five on the bike. I guess I was pushing too hard and my stomach didn't want to keep down the stuff I was drinking. It was all fluid so not as disgusting as it could have been, but it was still weird though. But I felt completely fine so didn't do anything differently.
Hitting the turn around, it took a minute or two until I saw anyone coming the other way. I didn't want to temp the bad luck gods, but at that point, it was pretty much in the bag unless someone was thinking about running a 12-minute 5k. It was surely a cool feeling hearing the disc wheel; it just made me want to go faster and faster.
The 14.5 mile bike leg came to an end as I rolled into transition and started the run.
Surprise, there was a lead bike on the run for me to follow too! Life is good. The bottom half of my legs and feet were so cold that I could barely feel them hitting the pavement at the beginning. I buzzed through the 5k in a little over 18 minutes without incident and won by nearly five minutes.
Just as a little extra bonus, I beat the time of last year's winner by a few seconds. The winner last year was the same person who beat me in a duathlon last year by a few minutes. Hopefully this means I'm definitely getting faster.
Lastly, my leg seems to be feeling considerably better. There's still some pain and discomfort, but I ran again today and think it's only a matter of time until it's 100% again. I'm very glad about this because I very much need to get in some quality run training to drop my 10k time in races.
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