Sydenham Duathlon 2018

Sydenham is a race that I've considered doing a few times, but never managed to get to. With illness and injury delaying the start of my racing season, this ended up being my first opportunity to race. At one point I was trying to decide between this race and the Carleton Place Du the following week, but the cancellation of CP made the choice for me.

I came into this race with a lot of uncertainty. My run fitness was a real question mark as the time off recovering from my calf strain, followed by a cautious resumption of running, meant I really didn't have enough speed sessions under my belt to have a solid handle on what my sustainable race pace would be. On top of this, for whatever reason my bike legs were feeling really fatigued over the two weeks leading up to this race. I hoped by backing off as this race approached, they'd come back, but I didn't really know what to expect.

The lake in Sydenham looks really nice and the water was pretty warm (I swam after my race). The run course along the Cataraqui Trail is great - much of it is shaded, good views of the lake, the gravel path is easy on the legs and it's dead flat. The bike course is solid too, in that the pavement is good, the countryside is nice, and the terrain is undulating so you're always busy. Overall a really nice venue for a multisport race, definitely one of my favourites.

The Race

The usual small field (17) assembled along the start line. It's always interesting to see what happens when everyone settles into the run - I'm mentally prepared to be in the lead, but also know it's likely that there will be fast runners. As it turned out, two guys (a fast looking kid in M20-24 and a guy in a team Canada suit in M30-34) took the lead and I tucked in behind them, with others right on my heels.

Still smiling at this point in the race

 

Checking my watch after the first few hundred meters, we were running at around 3:30/km, which even in peak run shape would not be sustainable for 2k for me, so I backed off and let the runners run. I've been down this road before - plenty of people go out too hard and will get reeled in eventually, and in any case a duathlon is not just a footrace. I was targeting around 4:00/km, and that's what I did the first k in. The two frontrunners had a good lead after the turnaround, and I could hear steps right behind me, so it seemed I was leading a chase group into T1. But I was actually feeling pretty gassed getting into transition - my pace had dropped to 4:15/km and I was struggling. Not a good sign. Transition went okay and I was out onto the bike smoothly.

Run + T1: 8:33 (3/17)

There's a pretty significant hill right out of transition - much bigger than the one in Brockville. I waited to crest the hill before getting into my shoes, then it was on to the task of seeing if the two guys ahead of me could bike as well as they could run. The duathlon went off last out of all the races, so there were Olympic triathletes out on their second lap, and Sprint/Super Sprint/Try-a-Tri racers all out on the bike course too, so it was pretty much non-stop "on your left!" passing people. The bike course was open to traffic (my preference) so people generally stayed single file along the edge of the road. The great thing about duathlons is you know exactly who is in front of you and what they look like, so I knew when I moved into second place (the team Canada kit was pretty easy to spot).

Leaving T1

I had planned to hold right around FTP for the bike, but as usual, this didn't happen. The course is very rolling, and I used every gear in my 1x11 drivetrain. That made it impossible to really "settle in" to target power, and constantly passing people and being aware of vehicular traffic in both directions also prevented me from focusing on my power numbers. But mostly it was just me chickening out. Riding at threshold comes with a certain level of discomfort, and I always end up being unwilling to risk cooking my legs before the run, even though I've run off of threshold rides in training so I know I can do it.

I never passed Adric (the race leader) and didn't see him going back from the turnaround, so wasn't sure what his gap was to me. As it turns out he had stretched his 1 minute lead on me to about 4 minutes, so he outbiked me in addition to outrunning me. Meanwhile, though I didn't know it at the time, I had built up a 5 minute lead on third place Brad, who had been caught by fourth place Tim. They entered T2 more or less together, so things were set up for a good battle between those dudes.

Bike: 35:04 (2/17)

As I exited the T-zone and switched my watch over to "Run", I managed to lock the buttons. I didn't know how to unlock them, so my watch just showed the screen that says "Run, Bike 1, Bike 2" etc. Without Garmin telling me my pace I was "running blind", but not all that big a deal since Run #2 in a duathlon isn't so much about holding a target pace as it is just doing what you can. In any case, thanks to dramatically underbiking, my legs felt okay, and I went out right on 4:00/km pace. It was pretty hot though, and I was tired, so my pace settled into more like 4:30/km pretty quick. It seemed to take forever to get to the turnaround (without my watch on the "run" setting, it wasn't giving me "lap" alerts every kilometre) and when Adric passed me going the other way, I knew he had well over a kilometre lead on me and would not be caught. I didn't know what kind of gap I had on those behind me, so there was a bit of a question mark after the turnaround. However, I passed Brad and Tim more or less the same place that I had passed Adric, so 2nd place looked pretty well locked down. I still finished strong... even setting a new Max Heart Rate of 193 coming into the finish!

T2 + Run #2: 23:35 (2/17)

Adric, who appears to be a duathlon specialist and the reigning champion of the very competitive Kingston race, ended up finishing under an hour and beating me by over 7 minutes. So as per usual, I was never in contention in this race. Tim ended up taking 3rd by about 25 seconds over Brad, so that was a pretty tight race for the final podium spot.

Overall Time: 1:07:10 (2/17)

Just like in Brockville last year, my time would have won the previous year's race, but I was thoroughly outclassed by the race winner. Unlike Brockville, I wasn't all that happy with my performance.

Lessons learned:
1) Trust in your training and PUSH THE PACE ON THE BIKE
2) To unlock the buttons on a Garmin 310XT, hold "mode" and "up" simultaneously