Orange County Duathlon

Mr. Bono loves to lay in the sun.  He has the weekend all figured out.  On Saturdays and Sundays he knows that it's the weekend, and if it's sunny out, he'll stand by the sliding glass door blinds waiting for you to open them up.  This comes second to breakfast of course.

I signed up as part of a relay team for the Orange County Duathlon a few months ago.  My buddy Ricardo said he was doing it and suggested I sign up too.  I'm not much of a runner, so I recruited Mike Francis for that part.  The Navy had it's say in the whole situation and unfortunately Ricardo couldn't do the race (he signed up to do all the legs himself).  Francis and I aren't in peak shape yet, evidenced by the fact that the top finisher in the male 60-64 age group beat us by a couple of minutes.  We finished in about 1 hour and 50 minutes, complete with the transitions.  Francis was the type of guy at the Academy who could roll out of bed 5 minutes before the PRT, having not done much prep, and would crush the test, finishing in the mid 8 minute area for the 1.5 mile run and maxing the push-ups and sit-ups.  I was always the person maxing the push-ups and sit-ups, then doing the run in 10:20, about 10 seconds before the cut-off, then I would puke.  There was even a time I puked on the way to the finish line.  Nice!  Anyway, bottom line is that we had a fun time doing the OC Duathlon which consisted of a 5k run, 40k bike, and another 5k run.  Cezanne and I got up at 4:15am this morning to leave around 5:10am since the event was about 70 miles north of La Jolla.  The day started off pretty chilly (for SoCal) at around 47 degrees F.  The 40k (wound up being about 22 miles, not 25 miles) was pretty hilly, but on really nice roads (Santiago Canyon).  For about half the route you could see the burnt out hillsides on either side of the road, which is an unfortunate reality of living in Southern California.  Below is me taking off on the start of the ride.  We had our timing chip on an ankle bracelet on our left foot which Mike and I had to switch off between each segment.

Cycling is an interesting sport.  There are times when you'll blow by someone who "looks" the part, complete with high end triathlon bike, nice aero position, lean, etc. and then there are times when the slightly heavier person on a old beater of a road bike will pass you.  I think I started off a little too hard, passing a bunch of people, but then settled into a groove.  I was frustrated that my heart rate monitor wasn't working.  One of my favorite things to do on the ride is the check out other bikes.  I've got a nice road bike (the frame is the same that Lance used to win the Tour de France), but as with anything, after about 3 years, I'm starting to want something updated.  There were a lot of nice triathlon bikes out there as well as a lot of road bikes.  Below is me after I finished riding, handed the timing chip off to Mike, and racked my bike.  I wound up averaging 19.9 mph over the 22 mile course.  I was personally happy with that given that most of my 30-50 mile training rides I'm averaging about 17.5 alone and 18.8 in the Saturday group ride I do.  Of course, after the fact, I thought I could have pushed it a little harder.  

Below is Mike cranking it up to pass someone in the last 30 yards of his second run.  The guy in white got some motivation and turned on the burners after Mike passed him.  Mike, of course, is wearing his native "Pittsburgh Steelers" shirt.

Mike was wearing a "Navy" t-shirt under his Steelers shirt and we were approached by a couple of Naval Academy graduates after the race, Damon Dixon, '95 and Gary Leaman (sorry Gary, I think you said '78), both living in the San Diego area.  They both scored really well in their age group.  I'm sure it's the same way with other colleges, but it always seems like you'll find 1 or 2 Naval Academy grads doing something, somewhere.  It's really a great network.