BlogMarch 6, 2007 The Desert Duathlon has come and gone! A stacked field showed up for my favorite spring race - the Trisports.com Desert Duathlon. Going into the event, my main concern competition-wise was Simon Whitfield and the rest of the Canadian ITU National Triathlon Team. I also expected Americans Tyler Stanfield and Jordan Rapp to put in some solid runs and awesome bike rides. On the first run I went out strong holding close to the Canadian Olympic Gold Medalist Whitfield. Early on the first run, I noticed my calves were super-tight from the 12x400's I did on Wednesday, my first track workout of the year. Happily finishing the first run about 15 seconds down I got on my Trek TTX Rocket-bike and immediately settled into a decent rhythm. Halfway to the turnaround i'd passed Whitfield and another ITU standout Canadian Kyle Jones to take the lead! I had trouble shaking Whitfield and only on the way back was I able to put time into him. Every time I tried to stand up to go hard my calves would cramp severely to the point where I was wondering if I would be able to finish the race. I couldn't imagine dropping out of a sprint duathlon while leading! On the final climb , Jordan Rapp , who had caught Kyle Jones and Whitfield among others after losing over a minute on the first run came flying by me. I saw Whitfield just behind him and knowing that Simon was the better runner of the two I shadowed him into transition. Big mistake! Jordan put almost 30 seconds on us by the time we hit the final 2.5 mile trail run. Whitfield and I exited transition in 2nd and 3rd place chasing Jordan for the win. Unfortunately, I could not go with Simon and he seemed to almost effortlessly run up to Rapp. He went on to win while I spent the rest of the run trying to bridge up to Jordan fighting cramping calves. Unfortunately, I fell a few seconds short and ended up placing third overall for the third time in this event. Overall, I'm happy with the race. I believe my race plan was spot-on and with no calf problem I would've been able to accomplish my goal here. Definitely big props to all the pros who showed up, as it was the best field I've seen in the four times I've done this event. It's great that the Phoenix Tri-Club puts on a fairly high profile early season race. It gives us a good guage to see where the fitness is for the upcoming season. Congratulations to Jordan and Simon, hope you guys come back next year. I can't wait for the Florida's Great Escape Triathlon in two weeks, as it will be my first open-water swim test of the year. I will be updating soon! Thanks for reading, Lewis « Back to Blogs |
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