2009 Emlenton Festival Duathlon

Posted by Dan on 15. July 2009 07:17

Each summer, my wife and kids head to rural Pennsylvania for several weeks of country life. She's been putting in some serious miles in the hilly terrain and thought the Emlenton Summer Festival's duathlon might be a good idea.

She decided the bike portion would be fun if she could find a runner. A quick call to the event organizer put her in contact with 14 year-old Mara White who was billed as a "high school track star from Ohio". How could she lose? All the pieces were in place. The next step was to do what any good cyclist does - drive the course, which she did. Immediately afterwards, she called me and asked if I'd do the bike part, citing the hills rivaled the Pyrenees or even the Alps. Me, being the chump that I am, said "Sure, OK."



We got to the event about an hour early to facilitate a good warm-up on the trainer. As I warmed up, I remembered the Thorlo ads from years ago where some guy ran a marathon in his Thorlo socks. I suppose I was thinking of worse case scenarios, e.g. my partner didn't show up and I was forced to actually run. With my feet. My fears subsided when Mara and her family pulled up and made their way to the registration table.



Around 9:00 AM or so, all individuals and run-only participants lined up. With a blast of the air horn, they were off, most like gazelles. Some not so much. I cleaned up, grabbed a fresh bottle and began nervously pacing up and down the street waiting for the first runners to crest the hill. Around the 20 minute mark, the first runner came over the hill and made his way to the bikes. Thinking last year's record run time was 25 minutes, I must admit I thought maybe this guy was going to clean our clock. If Mara could get in within 25 minutes, we'd still stand a good chance, but it'd require some work. Two minutes later, a string of five runners made their way over the hill. Mara was the fourth over the line and tagged me with what appeared to be her last bit of strength. She looked completely exhausted. Word is she had a bottle of water and sat for 5 minutes and popped up, ready to go again! If only I could recover like that...



My ride started with four riders ahead of me. From the line, I had a nice downhill with an immediate right turn in loose gravel. Having not ridden the course, I was just discovering all of these "neat" features at a frantically high speed. From the corner, the climbing began in earnest. Another right turn two blocks up put me on the main outward bound stretch. The next turn was just after the 3 mile mark. I had passed each of the four riders that started before me before making the turn. A slight descent and then... can you guess? RIGHT! More climbing. In theory, the ascending should equal the descending considering I'm doing a loop. I can tell you it did not feel like that. Gun to my head, I'd estimate the average grade of the climbs to be 3-5% with kicks up to 12% in quite a few locations.



Meanwhile, back at the start/finish line, my wife was arming my partner with weaponry in the event I didn't make it back within 30 minutes.

Just after the last turn, I shifted into my little ring in preparation for a serious wall that loomed before me. That was the moment I dropped my chain. No problem. I'll just shift to the big ring and it'll fix itself. Wrong! Nothing I did got that lousy chain back on. So I had to stop and put it on the old fashioned way - with my finger. Now I'm riding with white bar tape and a greasy finger. Could I climb the Wall with only nine fingers? We'd soon find out.



As it turns out, I could climb with one greasy finger sticking off the front of the bike. I checked behind me periodically but saw no one. Good sign. The line came and went. Our elapsed time was 0:52:04 which got us 1st place overall for a team and the fastest time of the day. Very satisfying.

Next year, I guess our goal will be to break 0:50:00. Who knows? Maybe if my chain stays on and I have use of all ten fingers, we can break 45 minutes. At any rate, Mara put in a stellar effort and we had a great time. As long as I'm not the one running, I might do more of these multi sport things.