5/17/09 - Race Report, Shamrock Duathlon

Well, today was my first race of the season. Overall, I'm satisfied with the results considering that I have only been training for a month after a two month lay-off.

I eased into the first run and got my HR up to about 155 and kept it there - or at least tried. I looked at my HR monitor a couple of times and my HR was around 150 which is unusual for me - I 'm usually high on the run. The effort was definately there.

Biking is generally my best leg, but I'm not feeling overly satisified with my bike result in this race. The course was different and it felt more difficult to me, but I'm not 100% sure it was. I also had trouble keeping my HR up on the ride as well - I got it up to 160 on the hills (which there were a lot of), but other than that it was probably between 150 and 155. The course was wet, but that is not my excuse - the corners were slower, but the rest of the ride was at race pace. The good news is that I am already starting to feel more comfortable on the new aero bars.

I came off the bike and started the second run and was very surprised at how comfortable I was running coming off the bike. I ran for about a mile and looked at my HR monitor and it was again lower than I expected it to be. I kicked myself in the butt as I train harder than I was racing. I kicked it up a notch and was able to keep the HR up around 160, 162 for the rest of the run.

My average HR was 154 and my maximum HR was 168. I'm starting to believe that my maximum HR is not as high as I thought it was. According to my HR monitor my average HR was 87% of my max and my max HR was 95% of my max. I'm not sure how the monitor would know this - I do not recall programming it in.

This race was really a test of how the training is coming along rather than a quest for a specific result; however I was secretly hoping I could finish it in less than two hours. My official result is 1:58:35, so I reached this goal. The course was different this year so it is not possible to compare this year's result with last year's result; however, my self assessment tells me that I am running better but I have some improvements to make on the bike. Both runs were better than the times I had last year for this event. 27:01 and 29:40 compared to 28:00 and 30:48 last year.