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Rockbuster Offroad Duathlon

Posted by David Hardy
David Hardy
VTR Expert
User is currently offline
on Monday, April 21, 2014
in Triathlons

I mentioned at the beginning of this year that I wanted to enter a ton of races in 2014. Too many long events over the last few years have prevented me from entering many of the shorter races I used to enjoy. When you are training for long distance events most weekends are filled with long runs/rides. There is really no time to enter a sprint triathlon/duathlon. This year is different for me. I do not have any long distance races planned at the moment and I plan on enjoying as many shorter events as I can squeeze in.

On Saturday I entered the Rockbuster Offroad Duathlon. This race is a 1.8 mile run, 5.5 mile mountain bike, and then finishes with another 1.8 mile run. The entire race is held in Ashland State Park. Now since I do not mountain bike, I recruited my brother-in-law to ride and we entered as a relay team. I figured it would be fun to race as a team and to get a little off-road racing in to mix it up.

The run course was a tough rolling course. The first .75 miles were on pavement and then the last mile was off road on trails. The off road portion I found to be tough. The start of the trail section was mild but soon after there was a short jump over a stream and then a real tough climb. The remainder of the course was rolling with a lot of roots, rocks, and other debris. I managed not to twist an ankle but unfortunately fell pretty hard on the second run. I quickly bounced back up and luckily only got a few cuts on my leg. I did a decent effort on both finishing in 1202 and 1246 for both runs. It was interesting to run and then wait for 28 minutes before running the same course again. I thought I would be tight for the second run but actually felt fine.

The bike course was similar to the run course with an added section that went out to an aqueduct. It was fun watching the mountain bikers negotiate the stream crossing and then carry their bikes up the tough hill. The bike course went up the same tough hill I completed on the run course. Almost all of the riders had to carry their bikes due to the steepness of the short tough hill. It was a loop course that included climbing this hill twice.

How did we do? Well first off I will be honest. There were only a total of two relay teams. We ended up coming in 2nd place. I gave my bother-in-law a 10 second lead after the first run but the cyclist on the other team had the fastest bike split of the day and beat him by 5 minutes. Now I knew there was no chance to catch the other team but I still ran hard on my second run. I do not feel bad about getting our 2nd place medals because we had a decent time and almost certainly would have placed if there were more teams.

This was a fun event and was my third race of the week. Not a bad week.

Our results: Total time 53:21   2nd Relay Team

 

 

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