You’ve decided to do your first duathlon. You need a bike. What do you choose? Your first and least expensive option is to pull out that your old junker from college wipe off the cobwebs, spray some WD-40 on the chain, and hope that the tubes will hold air. If you’re smart, you’ll do this at least a couple of days before your event (hopefully sooner). The problem with this approach is that the bike in the garage probably didn’t fit you in the first place. FIND A BIKE THAT FITS. If you’re just aiming for the fitness challenge, the type of bike is irrelevant - unless you’re doing an off-road duathlon. For an on-road duathlon course, a mountain, road, or hybrid style bike will do the job. Don’t be intimidated by the $10,000 machines at the transition area when you show up to the event. This is about you meeting your goals and completing the task. There are countless systems of bike fit, but the folks at your l ocal bike shop should be able to get you comfortable. If you decide that you enjoy the sport and want to upgrade your bike, I suggest purchasing a road bike then adding clip on bars [Bias notice: I was a road cyclist long before I was a multipart athlete]. I find a pure road bike more comfortable and easier to train on. I do have a pure triathlon bike that I use for competition, but I’m aiming to be quite competitive. In my limited experience with duathlon and triathlon, beginners generally don’t need a faster bike to improve their times, they need to ride more. After some time, the endurance sport virus will infect every cell in your body. At this point, you might consider that owning a bike more expensive than your car is perfectly normal. Before you get to that point, several bike manufacturers are making "entry level" triathlon bikes. As an example, for just under two grand, the Jamis Comet comes with all the major features (namely, aerodynamics) that make a triathlon bike unique. I did my first duathlon on an old Guercotti cyclocross bike. It had thin walled aluminum tubing. With a frame my size, it rode like a wet noodle. I didn’t have any aero bars, and the back brake was fashioned to look like it would work. It didn’t matter though. I had a blast. What was your first duathlon bike? Let us know in the comments.
I went to check the Auburn Duathlon results for this year, and I was saddened to see that only 15 participants came out this year. This is a truly wonderful and challenging event. It also looks like the turnout for the Apple Duathlon was down this year, compared to years' past. Since my bike accident in 2009, I haven't participated in a single duathlon, and by the looks of it the general interest in duathlon is down as well:
What's your experience? Is duathlon fading while triathlon surges? Are you planning on entering any duathlons this year?
There's a new duathlon website out there: www.duathlon247.com. It appears to be based in the UK, but the information, interviews, and results are great. Finally a place to keep track of the elite duathlon scene in Europe.
Raf shared this quote over at his blog: The late Primo Nebiolo, former President of the International Athletic Federation (IAAF) and prominent IOC Executive Board member 10 years ago wrote, “Duathletes are the first cousins to our athletes - there is no confrontation, but rather continuity. Jumping onto the saddle after running ten kilometers and then running again after 40km on two wheels is a demonstration of the integrity and strength of muscles and will power of these champions. Running and cycling are both beautiful and venerable sports.” Fast times over in Auburn last weekend - oh, how I wish I'd been there.
It's 11pm, and I'm packing for Sunday's race. I head the door tomorrow at 6:30 a.m. to catch the airporter; 15 hours later I should be in Richmond. I'm packing light this trip. I've distilled my mental checklist down to two essentials: tri shorts and cycling shoes. Everything else, I figure, you could buy, beg, borrow, steal, or go without if you had to. The tri shorts are a must because most people aren't going to let you steal and heaven forbid if you went without! If you forget your bike and pedals, your cycling shoes are probably useless, but you might be able to use the velcro to fashion something else you might have forgotten. Let's look other things you'll want to forget: - Everyone's into barefoot running these days, so why need running shoes?
- You could borrow a helmet and even a bike from a spectating kid, though it wouldn't be as aerodynamic.
- Life is risky anyway, so do you really need an extra tube & co2 cartridge?
- In a pinch, a T-shirt, dorky though it may be, could replace your tri top.
- The race is only 55k in total so even if you did bonk, you could probably finish. Who needs food?
- If you can find a Kinko's you could make like an 18-year-old and print a fake USAT license.
What items are you forgetting on your way to Duathlon Nationals this year?
The forecast for Sunday in Richmond: 90 degrees and sunny. I hope the roads aren't melting by my start time of 10:50 a.m. I probably will be by the time I finish. Though we've had a couple of unseasonably hot days in the past week, acclimatization to heat is challenging in a coastal biome. Unlike when I lived in Tucson, AZ, there are only a few scorching hot days each year. I have some experience racing duathlon in the heat. The heat and sun at last year's Long Course Duathlon Nationals in Auburn, CA was truly oppressive. People were wilting like parched tulips on the final run. Having only started running training 8 weeks before the event, I felt lucky to still be moving forward on the last climb. I managed to finish in a few minutes over 5 hours, plodding as quickly as I could to the nearest shade. Even in a short course duathlon, heat exposure can still be a problem. My preparation plans haven't changed, other than focusing on staying cool and out of the sun before the race. During the race, though, I will concentrate on keeping my core body temperature cool. Dowsing myself in water at the water stops is a favorite method of mine. How are you planning to keep cool this weekend? Let us know in the comments.
I hope you are. I know I haven't treated you as well as you deserved the past few days. Standing on concrete for 8 hours a day is not the greatest preparation for Du nats, I know, and I could have treated you to more massages and TLC. What can I say? Life isn't fair. I hope you'll stick with me through Sunday. People are saying that this weekend's Duathlon Nationals is the biggest duathlon ever on American soil. Count me in. I'm flying over 3000 miles from my little hamlet of Sebastopol, CA to Richmond, VA in the heart of tobacco land. Are the dogwoods and azaleas in bloom? I originally hail from South Carolina, and I miss Spring south of the Mason-Dixon line. Pretty blossoms aside, I'm interested to see what this "duathlon resurgence" is all about. Is this a flash in the pan with ITU Worlds being hosted in North Carolina this year? Or are people truly interested in duathlon? I am. I'm stoked on it. I admit to a personal motivation to see that duathlon booms. Secretly, I want to get back to being an elite athlete, and it would be fun if the depth of the duathlon competition stepped up and the quantity of events increased. I raced bikes for years and picked up running a couple of years ago. While I love heading into the coastal hills for long rides, I've come to love a long run through the apple orchards around Sebastopol just as much. Now I get to combine the two! Between owning a bike shop and directing a nonprofit organization, I don't have the time to train that I once had, but I still manage to squeeze out some semblance of form somehow. Come Sunday, I'm going to ask my legs (and lungs too) to use every bit of that form to do it. As they say, "du or du not, there is no tri."
I get regular google alerts about duathlon happenings. I'd say 60% of them come from New Zealand. Maybe it's just because it's now summer there, but the kiwis seem to be nuts over duathlon. A quick search for "New Zealand Duathlon" yielded this result: The Real Women's Duathlon. "Another 600 women catch the 'duathlon bug.'" If you look at google trends for duathlon, you'll see that New Zealand has a much larger search volume than anywhere else in the world. Sadly, the US isn't even in the top ten. So what is New Zealand doing right in promoting the sport of duathlon?
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