Hi All,
I wanted to chime in on my activities over the past couple of weeks. I competed in a Duathalon and a 5 mile race over the last two weekends. This is a little out of the ordinary for me as the only other road race i've ever run was the Falmouth a couple of summers ago. As you can see I've never been much of a cardio person, but it's something i've always wanted to consistently add to my routine. To make this happen I decided to sign up for a couple of races and have something to train for. I was given a bike as a birthday gift a month back so I thought a duathalon would be a good place to start. I looked for a short one and found one in the Lynn Woods called the down and dirty duathalon. It consisted of a 2.5 mile run 5.9 mile bike and another 2.5 mile run. So I trained for the race by biking and running a couple of times a week leading up to it. The farthest I ran was 6.5 miles and the longest bike was 16. So in my mind I was ready for the race. We'll race day came and the conditions were less than stellar. It poored before, during, and after the race. It was a woods course so the terrain was full of large puddles and soft ground. Lets just say my finish time was not what I had hopef for. I had my girlfriend with me and she was terrified of the conditions. There were steep up hills and down hills that kept the both of us from pushing the pace. It was more about survival than trying to set a personal best. I was just happy that we finished the race, even though it was 4th to last out of a 40-50 person field with a time of 1 hour and 45 minutes.
We'll the next weekend(this past weekend) I was signed up for a 5 mile race in Quincy that I was pumped up for. I was determined to put up a good time in the race and I couldn't blame it on the conditions this time as it was a beautiful October day. I went strong for the first 3.5 miles, but than began to tire. I struggled though the last 1.5 miles and was able to finish in a little over 37 minutes, which was good enough for 16th place out of 115. This time was a little suprising to me. I would have been happy with something around 40 minutes. It goes to show you what you can do when your motivated. If your looking to jump start a cardio routine, find a local road race to sign up for. It gives you something to look forward to and than when you finish, it motivates you to sign up for the next one to improve your time. I'm also looking for some other road races/duathalons, so if anyone out there knows of anything local coming up let me know. I also plan on running with a South Boston running club on Wednesday evenings to help stay in shape. This is another great way to stay motivated. Having other people to run with always helps the cause. We'll that's my advice for the day. So try these out and let me know how it goes!
Russ
