The Mt. Rainier duathlon was May 6th, so it’s a bit belated to be churning out a race report but I’m doing it anyway so DEAL WIF IT. It was the fourth year I’d be doing the short course, and I’ve grown to enjoy the race quite a bit (it doesn’t hurt that I’ve placed in my age group every time I’ve done it, largely due to the fact that there’s no swim segment to substantially drag down my overall finish time). I thought for sure this year Teresa would finally succeed in forcing me to do the long course version of the race (I’d managed to dodge it in previous years due to 1. Being a noob, 2. Being stubborn, and 3. Being injured), but she surprised me by encouraging me to do the short course race because I had enough long distance races on my plate this season and she thought a fast, short race would be good for me. Over two consecutive weekends I drove to Enumclaw and rode the duathlon course. The once-mighty Mud Mountain Road climb now seemed totally manageable thanks to experience/familiarity with the route and because I’ve grown to become a halfway decent cyclist. A week before the race I felt comfortable and confident and was looking forward to the event. And then, as what often happens, three days before the race life decided to kick me squarely in the ladyballs. I won’t go into details but basically an unexpected and profoundly shitty event occurred and my focus immediately shifted from racing to dealing with this sudden hardship. I abandoned my workouts and drowned my sorrows in lots and lots of booze. Thursday and Friday night consisted of drinking with friends and stumbling home from the bars. On Saturday I pinged Teresa and told her that I wasn’t in the best mindset for the race, that I had skipped workouts and was boozing it up instead of taking care of my body, and whether I should still do the duathlon. She talked me off the ledge and, ever the optimist and eternally my ardent cheerleader, encouraged me to “get back on the horse” and “channel my rage” on race day to push me across the finish line. I sucked it up and decided to follow coach’s orders. Despite having endured such a shitty week, I figured enough was enough and that I needed to get back on track, so what better time to re-establish some order in my life than to wake up and race. I behaved myself Saturday night, partaking in a single glass of wine at a friend’s birthday dinner and trying to reintroduce more traditional forms of hydration so that I wouldn’t make a complete ass of myself at the race the next day. On Sunday Jason, who was nursing an injured knee and thus wouldn’t be racing, acted as my sherpa and helped me get all my shit together before we headed out the door. I met up with my teammates and we griped about how cold the race always is before lining up to start. (I never know what to wear for this race so this year I opted to dork it up with a TN performance tee, arm warmers, black tri shorts, and tights. I think my hastily assembled attire was the byproduct of my “Fuck it, this week sucked so I’ll just throw on whatever I can grab so I can get this race over with” mentality.) The long coursers took off and I waited around with my short course peeps, one of whom recognized me as the “Mediocre Athlete,” which made me chuckle. I’m...

Before I put up my Issaquah sprint triathlon race recap, I thought I’d crank out a delayed recap of the Mt. Rainier Duathlon, which I did on May 1st. Enjoy! Until recently, I haven’t been focused on races and have instead been trying to get my right Achilles tendon healthy. Now that it finally seems as if it’s mostly on the mend, Teresa has taken advantage of my newfound health and has been bugging me about my 2011 race season. First up was the Mt. Rainier duathlon, which I wasn’t thrilled about because I wasn’t optimistic about how well I’d do (especially since I was fresh off an injury, hadn’t been running much lately, and had gained a shame-inducing amount of weight in the offseason). My grumblings fell on deaf ears, and both my trainer and my somewhat bullying boyfriend peer pressured me into signing up. (Well, technically Jason signed me up, but he used my credit card. Bastard.) Because of my running handicap, I got out of doing the long course for the third straight year, but Jason opted to finally pop his long course cherry. I wasn’t optimistic about posting a PR this time around and instead opted to focus on not embarrassing myself. Since I didn’t expect to run better than last year, I figured I could at least improve my bike time. Jason’s goal was to take the big descent back to transition confidently since he was still a bit shaky after last year’s bike accident. We got to the race and although the rain had held off and it was remarkably sunny, it was also ball-shrinkingly cold (if I had balls, that is) and holding steady at about 36 degrees. I began to immediately fret over what to wear: should I have gloves? Should I wear the team windbreaker? Is a t-shirt and arm warmers enough or do I need to don a parka OH GOD I’M GOING TO FREEZE TO DEATH OUT THERE. I reminded myself that I often race warm and ended up going with the “Screw it, it’s a short race that I don’t really care about” approach to getting ready. Jason and the other long course racers started five minutes before us shorties, so I gave him a hug and a kiss and wished him good luck. I stood around with my teammates until it was our turn to get started. Let my first race of 2011 commence! Run #1 I wasn’t sure how hard to go out on the first run leg, so I just took off like a spaz and ran as best I could. I had to dodge several horses since this year we were sharing the area with some Enumclaw horse show nonsense, but it wasn’t too annoying because the first run is so short. I thought about trying to chase down Jason’s sister who was also doing the race before remembering that she had just done the Boston Marathon and I was newly uninjured, so unless I wanted to keel over and die on the bike portion of the race, I’d better give up on unsuccessfully trying to catch someone who’s quite a bit faster than me. Boo. You just wait until I’m healthy, Danielle! …healthy and a much, much better runner. (Also, in this stupid run fantasy can you stop getting faster so I can catch up to you? K thanks.) Run #1 time: 12 min 33 seconds (7:51 min/mile pace) — not bad considering I had barely done any running (and haven’t done any speed work) in the past six months. T1 This year they changed how you enter and exit the transition...

Last year I bitched and moaned about having to do the Mt. Rainier duathlon because it was all the way over in Enumclaw and had a 2 mile hill that sucks ass to climb. Jason Jedi mind-tricked me into racing and I ended up taking 3rd in my age group. This year I did the duathlon again, and since I’ve been hitting my workouts pretty diligently and am training for a fatty Ironman, the race was one of my best ever. This year to prep for the duathlon, I ended up riding the course four times in one day (gotta love those long long long training rides) and got to know the Mud Mountain Road hill quite intimately. I also did a bike ride with some girls over Teresa’s bachelorette weekend that included an absolutely absurd 6+ mile hill that took me an hour to climb. After wimpily conquering that, Mud Mountain Road felt like a piece of cake. Throw in some good track workouts to improve my runs and I felt pretty good waking up at the butt crack of dawn on Sunday morning to race. Last year I raced a 1:36:37. My only goal this time around was to PR and to try and bike 50 minutes or under (I biked a 51:22 last year). Jas and I showed up and set up our transition areas. It was cold but sunnier than last year, and it ended up warming up fairly quickly so I just raced in my usual tri gear and threw on some arm warmers for good measure. Some of my training buddies raced in bike shorts, which I cannot fathom how comfortable it is to waddle-run with a huge cushy load near your ass and taint. Most of my teammates raced the long course but five of us represented Team Shorty. We started the race and I pushed myself to run a good but not super strenuous first leg so that I wouldn’t feel like collapsing once I got to transition. After the first 1.6 mile run I grabbed my bike and embarked as fast as I could. I felt pretty good and kept mentally telling myself to push it during the bike part of the race. When I got to the Mud Mountain Road hill, I had my best climb to date. Don’t get me wrong, it was still kind of crappy and I got passed by better climbers, but I felt pretty good and steady and was able to scale it without feeling like I was going to crap myself afterwards. (Plus, I re-passed just about everyone who passed me on the hill, so suck it.) When I got back to transition, a couple of my teammates who weren’t racing that day shouted some words of encouragement and told me, to my surprise, that I was the third female to finish the bike portion. I clickity-clacked into transition to rack my bike and pull on my Zoots, and Jason’s parents cheered me on. Jason’s mom said, “I think you’re the first female!” When I responded with, “I heard I was third,” she said, “Oh…those must have been some manly looking women then.” I chuckled and started run #2. My pace felt a bit fast but steady, and I just kept thinking push push push. I still felt good and just wanted to have a good race. At one point I passed a female and got excited, but then another female went blowing by me and I never caught up to her. She ended up beating me by about 30 seconds. *shakes fist* Anyway, I was maybe less than a mile from the...

On Sunday Jason and I did the Mt. Rainier Duathlon in Enumclaw. A bunch of our TN Multisport buddies had signed up for the race and were urging us to do the same. We had heard daunting things about the mighty duathlon course hill, so last week we decided to ride the bike route and see how formidable the hill would be. Jason, his dad, Beth, Barb and I met in horse loving Enumclaw and rode our bikes to get a feel for the duathlon course. Beth told me that she wanted to make sure she could successfully get up the hill this year since last year she was unable to conquer it. It was a warm, sunny day and most of the roads were flat and fast with a few gradual inclines…and then we got to the hill. Even though I had heard gloriously awful things about it, the beast still caught me by surprise. The first part of the hill is the steepest — it’s mercifully short, but I’m told it’s a shitty 17% incline. When I hit it I was in the completely wrong gearing and frantically downshifted. Although I did make it to the top, I ran out of momentum and ended up keeling over and running into a guardrail (thankfully, much like a Weeble, I wobbled but did not fall down). When Beth caught up to me at the top of the hill, I asked her, “Was that the part you got stuck on last year?” She just laughed and said, “Oh no, it gets worse.” “Worse” is putting it lightly. This mofo is 2 miles long. While the rest of the hill isn’t as superbly steep as the beginning part, it’s a long, winding, never-ending piece of crap. Every time I rounded a corner and expected to be at the end, I’d see more hill to climb. I cursed, sweated, wheezed, dropped my chain, cursed again, stopped to put the chain back on my bike, burned my legs up trying to start climbing again mid-hill, sweated some more, wheezed a few more times, and finally made it to the top. Then we turned around, flew down the hill (well, they flew while I held my brakes in a nervous death grip) and climbed the bastard again. While I was in better gearing the second time around, my legs were tired and hating me for drowning them in lactic acid. Why the hell would I want to pay to bike up this hill? I just climbed it twice for free and hated every sweat-soaked minute of it! Our practice ride was last Sunday, and all week Jason and I contemplated signing up for the duathlon. Teresa initially wanted us to do the long course (which consisted of a 5.1 mile run, a 28.8 mile bike and a 3.7 mile run), meaning we’d have to do the bike loop (and that bullshit hill) twice, and once we rode the course we were like “Yeeeeeah, the short course seems more appropriate.” Several of our training buddies were doing the short course and a couple of folks were doing the long course. Confident that she could conquer the hill this year, Beth egged me on to sign up and race with her. Jason and I dragged our feet up until Saturday, at which point Jason put on his game face, hitched up his britches and decided to do the race. He set out his gear and clothes and I begrudgingly mimicked him like a disgruntled monkey. When the alarm started blaring at 5:15 am on Sunday morning, he bounced out of bed and said in a far-too-chipper...