Laguna Niguel Duathlon

OC, CA
February 17th, 2012

5km RUN --- 17km BIKE --- 5km RUN

A tune-up early season duathlon that starts less than 7 miles from my house?
Sure thing!

4:45am roll out of bed
5:15 roll out of my garage into 37 degrees of freezing darkness
5:50 roll up to the Crown Valley Community Park

Register, rack at transition, find mom’s parking spot, warm up with some embro, drink some tea, get ready to race!


Run #1 = 20:41.04
6:39.45 /mile pace. 

I was moooving right out of the gate! I love the rush of the first few minutes of a mass start run race.. then the HR escalates and the pain settles in, and I wonder why I’m sprinting so hard.. haha.

I have been doing about zero speed run workouts lately, so I am more than happy with this 5k pace.
Michellie Jones and Julie Ertel split in the low 18’s for their first 5km. They didn’t have to do the 5k at the end because they were doing the reverse triathlon. But damn that’s fast!

Bike = 29:34.89 – 21.4 mph 

Strong. Worked the uphills and pushed the descents. Michellie Jones split a 28:15 and Julie Ertel split a 28:24. They were the women that beat me and only a handful of other men went under the 30 min mark.

Run #2 = 21:38.23
6:57.86 /mile pace. 

Only slightly less than a minute slower after that bike leg? I’ll take it! I got passed with a mile left on the run by a very speedy woman and I just didn’t care to push my HR over 180 to catch her back. I was fine with the fact that my pace was still under 7min every time I looked down at my watch, so it was good enough for me!

Overall time = 1:14:22.1
Overall Place = 2nd Female, 3rd OA 


There were 220 athletes in reverse triathlon and only 13 in the duathlon. It obviously wasn’t as popular as the tri, but considering this was the first annual race, I think the turnout was pretty decent. I didn’t really want to waste time getting wet for just 6 laps in a pool, which is why the duathlon sounded like a better workout for the day for me.

This was a pretty fun race and I’m happy to say I’ve found my running legs! I haven’t even been running that much which is why I was so surprised every time I kept glancing at my watch. Maybe riding around in the dirt has helped the cadence of my running legs? The Super Sunday 4 Miler I did about a year ago in NJ was a 6:45 pace, and I think I’m right back to where I was and just slightly better. Need to hold this into the next couple months of racing and bring it down!


Rocket ship: http://instagram.com/p/V15aTqPgpQ/

Event by local Go Forward Racing