I had two races this weekend, the Barkin’ Dog Duathlon and the Title 9K for Mothers Day. All pictures above were taken by my FIL at the Title 9K race today.

Barkin’ Dog Duathlon. It was to be a really warm weekend, and it started off HOT. The Barkin’ Dog Du was a 5K-run/30K-bike/5K-run event. Kinda like a triathlon but replace the swim with a 5K run. Arriving at the race site was a bit intimidating, it felt like everyone had such fancy bikes and they all looked like they were in such great shape. I found what I thought was a good spot in transition and racked my bike and set out my bike shoes, helmet, and water bottle. The race was to start in waves with the Elite competitors first, and then all the men, and relay teams, then the 35 and under women, and then the 35 and over women. After about a 25 minute late start we were off. I didn’t want to run too hard in the first 5K because I knew that I had so much more of the race to go. I had forgotten my watch so I had to go off how I felt. I felt good, I raced hard, but I felt like I left quite a bit too. I came out of the 5K somewhere around 9th in the heat. I tried to make my transition as quick as possible, off with sunglasses, off with hat, throw hat on ground, on with helmet, on with glasses, off with running shoes, on with bike shoes, grab the bike, run out of transition...it took about 1:07, not too shabby.

Onto the bike and cruising’. The bike was about 18 miles, and went around cherry creek and up and over the Dam road and back. I got passed by a few ladies, and I passed a few myself. I felt like I really held my own on the bike, especially for my first time. I learned a few lessons, I need a hydration system. Being on the aero-bars the whole time makes it hard to drink from a caged water bottle, I need an aero-bottle. Also, I need a better system for tying on the race number to the bike. After a mile or so the wind hit my bike race number and made it hit my leg every pedal stroke, ouch, so I had to rip it off. Probably not a legal thing to do in a bigger race.

After the bike it was back to transition, quickly into running shoes and off, but this time it felt horrible. Your legs feel like lead weights after the bike and it’s slow going to get them moving. After about a mile I was back and going. I managed to pass many men and one woman. Coming down the finish stretch a guy yelled to the dude ahead of me that he better speed up or he was going to get passed by a girl...but to me the funny thing was that if he was a man, he had started in a heat AT LEAST 7 minutes ahead of me, so really...I had passed him LONG AGO. All in all it was a great first race, a few lessons learned and a really tough effort.

Results: First 5K Run: 21:38 First Transition: 1:07 30K bike: 51:57 (average 21.528 miles per hour) Second Transition: 1:06 Second 5K Run: 23:07 126/479 in the race 13th woman (non-elite) 3rd in 25-29 age group (women - not elite)

Mother’s Day Title 9K. I was having a bit of trouble getting going this morning. I had a rough night last night trying to recover from the duathlon. It took a toll on my body and I needed a nap and lots of food to get things on the healing side. I woke up this morning with no appetite, and felt sick to my stomach. We got to the race site really early and had a rice walk around before anyone got there. Once people started getting there and I met up with some Mountain Mamas I was feeling better. I got Annie loaded up and with a little bit of a late start we were all off. There were TONS of women in this race and the start was really slow. It felt like eons before I was able to get around people and get going with my pace. Once in the clear I was off. It was hard running with Annie, I haven’t done it in awhile. She fell asleep for a bit. Troy was riding his bike and so I saw him many times on the course. Even Roger and Marla (FIL and MIL) showed up to cheer and take pics. I started picking off baby jogger after baby jogger and finally got to a place that I was amongst runners of my pace.

In the end there were three of us baby joggers battling it out for what we thought was the first baby jogger spot. I ended up second in the group after a long hard push to the finish. Little did we know there was a baby jogger like 5 1/2 minutes ahead. So I finished as the third baby jogger. I think my official time was 45:02, they said like 8:04 min mile pace. Here is the data from my watch, it’s pretty funny!

Results: Overall in Race: 47th out of 1627 Official Time: 45:02 Category: Jogger: 3rd of 111 Time to get to the start line: 0:58 Mile 1: 10:18 Mile 2: 7:22 Mile 3: 7:18 Mile 4: 7:49 Mile 5: 7:44 Last 0.52: 3:35

Yea! So...pretty wild! We had a great time after the race hanging out with Mountain Mamas and their families, it was great to meet some of the husbands of the women I adore. Also, after the race I felt like a whole new woman, I felt recovered from the previous day, like this was just what I needed to get rid of my funk. Good Times.