ATOMICMAN DUATHLON RACE REPORT

Another adventure. This time the journey took me and my friend east...to White Rock, New Mexico. A 6.5 hr drive away.

I had heard about the Atomicman Duathlon before and wanted to race it last year, but the drive was too long for one person :-) Especially me...2 hrs of driving = sleepy!!!
The race offers a cash prize for the win, and also a 500 $ bonus for breaking the course record...mhhh...I looked at the record and thought: Looks doable :-) I checked out the girl that had it and she is a GREAT athlete...so then I thought: why the heck are the times so slow?

Well, I found that out when I looked at the course:-) The run is a 2 loop 10 k, followed by the toughest 40 k bike I had ever seen in a multisport event, followed by another 5 k...
The running loop consist of a downhill of about 5 min followed by a 15 min uphill (felt like there was more uphill then downhill in that race ;-)
The bike is beautiful, it goes up and down and up and down and down into this canyon and back up on the other side (they are definitely NOT rollers, because you CAN'T "ROLL" on the uphill :-)...then followed by a 6 mile climb, then back the other way.

The race director and the entire town is super friendly!!! I had an offer for a homestay, but since we were 2 people we decided to camp instead of invading someone's house. We camped at the Juniper Campground, the weather forecast said 40 degrees as a low...yeah, right...we woke up and our tent cover was frozen, our water bottles were frozen and our handlebars and seat :-) And the NUTELLA!!! We actually had to heat the Nutella up to be able to have breakfast:-)

The race starts at a nice time: 8:30 am, so no stress :-)

The gun went off and the legs felt...OK. Not great but OK. I ran the first 10 k and was 2 MIN!!! behind my "goal time" for the course record. I jumped on the bike and felt OK again. It is really hard to find a rythm on this course. Constant shifting followed by thinking about getting out of the seat or staying in? I got to the turn around and looked at my watch and thought: there is no way I will break this record. I am pooped:-) But my 2010 attitude is that I just do the best I can without worrying or freaking out. And I kept going. I got into T2 and started running/or is it called...speed walking? I ran but felt sooo extremely pooped. IT WAS GREAT!!! My legs were done. I kept looking at my watch and realized I had a shot at making it, but I would have to go fast...the results from the years before show that everyone raced about one min/mile slower on the second run...including me. And now I know why. Because this is the toughest race!!! I ran around the last corner and realized that I ... wait a second... I am going to break the record!!! I finished 1.5 min under the old record. YIPPIE!!!

This doesn't happen a lot, but I didn't know if I could walk one more step!!! This might have been the toughest race I had ever done!!!

My friend finished 2nd in her agegroup and did great. We were both in a lot of pain after the race, but it was soooo worth it :-)

The people in the town were super nice and hung out with us for the longest time. We found out that the town has the most PHD's/Population in the US, because of all the secret weapon building that is going on.

This race is great. If you ever want to feel like throwing up, sitting down and walking due to being exhausted: go do the atomicman duathlon. Or just do it if you want to do a well organized race in a beautiful area with nice people!!!