Race Report: Omaha Duathlon

My husband has been working really hard getting ready for summer triathlons.  He runs most mornings, and either bikes or swims over lunch.  Naturally, the Omaha Duathlon was quite appealing to him...it would give him a chance to practice biking and running before putting the swim, bike, AND run together.  We decided that both of us would register for this event.  The format of the Omaha Duathlon was a 2.5 mile run, 15 mile bike, and 2.5 mile run.  As the event drew closer, I was starting to have visions of crashing my bike (have I mentioned that I'm not the best biker?)...I normally wouldn't let this bother me too much, but with the Lincoln half-marathon NEXT week, the last thing I needed to deal with was a bike accident.  I became even more worried when I saw that rain was forecast.  I decided that I would just take the event easy...well, probably run as fast as I could, but bike nice and easy.

So anyway, race morning started out perfectly...but around 7:00am the rain started and didn't stop.  When we arrived at the Memphis State Recreation area, we were alerted that the race directors weren't sure what they were going to do about the race and would make the call around 8:45.  Because of the rain and lightning, it was decided that we would do a 3 mile race.  It was still raining, and consequently felt really cold, but once we started running it felt fine.  Within the first 100 meters, I almost fell because my ankle gave out...what the heck? Apparently I don't even need to be on a bike or trip over anything to have a near accident.  We did two loops around the park for an even 3 miles.  I thought that the race directors did a great job of coming up with a new event and new course in a very short amount of time...though I can imagine it was very disappointing for them.  I felt good and won the race in a time of 19:01.  Philip finished about a minute after me.  I really wish that it would have been a 5k, because I think that I would have been sub-20 and Philip would have had a monster PR.  I think that Philip was in the top 10, but haven't seen the official results yet.  He did place in his age group, but not sure what place.  The race director said that the awards ceremony was going to be short and sweet since everyone had been in the rain for so long.

The 2014 Omaha Duathlon was not what we expected, but had a good time anyway.  I'm sad that my husband wasn't able to practice on his bike though.  We are planning on doing the Omaha Triathlon in mid-July...hopefully we just have hot/humid conditions instead of rain! :)

Next up: the Lincoln Half-Marathon and Market to Market Iowa.  It's going to be a fun and challenging next couple of weeks.

Complete Results can be found here: http://www.truetimeracing.com/results.php?id=3195