Runners Life Dirty Duathlon
Sir Sandford Fleming College Campus, Peterborough
Saturday November 10th 2007
runnerslife.ca
This was my last planned race of the calendar year (that can change!!), and I was excited to see what this race was like as I had never raced it (or heard of it) before. There were 2 races being held on Saturday, a short course and the long one that I entered along with 8 of my high school adventure racers. There were 70+ athletes racing with several university Triathlon team members racing. The weather was perfect with not a cloud in the sky and the temperature hovering around 4 degrees as all racers hit the trails just after noon.
The course was divided into 3 sections. The 1st was a 1.8km trail run loop that racers were required to complete twice. I will never pass myself off as a runner so I was really pleased to make my way into the bike transition in 8th place. The 2nd section was a 10 km bike that was also a shorter loop (5km) that racers had to complete twice. The biking was a mix of gravel trails and looping singletrack with a couple of cool obstacles and 2 river crossings. A lung busting climb brought racers back to the transition area (after their 2nd loop on the bike) where we again headed out to tackle the running loop twice more. I was able to make up a lot of ground on the bike and I took off on the 3rd section of the race, another 3.9 km run in 5th place. After the second loop of the run I headed into the finish with a time of 60:35, good for 5th place overall and 1st in my age category. And get this, the winners of each category were given bottles of wine!! So a first place finish and a bottle of red….that’s the way to end a season!!
Oh, I should also note that one of my students (Elyse Nieuwold) won her race category as well which makes it two races in a row (she also won the ARC Outventure race in Barrie). Congrats Elyse and all members of the AHS team for a fantastic event.
