Hagg Lake Duathlon

I hadn't done any multi-sport races in over a year, so I thought it was time to get busy.  I haven't been swimming at all so I entered the duathlon at Hagg Lake.  It was a 5K run, 40K bike, 5K run.  If you know Hagg lake, then you know it is a tough course.  
I have been working on my TT bike and didn't get it done in time, so I had to use my road bike.  And, I can't even use TT bars on my road bike so I went totally old-school and just rode a standard road bike.   
There were only 34 racers in the duathlon.   Most of the fast guys obviously do the triathlon.  I ended up 4th overall, and 3rd in my age group.  The top 5 guys were over 40, and 6th place was 15!


4. David Hopper 43 M 1:54:51 3 0:20:40 6 1:35 1:08:07 3 1:15 4 0:23:14 8 

I last did this duathlon in 2010, and did a 1:59 and change, so I was over 4 minutes faster this year, mostly due to not falling apart on the 2nd run. Super happy with that! And, my bike split would have been 8th best in the triathlon out of 156 racers. I bet nobody on a road bike was faster!
I got a nice bronze medal for my efforts:

After the race, I had to wait around for quite awhile for the awards ceremony, so I went for a swim.  Wow, that was an eye-opener.  I swam out maybe 100yds and my arms were already in pain!  Then, I got super dizzy and for awhile started wondering if I could make it back to shore.   I had to slowly breast-stroke it back in.   Hmmm.  I think I better get serious about this swimming stuff.  That was crazy.