Training Mini Duathlon

Happy Independence Day, everyone! As far as I could tell, the City of Denton didn't run their Liberty 5K that I had done last year. So I had to make up my own workout. As it turns out it was a tough (but very good) one.

I decided to practice my transitions and do some brick work by having a mini duathlon right in my neighborhood. A 1.1 mile run around the block, a fairly long (for a "mini duathlon") 12.4 mile bike ride throughout my neighborhood streets, and the same 1.1 mile run again. Here are my stats:

My first run was pretty fast, but I couldn't seem to hold my speed going up hills on the bike. The streets were almost completely empty at 7:30 AM on a holiday, but I still had to slow down to navigate some of the turns (and I almost wiped out turning near the end of my ride because of some sprinkler run-off on the street - whew, that could have been disasterous), but the main reason for just an 18.6 MPH average speed was that my legs just felt tired. I won't be doing any more hard workouts until Sunday's race so hopefully they will be well-rested.

The second run started off almost as fast as the second one, but I got really tired as I hit the uphill part near the end of the run and I even had to walk for about 30 seconds to get my heart rate down. My pace was still a respectable 8:08/mi for the second lap, but the short distance obviously allowed me to hold out until the finish line back at my house.

The transition times were very short - the time it took to open/close my garage door to grab and retrieve my bike being a major factor. :-)


My heart rate was pretty high during the runs, but due to my tired legs I couldn't push myself as hard I would have like during the bike. Still this was a very solid hour-long workout and I'm sure I got more out of this than I would have if I had run a 5K. And plus I didn't even have to go anywhere.

Enjoy the long holiday weekend!