Duke Liver Center ½ Triathlon Race Report
After the race many people asked me why I came all the way to Raleigh, North Carolina for the Duke Liver ½? Well, the truth is I am living with some friends down here in Durham, NC doing some “heat acclimatization” and my final build up for Kona. The 50-60 degree weather of Vermont is just too much of a jump to Kona’s 90 degrees. But I digress, onto the race report!
The race was put on by SetUp Events and they really did a great job. They had done some publicity before the race saying that I was coming down to race “fresh off my win at Ironman Lake Placid.” As a result I was a marked man on the course, but at the same time everyone knew who I was and were all very supportive. I had a great time during the race, but an even better time after the race meeting people. Thank you to the entire North Carolina triathlon community for being so welcoming.
Since I came for the heat, obviously on race morning it happened to be 50 degrees. During the race it was sunny and in the mid 70s, basically perfect race day weather! I was hoping for it to be 95 and humid just to practice racing in the heat. I’m sure I was the only one who was hoping it to be disgustingly hot!
I did not even bring my Helix wetsuit on this trip expecting the water to be well above 78 degrees. However, because of a few cooler days before the race it was a wetsuit legal race, measuring in at 77 degrees. I had decided regardless of water temps to wear my Blue Seventy Point Zero as I have yet to wear it in a race and wanted to before Kona. The water level in Jordan lake was about 2 feet lower than normal due to the drought most of North Carolina is experiencing this summer. As a result the swim was an out and back instead of the preferred triangle shape course. To add to this there was a pretty strong headwind creating a very rough and choppy swim particularly on the way out. As a result my swim was significantly slower than I was hoping and a little further back, 30mins, 8th place and 5 ½ minutes behind the leader.
After a quick T1 I headed out onto the bike. This bike course is absolutely beautiful through rolling farm land with a few small climbs and very few cars. At one point during the race there were about 10 wild turkeys in the middle of the road, at the time I was traveling about 30mph and had to swerve and fortunately avoided them, needless to say this experience was a little scary! The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful. I was working pretty hard and found a great rhythm until the last 10 miles when the slightly rougher road and head wind began to make it a little tough. I pushed through and finished 2nd off the bike in 2:19.
I cruised into T2 just as the leader was heading out onto the run course. After another quick transition I began my pursuit about 2 ½ minutes down.
This run course is two loops on a series of hilly, dirt and grass trails located in New Hope State Park. This run course is hard, but very beautiful and peaceful through a forest and overall a really enjoyable run. I began the run with several tight muscles and twinges after a solid bike, but after a mile or 2 I began to loosen up and found my stride. I caught up to the leader at about mile 4 and kept up the pace because there were some very talented athletes in this race that I knew would keep the pressure on. I finished the run in 1:22.
I finished first overall in 4:13 which I was told is a new course record. This was a great confidence boost and measure of my fitness heading into October and I’m getting very excited! Lastly, I really like this area of the country and the triathlon community is pretty impressive. There is a chance I may move here next year…we’ll see! J
Thanks!
Alex M-M
www.alexmmtri.com
