It won't be long, the racing season will be over and it will be time to reflect on what worked and what did not worked. One thing I learned that you just can't "swing it", are the high intensity intervals above your anaerobic threshold. In most criteriums and road races I did this year, I just didn't have the top end speed to instigate or bridge to winning breakaways. Looking back, that was to be expected as I really did not focus on that type of training. Cycling road races, are much different than triathlons/duathlons - what makes the difference in a cycling race is the ability to sustain those anaerobic efforts for a few minutes, recover, repeat, recover, repeat, recover, repeat... until the winning break.

On the other hand, time-trialing/triathlons/duathlons are steady state just at your threshold, and the only time you go above your threshold is in the last few minutes of the race (if you have other competitors near you...).

Duathlons suited me particularily well this year, having improved my running combined with strong cycling in the last few years. Last Saturday was a sprint (5km, 20km, 2.5km) duathlon in Drummondville, Quebec. My goal in the first run leg, was to stay in contact or remain very close to the leaders. It turned out, 5 of us, ran as a group, everyone looking at each other hesitant to accelerate risking to fade before the end of the race. I was content to keep it all together and we came into T1 (the first transition) in 16:55.

My strength is the bike and after stepping first into T1 but leaving third out of T1, within a few hundred meters as was in front of the race. Since the second run was very short, I kept a good focus on the bike, always making sure my position was aero and tried to avoid any mental distractions.

When I arrived in T2, I had about a 2 minute lead, as the annoucer was looking for upcoming racers. Since he couldn't see any, I remember him saying something like "unless there is a technical problem, it's pretty much in the bag". Then a volunteer, as I come out of T2 tells me "it's ok you can slow down now". So taking the advice, I slowed down just a notch to make sure I don't experience any "technical problem" (at least it's not possible to a flat on the run) and made it to the finish line in 56:09.

Next weekend it's back to cycling with the Quebec provincial (state) time-trial and road championships.? I'm not setting any goals for this one other than given it my best effort, as I know the competition will be tough.