Category: Flower City Paddle Triathalon (page 1 of 1)

With temperatures barely above freezing and the Genesee River moving quicker than usual, the kayaking was canceled and I ended up in my first ever Duathlon. I finished the run/bike/run in 2:30:57.

I ran the opening 5k in 23:33 which is a little slower than I have done in the past, but a fairly decent time given that I didn’t feel like I was pushing myself.

On the second stage it felt like I hadn’t ridden a bike in half a year, mostly because I hadn’t. This proved problematic on the third hill when I touched the front derailleur for the first time and my chain fell off. And after fixing it, it fell off a second time five seconds later. After finally getting things sorted I finally gave up any pretense about worrying about my finish time, and was able to simply enjoy the rest of the bike ride. I finished the bike portion in 1:34:51, which while slower than my 2016 time it was also inexplicably three minutes quicker than last year.

For some reason run/bike is easier than bike/run and this showed on my final run which took thirty minutes. While my pace was steady, it felt slow. However given the running is inherently quicker than kayaking this is still the fastest I have ever finished, even if it was in a different event.

On Saturday I competed in the Flower City Paddle Triathlon for the fourth straight year. I finished in 2:55:40, which unfortunately is slower than my time from last year.

The running part of the race went well. I ran the five kilometers in 22:05, which is only four seconds off my pace from the 2016 version of the race.

The bike is where this race fell apart for me. Going into the triathlon, I was aware that I hadn’t put in enough practice on the bike but hoped that I wouldn’t lose too much time. Instead it took me 1:37:36 to complete, which was 13 minutes slower than last year.

At 54 minutes, the kayak portion of the race also took longer than last year. However, given that I am always out of practice with the kayak, this probably had more to do with the change in river conditions. Not only was the average flow rate was higher than the past two years, and a wind storm from March has left the river filled with an usually high number of downed trees, that provided additional obstacles and unpredictable currents.