BSA Hercules Duathlon 2010

I am looking forward to doing my 1st Duathlon event two weeks from now on June 13th 2010. This will be the 2nd edition of the BSA Hercules Duathlon being organised by Runners For Life. I did not participate in the event last year. I felt a bit tired after the Sunfeast 10K 2009 at the end of last May and decided to conserve my energy to complete my 11th and 12th marathons in June and July as part of my 12 marathons in 12 months. Having recently invested in  a hybrid bicycle I hope to do fairly well in the duathlon. The winning time in the men's senior category last year was 1:31:11. My goal is to complete between 1:40 and 1:45.

While I have been cycling and running regularly, I have never  done both of them back to back on the same day. So the RFL duathlon practice today at EGL was a perfect opportunity for me to experience this. I managed to complete 5Km running+20Km cycling+5Km running in 1 hr 55 mins. The two runs were done in about the same time of 27 minutes - though of course the 2nd one was much tougher and I really had to push myself the 1st Km or so when the legs were  stiff. I should be able to shave 3-4 minutes off this time in the actual event. The 20Km cycling took me a little over an hour. While the route was not ideal for cycling with the speed bumps, potholes and warts I need to improve significantly. A2 and Ashwani of RFL observed that increasing the seat height on my cycle would result in considerable efficiency. Plus the route of the duathlon would be much better suited for cycling. So my aim is to do the cycling also in about 50 minutes.