On November 20th, I did a duathlon at Natural Bridge Caverns near San Antonio. My wife and 8 of my friends also did duathlons this day and we walked away with a ton of awards!
The event had a total of 4 races:
· Cave Bear: 2 mile run, 15.5 mile road bike, 2 mile run
· Sabertooth: 2 mile run, 12 mile mountain bike, 2 mile run
· Wooly Mammoth: 5K run, 26 mile road bike, 5K run
· T-Rex: 5 mile "very challenging" run, 26 mile road bike, 2 mile run
Shayne, Bernice, Jay, Jacky, Ron, and I chose the Sabertooth race. Darlene, Dave, and Helen chose the Cave Bear. Sebastian chose the Wooly Mammoth.
All races started off about 400 yards deep in the cave and then headed out to a dirt road. For the Sabertooth race, we transitioned to mountain bikes and hit the newly formed trails. The trails looked like they were just cut with a brush mower, so there was a lot of chopped brush on the ground. This proved to be very difficult to ride through because it wasn’t packed. I felt like I was riding through mud or I had flat tires. There were 2 sections that were marked with 3 down arrows, indicating sketchy descents. On the first descent, my rear discs weren’t grabbing and I slid out of control and went over my handlebars. I landed on a bunch of rocks and the bike landed on me. Not much fun… After putting the chain back on my bike and turning the brake levers back to their original locations, I jumped back on the bike and continued riding. At the second triple down arrow section, I got off my bike and walked it. There were 2 really big uphill sections and I passed a lot of guys walking up these hills. The second run was on the same dirt road as the first run, but we didn’t get to run in the cave this time.
As for the Sabertooth racers, I finished in 3rd place and Shayne finished about 2 minutes ahead of me in 2nd place in our age/gender classification (out of 8), Bernice got 1st (out of 3) in her class, Jacky finished 1st (out of 2) in her class, Jay got (5th) out of 10 in his class, and Ron got 3rd (out of 10) in his class. For the Cave Bear racers, Darlene got 2nd (out of 10) in her class, Dave got 3rd (out of 13) in his class, Helen got 4th (out of 7) in her class. Finally, Sebastian finished 2nd overall (out of 28) in the Wooly Mammoth race.
Overall, it was an awesome day. I always knew my friends were a bunch of badasses! Those other chumps at the race didn’t know what hit them!
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| Showing off our award rocks. |
From left to right: Darlene, Ross (me), Dave, Shayne, Sebastian, Jay (holding Bernice's award rock), and Jacky.
