Doing the Dirty Duo

We’re off to the 2016 Dirty Duo on March 5th!

Unlike the phrase ‘bikes only’ which has a bit of elitist swagger, ‘bike only’ refers to the fact I wimped out and only entered the riding portion of the dual-event race. Kind of like entering a triathlon then only doing the run.

The Dirty Duo is a solo or relay race that “brings together the mountain bike and running community”. There are a few options for entry including three running distances (15/27/50km), a single 30km mountain bike race, or a relay with a run by one teammate followed by the mountain bike course for the other. For the truly fit you can individually run the 27km then hop on your bike and ride the 30km. I’m exhausted just thinking of it.

In the paddock for the 2013 Dirty Duo. Bike was in meticulously functional and beautifully clean condition. Body, not so much.

This March event will be the first race in preparation for the BC Bike Race. The plan is to do 2–3 races before the July start of BCBR. The Dirty Duo, at 30km, seems like a nice way to ease into things. There’s also a little bit of redemption here, since I did the Dirty Duo in 2013 and came in second to last, burped a tire, and tore a chunk out of my leg.

Look how happy I am at the start! Yes this is a blurry picture.

Oh no! Trailside repair of a ‘burped’ tire. This is when you launch off a cliff with such lack of grace you actually unseat the tire from the wheel and it ‘burps’ all the air out. If you look close there’s a bunch of white slime oozing from the tire — that is sealant and it is gross. Put the tire back in place, fill it with CO2 to seat the bead, then get back to riding. You’ll also notice a runner in the background — somehow runners were passing me for the whole race. I suspect cheating.

In 2013 I finished the Dirty Duo with a time of 03:09 putting me second to last, across all categories and divisions. I was 5min ahead of last place and 1h40min behind the fastest time in the relay. But who’s counting…? More important is that I had a pretty miserable time, and not because of any falls or field repairs required. I could blame the John Fluvog dress shoes i was wearing (still assembling proper riding kit back then) but I think there was more to it.

Oops. The front wheel was swallowed by a rotten board in a ladder on the course. I made many embarrassing mistakes on this day, but this boo-boo was pretty unavoidable.

An awkward selfie to showoff the triumphant finish of rider and bike.

I wasn’t out of shape for this race, I was never in shape to start with. I was on the wait list to enter and never thought i would actually do it, so didn’t have much motivation to train. So i didn’t. Probably drank a beer and ate some ice cream. Then I got the call I was up to enter and… didn’t know what to do about it. In 2013 I didn’t know what training was, where to start, or even how to do one effective exercise. I had an idea that I wanted to start riding again, and a race seemed like a fun way to connected with that community, but I was just horribly unprepared.

In a desperate attempt to prepare for the 2013 event I went and pre-rode a section of the course on a Wednesday. That seemed like a good idea at the time and I felt okay, except that my body was so atrophied from years of inactivity that when race day came 3 days later I had no strength from lack of recovery. I was a Yugo without gas.

Lessons were learned and it turns out that smart people ease off the gas 5–7 days before a big event to let the body build up its reserves. The first of many lessons i took that day about how to train, prepare, and show up for an extended event.

A look at the altimeter reading from the final course. You can see that there was indeed a mountain in this mountain bike race (up and down Mt Seymour to ride Ned’s Atomic Dustbin).

So, what is a good finish? The 2013 event wasn’t it, but I’m doing a bit of thinking about what is. I’ll need to figure this out for the main event.