Kraillinger Duathlon

Yes, it's finally here. Four weeks to the day after the infamous event took place, relive it now below...

Pemulis wakes up, as he does at the beginning of many Pemulis stories, which makes sense because if he was sleeping then there wouldn't be so much happening and therefore there might not be much of a story going on, unless of course the story somehow involved dreaming or something was happening behind Pemulis's back as his enemies plotted against him as he slept, but generally it makes sense that he would be awake for his own stories, at six AM. As usual, though the alarm had been set for precautionary purposes, Pemulis has been sleeping only sporadically throughout the night, and has been semi-conscious for the last while, and only grabs his phone to dismiss the alarm because one needs to do that to shut it up. Both Pemulis and Joelle -- Joelle with much trepidation as she seems to fear moving too quickly after an alarm has sounded, or when either of the two are in a rush for anything -- slowly make their way out of bed to begin consuming bananas, toast, and other boring race-morning consumables that (in theory anyway) are easy on the stomach before the coming event.

As the weatherman had predicted, it is raining. Hard. While he/she is often wrong about many things, in all manner of varying ways that one could possibly be wrong, this time the weatherman has really nailed it, having called for hard, consistent rain, at 100% probability throughout the day. Offer this man a promotion. Despite the dismal, elegiac weather, the preparations go on, including pumping up the race tires (at home, for public transportation will be the means to arrive in Krailling), loading up the backpacks with warm, dry (for now) clothes, and taking one last look at the directions to the backwater that is Krailling, and finally Pemulis and Joelle are out the door. Our two heroes ride through the dark, wet morning to the local S-Bahn stop at Rosenheimerplatz. A day pass and a special fahrrad day pass for the bikes are purchased, and the next train heading east is boarded.

On the train Pemulis and Joelle encounter a young man with a mountain bike and pony-tailed long hair both in the back, and in the front. His front pony-tail is comprised of a disgusting amount of goatee hair, collected together with a hair elastic. Weird. He rambles off some questions in what sounds like German, but neither P nor J can make heads or tails about what he's saying, so P offers his standard response that goes something along the lines of "sorry we have no effing clue what you're trying to say". The young man switches to English to ask if we are also participating in the race. Up to this point Joelle had been apprehensive about the whole adventure, thinking that she would be the only "non-pro" out there, as she has recently been diagnosed as being "mit Baby" and hence will not be, let's say, pushing things to the limit on this day. As the double-pony-tailed Pole (he turned out to be Polish which is the excuse that Pemulis will use to explain why he didn't understand the initial German question) is rocking a big old fat mountain bike, Joelle's fears ease that she might have been the only "non-pro" and finish dead last.

As Krailling finally approaches and the train passengers thin out, the few that remain seem to also be travelling with personal transportation devices in the form of bicycles. Lo and behold, we're all heading to the apparently Munich-wide-famous Kraillinger Duathlon, and as we step out into the torrential downpour of a morning, despite what is now a group of six of us, none of us know which direction to take. We make a guess and start pedalling towards either an empty farmer's field or the beginning of the race. A young man appears on his bicycle and one of our group member's asks something along the lines of "young man, would you know where TV Planegg-Krailling might be?" (that being the name of the sports club where the race is set to begin). Pemulis is no German expert, but he understands the response to be something like "yes, in fact, I'm a volunteer in said race and am heading to the start now. Follow me."

We arrive at the beginning and the rain is still strong. P & J pick up their race kits which include, inter alia, a sticker that you are to place on your bicycle. The short four second walk from the race-kit-pick-up hut to the transition zone is enough time for the entire contents of the race kit to be ensconced with a protective layer of rain water. When Pemulis tries to peel off the sticker-back to expose the adhesive, he is unsuccessful. Joelle suggests that he just kind of ignore the whole sticker thing. Pemulis argues that it's very important to have the bike sticker, and would you please help me to try to remove the sticker backing to expose the adhesive. Joelle feigns an attempt and reiterates that there is really no reason that one would need to securely connect the bike sticker to the bike, time is running out, and so Pemulis reluctantly, after a few more unsuccessful tries that are unsuccessful due to the water-soaked-state of the sticker, simply "attaches" the sticker via the connecting power of water.

In this particular duathlon, the transition zone is less "every man for himself" than in your typical Ontario Subaru Triathlon Series. Each spot is numbered with your race number, and so Joelle goes to set up her station, if you will, in what miraculously turns out to be one of the only places in a several mile radius that is protected from the rain. Pemulis finds his numbered station and it is in pure open-air, open-rain land. He sets things up, eats another banana, and gets ready to race.

Given the whole mit Baby thing, Joelle has decided to participate in the shorter of the two races: the Volksduathlon. This constitutes a 5 km run, a 19 km bike, and finally a 3.4 km run. As you'll know from previous incarnations of this blog, Pemulis's race is about double, but the final run segment is just 5 km, so: 10 km run, 38 km bike, 5 km run. Because of the separate races, Pemulis's group sets off first. There is definitely a gun, and despite his poor training and woeful out-of-shapeness, the group, along with Pemulis, explode out of the gate like a rocket. The run takes the competitors on a looped course across a field, and then, as one would hope on the rainiest day of the year, where you pass the same spots several times throughout the race, through a muddy forest path that gets muddier and muddier every time you pass through it. The racers weave and dodge around giant mud puddles and quick-sand (probably) traps. Over fallen trees, and under, and around impediments and obstacles of all kinds. Pemulis runs and runs, in the freezing rain, and finally finishes in 42m35s, which is actually not all that bad if I don't say so myself, and which handily beats his goal time of 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, Joelle is jogging along at a leisurely pace. She is enjoying the shorter distance that being mit Baby affords her an excuse to participate in, but still the rain could be done without. She easily completes the 5 km run, but for contractual reasons reached between this blog, Joelle, and the management of the Kraillinger Duathlon, since any race done while mit Baby is officially for fun only and Joelle is not encouraged to exert herself too intensely, the times mean nothing and they are not permitted by the terms of the contract to be relayed here. Following the Sunday-morning jog through the woods, Joelle sets off on the next leg of her race: the 19 km bike. Again, she is mindful of her future child and wouldn't dream of depriving it of any of the blood that it might need to fully develop by being selfish and pushing her muscles too hard such that some of that blood might be diverted to fuel them. She pushes slowly along and even sees our Polish double-pony-tailed friend trying to ride his mountain bike in an aero-bar position. The final few running kilometres are completed with ease, and Joelle waits in anticipation for Pemulis to complete his race.

For any of you with strong abilities in the art of recall -- some call it memory -- you may remember that Pemulis has, in the past, had an issue with the transition zones. In Ironman Kalmar, for instance, he spent the equivalent of some small races lounging in the transition tent, longing for his bed or a hot bath, and generally not acting at all like he was participating in an event where the point is to try to complete it quickly. On this day, however, his transitions are OK. He arrives at his bike, pulls up some bike bibs over his tights, changes his shoes, and sets off. The transition zone is of more-or-less "medium" size, and though many would do it faster, his transition is acceptable coming in somewhere around two minutes. The bike is tough. Pemulis's cycling training up to this point in the summer has fallen somewhere between bad and pretty bad, and he's not exactly your model cycling-in-the-rain cyclist. Nevertheless, he presses on as best he can. As a somewhat cruel example of how inexperienced Pemulis is with cycling this year, his distance estimates are entirely off. He leaves his bike computer in the mode that shows the following two values: current speed, and current cadence. After what seems like an inexorably long time, he genuinely believes that the bike portion must almost be over and so he decides to push a button to see how close to 38 km he actually is. The answer? 13 km. THIRTEEN!?!? Oh man...

Pemulis continues to push his pedals and move painfully through the rain. He is only at the 13 km mark somehow, but if you think about it in the terms of fractions, for example, that's more than one third done. When there are only a few km's remaining, Pemulis decides he has some juice in the tank, so to speak, and decides to hammer it for this last bit. He accelerates to >40 km/h and just as he's getting into a nice rhythm, the bike portion is mercifully over. He dismounts his bike, and begins hobbling it over to his transition station to remove the bike bibs, change back into the absolutely drenched and muddy running shoes, and go for one last five kilometre run. The bike portion takes 1h7m on the dot, for an average speed of just above 34 km/h. Pemulis is pleasantly surprised as he beats his 1h15m goal time by a full eight minutes.

The last run is tough. While he had made some race predictions / goals on his blog some days before the race, and he had been beating them up to this point, the final run is a portion that would not prove to be as easy as he had foreseen and hoped. Back through the muddy forest two more times, and along the puddle-filled field, Pemulis did have the energy to pass a few people near the end which is always nice. And though he had predicted a time no worse than 22 minutes thirty seconds, he finishes the final 5 k in 22:51 for a lacklustre finish to his duathlon. So, the total? 2h16m27s, which is exactly ten minutes and three seconds faster than his goal. Success! Success? Sure.

But how successful relative to the other racers? Not very. You see, it turns out that the Kraillinger Kurzduathlon was not just any duathlon, but in fact the Bavarian championships. His "competitors", if you can call them that, were Bayern's best and brightest. And so we won't report his final placing in this particular forum, but this is the Internet age, and so, for inquiring minds who have to know, the truth is out there. But: not last!

Finally, like many races where there is race photography involved, they have a company do it and you can spend 3 months salary on the full size photographs after choosing the ones you like from grainy thumbnail size previews that have been modified with a watermark. Since many of the photos were taken closely together, and since just seeing them by themselves is a little underwhelming due to their small size, I took the liberty of assembling them into an animated GIF for your amusement. Enjoy and see you next time.

Oh, and one last thing: do you remember the bike sticker that Joelle was adamant about being entirely superfluous? One other German over-indulgence on the rules that we should just ignore and get on with our lives? Well, the ingenious system that has been developed for German triathlons is that you can only leave the transition zone with your bike at the end of the race if the number on your bib matches the number of your bike to prevent people from stealing bikes. Great idea! Unfortunately, since my sticker clearly fell off due to no use of actual sticker adhesive, we were left waiting in the rain after the race until every single other person had left with their bike to make sure that I wasn't stealing theirs. Next time we will make sure to apply the sticker.

FIN

CykelCity Gran Fondo Kungsbacka

Hello from sunny Florence! While you may think that you can now feel relieved as you will finally after all this time of what seemed to be ceaselessly hour after hour day after day week after week waiting to finally (!) hear the news of the outcome of the Krailling Duathlon and whether or not I was able to achieve my goal time that was dissected and explained several days ago, unfortunately you are about to be gravely disappointed. This is not the long-awaited KD post-race-analysis post. While theoretically I could make this post into that post, there is an important reason why, practically, I won't. You see, I had previously spent a bunch of time downloading all the pictures from the K Duathlon onto my computer at home for the very reason that I could then use them in the KDPRA post, and since I'm not at home, burdened that I am relegated to the Tuscan hinterland, and don't have my computer with me (side note: it sure is embarrassing being at a conference with a PC instead of a Mac [going for work so need my work computer] and it's also quite inefficient and frustrating because the battery dies in a few minutes [more or less] and therefore you have to find an outlet to sit by and normally they're at the very back of the room and then you can no longer see the slides very well or hear the speaker clearly either and so you lose interest and instead decide to write a post on your long-neglected blog but you can't do the one you have been meaning to do because you don't have the pictures that you downloaded specifically for said blog and so you write another post on another -- albeit slightly related -- topic) you're getting this post instead.

So, the post at hand: the Kungsbacka Gran Fondo... This was a 137 km (though my Garmin ended up saying 137.7) bike race that Thony, I, and about 200 other people participated in around the hellaciously hilly Halland* County on Sweden's not-always-so-sunny south-west coast last weekend on what would prove to be the windiest day in the history of Scandinavia. Before I get into the details of race day itself, let me begin with a word of caution: based on my learned experience, accumulated up to this point in my now thirty-four years of life on this here planet, and particularly with respect to learnings I acquired some time in the last several days, I would warn off anyone, anywhere, from participating in a 137 km bike race when any or all of the following conditions are or may be met: (1) the wind levels surpass the "gale force" classification sustained over an entire day; (2) the furthest you've cycled in a single session in the previous three years or so accounts for about half of the distance you are to complete in the race; (3) you're a bit of a wimp. Unfortunately for the author of this blog, all three of the above points were met during the aforementioned race. Thus, it was a difficult day full of pain, horror, and humiliation. That begin said, however, it was also a lot of fun, I didn't DNF (i.e. I finished the race within the cut-off time), and I wasn't even in last place.

Sunday morning started around 7:00 when the 50+ km/h howling winds and ~7 degree temperature greeted our timid steps as we emerged from Thony's cottage-like mansion (CLM) overlooking the shores of Sweden's beautiful west coast to load up the Korean station wagon. We drove to Kungsbacka, prepped the bikes by performing various tasks including ensuring that the tires held a solid twelve bars of pressure per, did a short warm-up ride, and lined ourselves up right in the thick of the starting pack. As a small aside, for those wondering what bike I made use of for this epic journey, that would be Thony's previous road bike -- a "Merida" -- seen behind his current professional Cervelo S5. The fact that the latter bike costs (literally) five times as much as the former could be a factor that one might use if you were looking for performance excuses in a race. I won't do that here, however, as this was a pure case of being woefully out-of-shape and ass-kicked by the distance, the terrain (more than 1,300 m of climbing), and mother nature's evil, evil conditions that included cold, rain, and surpassing all else, the wind (did I mention the wind?).

At 9 AM sharp, the gun finally went off (ed: was there a gun? It may have just been a "GO!") and the group of 200+ cyclists were off. Our protagonist joined himself on to a sizeable peloton and launched into some early hard climbs that saw his HR jump to >100% of its theoretical maximum. Still, he clung on to the back wheel of whoever's bike he could and when he was dropped from that particular group approximately 15 km into the 137, he realized (he = I here of course, but I'm just using a different narrative technique) that his RPE (rating of perceived exertion) was more in line with a 20-minute race rather than one that should consume between 4 and 6 hours.

For the next about 1 hour / 30 kilometres I was on my own. I pedalled up and down towering ascents, through forests, and along winding roads looking down on Swedish lakes and bays and estuaries of the North Sea. Finally, a single cyclist caught up to me and we "worked together" (i.e. he would be at the front and I would cling on as best as I could in the draft zone for 15 minutes or so followed by me being at the front for a couple minutes tops) until the end of the first loop which was around the 58 km point and which I arrived at after 2 hours, 10 minutes. At this point, I got off my bike and ate a bunch of food at the rest stop. I ate and I ate and I drank some water and then I drank some more. Then I went pee and then I ate another nutrition bar. Then I drank some sports drink and then I looked around and figured I had better get going again, just after one more snack. My pit stop was arguably a little bit long and I was again by myself. I trucked along the wind-swept roads where the winds were so strong that I could be pushing let's say approximately 300 W along a flat and be going 15 km/h max. Just when I decided that maybe I should crumple up into a little ball, put down my bike, and quit this silly race, a group of approximately 8-10 riders caught up to me.

Before these particular riders had reached me I had been harbouring an irrational fear that I was the last / only one left on the course. Irrational, of course, because when I left the rest area there were several riders still drinking coffee and many more still making their way into the pit stop. But the fears felt real enough and the arrival of a group of cyclists was a pleasant surprise that helped keep my spirits from shattering completely. I joined on with these guys and their approach to the race turned out to be highly amenable to my own. Within a few km's, following a particularly loathsome climb, everyone pulled over to the side of the road for a snack break! I naturally pulled over as well and broke out a Xenofit Carbohydrate Bar and joined in the snacking festivities. Not speaking (of course), somehow (maybe because I'm not blonde? [ed: but you were wearing a helmet!]) a friend of Thony's figured out that I was the odd man out and -- out of 200+ people in the race where one of them happened to know Thony and know that I was in the race -- he said "hey! are you Thony's friend?". This was the beginning of my long partnership with Thony's friend Ville and his team.

Ville, his buddies, and I, would more or less stay together for the rest of the race. There is a particular ~5 km section near the end of both loops 1 and 2 where you charge head-first directly into the wind for a bit, only to then make a sharp right on to a fully open road with large farm fields on either side. During this latter sub-section, the wind has nothing standing in its way that might work to diminish its power, and you have to lean to your left as if you were making a hard left turn simply to stay more-or-less upright on the bike. The wind was that strong. We had been working together as a team up to this point, but riders were crumbling. This wind-swept leg in particular unloaded a "hurt locker" (as they say) upon the course (or something like that) and when we rolled into the pit stop area for the second time, it seemed like a lot of us had simply had enough. At this point, we weren't the last-place group. As I repeated the ritual of eating, drinking, eating, and drinking some more, more groups arrived into the rest zone along with a charity team comprised of about 25 people all decked out with matching yellow Bianchi bicycles. These teams didn't stick around this time, however. Some stopped very briefly, whereas others simply cruised through the nutrition hut (that was being disassembled at this point anyways). Finally, just as we were about to head off for the final thirty kilometres, Ville told me "they said we can't do the last loop". I said "what???", he spoke to some people in Swedish a bit more, and then he said "ok we're gonna do it anyways." And we were off...

The group had been vastly diminished in size and power, however. Whereas previously we were many, we were now just four: me, Ville, and two other guys with names probably somewhere along the lines of "Mats" or "Linus" or "Hjalmar" or "Melker". The problem was that none of us had any energy left. And somehow it was left to me to be the saviour of the misfits. Think of most Hollywood movies that have ever been made: you know, where there are a bunch of losers and then one of the losers somehow accomplishes a heroic feat to turn the losers into victorious winning warriors? Well, it wasn't like that at all, but we were going to finish the race and it turned out that I was going to be the one who was going to get us there. And so I took the lead. I pulled and I pulled and led our small team with the foreign captain up mountain(-ish) passes, alongside Swedish farms, and even through a short thunder storm. Finally, with only three or four kilometres to go, I pulled off to the side as I felt spent. I made the signal that it was someone else's turn up front, and moved to the back of the pace line. Unfortunately, no one had gained any energy and our speed diminished from a sprightly 20-some km/h down to a geriatric number in the, let's say, "high teens". We were so close anyways and so after half a minute I raced back up to the front of the line and waited for everyone to catch up so I could be a hero and pull us to victory (victory of a sort). I slowed down and I slowed down some more, but my Swedish comrades were still having problems. Ville saw his moment of defeat and in valiant selfless tradition told me (essentially) to save myself: go on! Leave us! In the aforementioned Hollywood movie I would have ignored that advice, but since it was real life and I just wanted this thing to be over, I looked to a deep dark place within myself (they say this in Ironman movies... I don't really know what it means but I hope it's metaphorical) and found some power. I raced ahead up one final climb and even passed a couple of lone cyclists who had lost their own groups.

Finally, I arrived at the half-dismantled finish line. Some volunteers that hadn't yet gone home delivered a round of applause and a girl that seemed relieved to be able to get rid of another of the last-remaining finisher medals handed it to me and said something in Swedish; probably "Congratulations" or "Call me later" -- they sound similar in Swedish. In the end the race would take me 6 hours and 11 seconds for an average speed of 22.82 km/h. That of course includes the multiple breaks and so if you consider my "average moving speed" (which is a great invention made I think by Garmin) it climbs all the way to about 25 km/h which is still pretty bad but not as bad. I guess it would have been nice to get under six hours and I easily could have found those 11 seconds at a number of places throughout the race, but when you're up in the six hour range for a race that should really have taken you maybe even up to an hour less, getting just under the rounding-off hour doesn't have the same importance I would venture to say.

So that's it. The take-aways: about ten people finished after me and another twenty or so didn't complete it at all. Let's not discuss the hundreds that were ahead of me because in life you're supposed to concentrate on the victories, no matter how small or how insignificant or how you choose to frame them. Thony, on the other hand, did really well. He has to since he's got an Ironman in a few weeks. He finished 36th with a time of 4h12m26s. Something for me to work towards!

And with that, back to the conference. Quick Florence update: 30 degrees and sunny when I arrived, but has devolved into more Munich-like weather with rain and 18 or so. Sandi is here too (arrived on the train) and we will participate in the "Color Run" on Saturday with our friend Clara: a 5 km run in the city centre where one runs through clouds of paint and you end up colourful, I guess, at the end. Probably not the greatest thing for our unborn child, but I'm hoping the paint clouds are non-toxic.



* that's Alliteration.

Multi-Sport Race Preparation, or, How to Make a Goal Time

When we moved to Grenoble more than three years ago, one might say that we were at the pinnacle of our multi-sport careers [FN1]. Having come off a summer that included multiple sprint- and olympic-distance finishes in the Subaru Ontario triathlon series, plus our first half-Ironman distance in Peterborough, my first 3,000+ km season of biking, a semester as part of the Masters swim program at the University of Guelph, and, of course, starting into training for the inaugural Ironman Sweden that would come later that summer, I think it would be fair to say that we felt confident going into a race that we knew what to do. Not how to win, of course (that, unfortunately, takes more than experience: it requires talent), but how the whole thing goes down, what you need to bring, how the transition between legs of the race works, etc. Even for the Aquathlon Longue Distance in Roanne-Villerest, where we swam 4km against real open-water swimmers (and didn't finish last), we were prepared with an idea of what to wear, what kind of nutrition to bring, and had a good idea of approximately how long the whole thing would take to complete.

It is now (somehow) May 2015; we drink less wine but more beer, eat less baguette but more bretzen, and haven't entered a multi-sport event since Ironman Sweden, nearly three years ago. That will all change tomorrow with the running (and cycling) of the 22nd (!!) Kraillinger Duathlon here in Munich. The distances I'll be required to complete are: 9.7 km running, followed by 38 km cycling, followed by another 4.9 km running. How long will that take? Who knows!? I ran less km's this past April than any other April in the last six years (when I started counting) and only had my first outdoor bike-ride of the season a couple of Wednesdays ago on April 15th, of which you can read about (if you haven't already) in the previous post on this very blog. So let's say it will be slow, and therefore the answer to the question is "a long time". But how long? Further complicating things is that the friendly weather man does not have so friendly news regarding tomorrow: ONE HUNDRED PERCENT (100%) chance of rain. They also break it down in eighths-of-the-day now: 12-3, 3-6, 6-9, etc. The race starts at 9:00 and will take less than three hours (one hopes anyways as three hours is the cut-off time). What does the weather man predict for 9-12? 100% chance of rain again. Oh man!

Nevertheless, and since this was originally meant to be a memo on multi-sport race preparation, I will go on the record here and give a goal time. So, the first task for race preparation is to set yourself a goal time. Something not so outrageous that you have no chance in the world of making it, but something not so easy that you don't even have to try to beat it. I suppose that part is obvious, but better to have it in writing [FN2]. How do you come up with this time? Let's start by breaking things down. The first leg of the race is a 9.7 km run, so essentially 10 km with a little bit of room to screw up. My best 10k was a year and a half ago and took me 41 minutes and 30 seconds. Being that I have to bike ~40k afterwards, and then run another 5k, the sensible thing to do in this situation then is to not take your best time as an estimate/goal. Also, we have to factor in the important detail mentioned above that I haven't exactly been tearing up the running trails lately. So let's round up a bit and lay down the first number: 45 minutes for the first leg.

Following the initial run, we have the 38 km bike. This one is even more difficult to predict because while Sandra and I may have participated in literally dozens of running races over the last several years, as noted above the cycling kind of disappeared after the glory of Sweden. Not only have we not participated in any multi-sport events, but we haven't participated in any cycling events, or done much cycling of any kind either. The other thing is the guaranteed rain. Running in the rain is fine, and, depending on the often accompanying wind, doesn't affect performance all that much. Cycling in the rain, on the other hand, is a whole other thing. Turns have to be taken more slowly, descents are more dangerous, and all in all you end up going a lot more slowly than dry conditions might allow. To find a comparable historical datapoint let's go all the way back to September 2011 (nearly four years ago) to the Guelph Lake 2 Sprint Triathlon Relay where I completed the 30 km bike leg in 51 minutes and 59 seconds for an average speed of 34.6 km/h. There, of course, I only had to bike (no running before or after) and it was a dry, beautiful day. Extrapolating from that speed, to go 38 km it would take me 1hr, 5m, 55s. But clearly there's no way I'm going to go that speed, so let's just conservatively bump that time up to 1h15m (that's just on the right side of 30 km/h).

Finally, we have the second run leg of the race. Why they want us to run again, anyone's guess is as good as mine, but there's no sense in asking why because it's there so we have to do it. The distance is another strange one coming in at 4.9 km, so let's demonstrate a little bit of common sense and call it a fiver. To be a little bit silly about things, we can again look to my best 5k time which is actually not all that great, coming in at 20m22s from September 24 2011. Interestingly, this came just three weeks after the bike ride we used in the previous paragraph. Must have been a magical time. Anyways, am I going to run 5k in 20 minutes after having ran 10km and then biked 40? No-siree-Bob. I will be 100% pooched at this point but I want to be a little bit daring here and go out on a limb and say I should be able to run it at a 4:30 pace at worst and so that leaves us with 22m30s. Probably being a little reckless, but you can't always meet all your goal times, right?

Finally, before tallying everything up, we need to consider transitions. Transitions are, as the  name suggests, the limbo purgatories between the different sports in the race. They should not be considered as negligible, however. Harking back to that dreamy August day in Sweden, I spent a cumulative total of more than twenty minutes during my two transitions confusingly searching for a bag that I threw in what I thought was the wrong pile then after minutes of searching deciding both that (A) it was the right pile; and (B) I actually didn't need the bag anymore, sitting around in a daze and in shock that there could possibly be more coming after what I had already done, and, naturally, making use of the Swedish portapotties. Since it will be as cold as all get out (or whatever the saying may be) tomorrow, I will definitely need to wear some kind of jacket for the bike, and remove it afterwards. I'll -- as always -- have to change from running to cycling shoes, and take in some important nutritional sustenance in the form of refined corn-syrup-based carbohydrates in an easily-digestible gel form. It's also difficult to predict how long these things might take because depending on the race the transition zone might include a long run from the actual timing mat that begins the transition, to your bike (or wherever), and back out the other side to the continuation of the race. Let's say 2 minutes-per, giving a grand total of 4 minutes of transition time. Now it's time to rack everything up!

First run: 45 minutes. Bike: 1h15m. Second run: 22m30s. Transitions: 4m. Total: 2h26m30s.

Come back tomorrow (or later this week perhaps) to see if I could make it!

[FN1] "Multi-sport" being a fancy way to say "Triathlon" that also encompasses other triathlon-like sports such as duathlon and, especially popular in France, aquathlon.

[FN2] I don't want to get sued or anything.