Team Happy Pants Rides Again!

Or, “Cannon Lake Duathlon Race Report”

Or, “Total Domination by ‘Team Happy Pants’”

(Race Format: 1.75 mile run, 14 mile bike, 3 mile run.)

Day Before:

I had a great pre-race meal at Snuffys Malt Shop with Mike and Pharmie (the same place we went the night before the LTF Tri). I had a chicken sandwich, a bunch of fries, and part of a strawberry shake:

Those fries gave Pharmie and I HORRIBLE GAS all night!

Then, Matt (the other half of Team Happy Pants) came over, and Pharmie schooled us all at Tetris on our old-school Nintendo. She hasn’t played in months, but she still got 169,000 points and made it to level 14!

Pre-Race:

Got up, ate breakfast, had a good race-morning poo, and was ready to go. It’s easy to pack for a duathlon that you’re doing as a team:

1. Running shoes
2. Race Belt
3. Nipguards

(If you don’t know why I need Nipguards, scroll down a couple of posts.) So, we picked up Matt and his bike, and headed south to Faribault. It was a dreary, wet, foggy day:

We’d be getting so wet that it felt like we were doing a tri instead of a du. We got there and scoped out the transition area. Still a lot of racks to choose from:

Matt and I found the port-o-johns (we both needed a second pre-race poo). You KNOW it’s going to be a small event when “port-o-john alley” is only 3 crappers long:

We took care of the paperwork, and went to get set up:

Team Happy Pants!

We unloaded the car. Matt checked his tires, and I got my race number on my race belt:

Then, my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law showed up to cheer us on. Matt is my brother-in-law, so Pharmie had a lot of her family there as the Team Happy Pants cheering section!

A few minutes before we started, there was a meeting in transition. Take a look at how FEW bikes there are, and how MUCH space each one has! There was an average of literally 3 bikes per rack!

It turns out, there were only 4 teams and only 39 individual competitors. Small event! (It was it’s first year.) We weren’t hiding the fact that we were hoping to place pretty well. The race format was: 1.75 mile run, 14 mile bike, 3 mile run. I was doing the runs, and Matt was going to take care of the bike.

Then we headed down to the starting line, which was about 200 meters away. Oh yeah, I had changed into the “Bowl Full of Sunshine:”

Sorry for my paleness...

I situated myself near the front, and here you can see me off to the left:

The Run:

Mark, the race director, stood off to the side and shouted GO. We were off:

Leading the pack on the left

I ran past Pharmie and shot her a smile. She shot a photo of me looking like a blur:

I led the entire way. We headed down the trail, ran a big loop (partially gravel), and then headed back up the trail towards transition. It was a 1.75 mile run. I hit the first mile in 4:26. “WHAT!” I quickly realized that the marker really meant “1 mile LEFT,” not “1 mile COMPLETE.” That made more sense. I waved at the volunteer and officer who directed me back onto the final stretch of the trail, and I ran hard back to transition.

I was afraid that I was going too fast; I didn’t know if I’d be fresh enough for the 3 mile run later on. But I didn’t let up. I just booked it home.

Meanwhile, as I was wrapping up the run, Matt was in transition with the other 3 teams’ bikers. They were in the "team transition zone," waiting for their runners to come running in:

Matt’s in yellow

TI:

I came running into T1, about 8 seconds ahead of the next runner. Team Happy Pants was out in the lead:

I ran up to Matt and slapped his hand; this du was SO small, that it wasn’t chip timed (so we didn’t have to transfer a chip from the runner to the biker). All we had to do was touch. So I slapped Matt, and he was off:

I'm just on the other side of the guy in green shorts

I was spent. I had run that pretty hard. This photo sums up my beat-up mood at the time:

Bike:

Matt was off on the ride. It had started raining again. And he said the course was hillier than he thought it was going to be. Let’s just say I was happy that I was able to put on some more clothes, talk with the other teams, and hang out in transition under the tent:

There were maybe a dozen spectators who were cheering for everyone, and Team Happy Pants had 4 of them:

Monica, Mike, Anne, and Pharmie

Then, Monica and Mike got in a tiff over the umbrella:

Mike, be nice to your mother!

T2:

I saw 3 guys fly through T2, but they weren’t teams. They were just speedy, speedy individuals. Shortly after the first 3, Matt came running into transition:

Matt ran up to me for the tag:

Of course I had a dumb grin on my face...
...what did you expect?

I was off on the run. But Matt had ridden his bike hard, and now HE looked as beat up as ME when I finished my first run:

Run:

I headed out on the 3 mile run. My cheering section was yelling! After about a 1/2 mile, I could finally see the 2nd and 3rd place individuals in front of me. They were 400 - 500 meters ahead of me. I was gunning for them.

Mile 1: 5:46. That was tough.

I turned up a little hill, and before too long, I was headed back towards the finish. That little hill hurt, and I was just trying to hang on. I was BARELY gaining on the 2 individuals in front of me.

Mile 2: 6:05. Dang, I was hoping to keep them all under 6.

Hurting, hurting, hurting. Trying to hold on. There was no way of reaching the 2 individual runners in front of me, but they pushed me nicely throughout.

I was nearing the finish. Matt and I were going to EASILY win the team competition. (We won by over 6 minutes.) Here I am coming to the line:

Mile 3: 5:55. Better. But ouch. I hurt.

Here are the official results:

Cannon Lake Duathlon 2008, Team Results
#728: Team Happy Pants (Steve Stenzel, Matt Linder), St. Paul, MN

1.75 Mile Run - 9:45 (5:25/mile), 1st
T1 - 0:12, 1st
14 Mile Bike - 39:27 (21.2 mph), 1st
T2 - 0:10, 1st
3 Mile Run – 17:47 (5:56/mile), 1st

TOTAL: 1:07:20
1st place out of 4 teams

We had gotten first place among the teams, and we had a clean sweep of all 5 categories! We had the fastest run, T1, bike, T2, and run! Sweet!! (BTW, my run times were faster than ANYONE ELSE who was in the individual race. And Matt’s bike time was the 4th fastest among all the individuals.) We both had a great day!

Guess what? I brought the Nipguards to the race, but I forgot to put them on! But, thankfully, because I was wearing a good, tight shirt, I had no issues like last weekend. See? No blood:

(but one of the scabs rubbed off, which you
can see sitting just to the left of the nipple)

So Matt and I chatted with some of the other teams near the finish line:

THEN, THEY MADE BRATS!

Double fisting brats

We stuck around for the awards. Here’s everyone under the shelter, because it had started raining again:

“Team Happy Pants” was called up as the first place team. We weren’t given medals (boo), but we were each given $15 gift cards to a local running store. Sweet!

Just after getting our prize:

We packed up, said goodbye to our cheering section, changed out of some wet clothes, and took off. Before going home, we stopped at the Nike Outlet Store. I bought some SWEET, SWEET socks to wear with the Bowl Full of Sunshine. The problem is, I already have girlie looking legs. Now (with the new socks), I look like a woman wearing leggings:

I dunno what to think of these

Then we stopped at McDonalds for a bite. I needed McNuggets. Quick question: does anyone really buy 10 piece McNuggets? The 10 piece was $3.79. The 4 piece was $1.

Hmmmmm....

So I bought 12 pieces for less than the cost of a 10 piece:

Do they think we’re dumb?!?

Then, while “Happy” (AKA Steve) drove back home, “Pants” (AKA Matt) was sawing logs in the backseat:

I got home and ate a burrito (of course):

Overall, it was a great morning! We got a little wet, but we currently hold the course record in the team event at the Cannon Lake Duathlon! We both had fun (and we both beat ourselves up pretty good in the process).

And BTW, the official photos from the Half IM last weekend (where I dressed as the Grim Reaper) are going to be up shortly, and I’ll be posting them as soon as I get them. They should be great! Thanks for reading everyone!!