Race Coverage

Guts, Heart and Screaming Legs...

Friday, 08 September 2017 23:10

By Mike Buenting (mikebuenting.wordpress.com)

2017 DUATHLON WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS RACE REPORT- 

The ITU multi-sport festival landed in Penticton Canada for 2017 and hosting a week of World Championships races! It kicked off with Sprint distance Duathlon and will end this coming weekend with Long Distance Triathlon.
If you have never been to British Columbia and especially the Penticton (Okanagen Valley) area you must visit!! It’s simply beautiful and well pretty much the most amazing place I have raced or vacationed!

2016 USA Triathlon Duathlon National Championships was the qualifying race for this event, and I had one of my best races there that year as I won the National title for the Male 40-44 race and was the 2nd overall Master that year. So 2017 ITU Worlds were my goal race of this season! This was the race I focused on all year, and trained myself to peak at! However this all went south when the Wednesday morning before I flew out west to Canada I tweaked my hamstring running a simple 400 at 85% effort level on a track. I can’t explain what happened other than just the Saturday before I had been in Omaha and raced USA Triathlon Nationals had a solid race qualifying for Team USA in Triathlon for 2018 in Aussie land! Felt great early in the week but when I rounded the last corner of the track that morning a sharp zinger shot down my leg and I knew something was wrong! I stretched, iced did all the recovery things I could think of but no way I could get it lose again to run. UGH!!! Once I arrived in Penticton on Friday afternoon I went straight to the Team USA massage room and had our...

massage therapist start working on me, she worked hard to loosen things up and could feel the tight ball and strain in my hamstring. The next morning I got up to run a little and bike some, I was able to run 2 slow miles with tightness and some pain then I came back to the Team Hotel and got treatment from the Team USA chiropractor she really worked on my low back as often times things like this stem from low back and a chain of pulling things out of whack. Sunday morning came and up again to go run and see how things felt. The night before I soaked in Epson salts, and did my stretches as the chiro instructed me to. This morning I squeaked out 3.5 miles again in pain with tightness and not fast. Then I went on the Team USA course familiarization bike ride. (biking did not bother me too much it was the run motion, the pressure and strain of running and trying to open up a stride into a race pace) after the bike ride was another trip to the team chiro and more treatment this time she taped me all up with Rock tape so I could try and get through the race the next morning....READ MORE