Courtenay Brown

Subtitle: THAT WAS AWESOME I am en route from Spain back to Reality. It has been a whirlwind and amazing trip. I almost don't know where to start, because so much of duathlon and ITU and international racing still feels new to me, not to mention Spanish language and cuisine (I think the only things that felt routine were my Recovery Pump sessions and pre-race PreRace!). But, you know, "rarely at a loss for words" and all... It was awesome. The race format was 10k run - 42.5k draft-legal bike - 5k run. The U.S. Duathlon national championship race, at which we qualify for worlds, is 5k run - 35k non-draft bike - 5k run, which is quite different. ...

I'm in Spain. It's fantastic! I love traveling so much. Tomorrow I race my first world championship, I can't wait. I got here yesterday. The flight into Oviedo was just beautiful, it's on Spain's northern coast and there are a lot of dramatic cliffs. And an outdoor 50m pool. My hotel room has a balcony and a view of the beach, where I plan to swim tomorrow after the race. When I got here I spent 10 minutes trying to make the lights work. I had to call the front desk, "donde esta le ectricitydad?!?!" which is poor spanish. Finally, "you have to put dee room key" she said. There is a little slot by the door where you place your key ...

I really wanted to do a play on the word Du. (You're welcome). (Sorry). Anyhow this year I'm doing lots of Duathlons (run-bike-run races). I went to Nationals on the last day of school/first day of exams back in April, I am headed to Spain in three weeks, and in the interim I did the Mile-High Duathlon series here in Colorado. Today was the last race, the West Side Duathlon down in Arvada. [caption id="attachment_3440" align="alignnone" width="149" caption="Pre-race openers through Wash Park"][/caption] This was a really cool course, it actually reminded me a lot of the Nationals ...