Courtenay Brown

I raced my first triathlon of 2012 on April 14 outside Las Vegas. After racing one super fun small Xterra last year, and after spending more and more time on my mountain bike to the point of justifying a gorgeous upgrade, I decided to race the Xterra USA championship series this year! Las Vegas was the first stop. The swim was pretty normal, there isn't a whole lot you can do to make an off-road triathlon's swim more "rugged" than an on-road triathlon's. It was a little bit cold though. My swim was OK, I started out on a girl's feet and after a couple hundred meters I realized hey wait a minute, this girl is SLOWER than me! ...

On my second-to-last day in South Africa, I raced the Totalsports Challenge Terra Firma. It's so named because it's based off the original Totalsports Challenge that runs concurrently, and has 7 events, and Dan Hugo has won it a hundred times, and those events are a mix of land and sea stages. The Terra Firma race skips the sea stages (two paddles and a swim) for those of us whose legs are faster than our arms. So it went: 50k road bike, 13k road/dirt run, 25k mountain bike, 9k beach run. The race is point-to-point with three separate transitions, so at Christmas after a suitable amount of wine I successfully roped Dan's uncle Michael into sherpa-ing me at the race! Except ...

I’m all introspective because this was the last race of my season. But I have a quiz to write so I’m bailing on my original plan of writing a playlist-themed race report, complete with samples and instrumentals. It was getting predictably over-involved and I’m probably the only one who would have thought it was awesome anyway. But I will tell you that Crystal Castles’ Vietnam, off their second eponymous release, was playing in my head for virtually all 4 hours 42 minutes that I was racing. It was a good choice – "I'm alive", indeed (side note yes I know that's not the exact lyric in the song sampled, Walk in the Park, but that sure is ...

Here, from :36 to 1:36, is Belgian French for "that girl with USA on her bum is amazing" (actually I have no idea what they are saying, but, that's me racing in Spain last weekend!).

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 raced the San Francisco Triathlon at Alcatraz yesterday. Then I flew home, slept a few hours, went to class, taught class, taught another class, went to another class, walked home, and stared at my computer. And got furious at a couple people because it was easier than admitting I was tired. So you guys are IN LUCK, this will be a medium-to-not-quite-long race report! The race was great, because I adore San Francisco. Cold, windy, foggy, I don't care, I love the city's vibrance and personality almost unconditionally. Which is a good thing, because otherwise I might have gotten really frustrated early on in yesterday's race and I might have given up. The current was really strong in a not-favorable direction, which ...

This past weekend I headed to Aberdeen, South Dakota with one of my roommates, Will Kelsay, to race Xterra Forest Drive. We had five great days of non-stop adventure, presented in verbal and pictoral detail below. Thursday: Goal departure time: 12:30 pm on Thursday. Actual departure time: 12:34 pm on Thursday. Yes! We are already winners on the road to success! One lengthy celebratory lunch at Chipotle in the 29th St. Mall (I know, only 2 miles from home) later, plus realization we forgot some stuff at home, and suddenly we are at actual actual departure time of 2 pm. Can’t win ‘em all. Anyway then we drove and drove. We disagreed over music (boys and their Nada Surf, uhgh). We compromised via ...

I won the Big Sky Duathlon on Saturday! It's the second of three races in the Mile High Duathlon Series. I finished third in the first race of the series, and Saturday's win moved me to the front of the standings. The final race is on Labor Day Weekend. I'm doing the series for fun, because racing is fun, and also for preparation. I'm traveling to Gijon, Spain in September to race the ITU Duathlon World Championships. Saturday's race was a short one, 4k run/25k bike/4k run, which was a blur. It was over before I knew it! After racing Rev3 Portland six days previously, I was worried about residual fatigue, but I was diligent about ...

In relative terms, “last place” can mean a lot of things. I should know, I’ve been last out of the water at all but one pro race I've done over the past 3 years. The good thing is, there is a huge difference between last by 6 or 8 minutes and last by a minute. [caption id="attachment_3357" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Becoming a pro at this whole no-wetsuit thing"][/caption] I was 13th (and last) out of the water at Rev3 Portland yesterday. Predictable and familiar, but what the split doesn’t tell you is I actually swam with two other athletes for half the ...

Walking isn't really an activity in which I partake. It ranks up there with "playing games that aren't Scrabble" and "gardening" on the list of things I try not to do. Store that nugget away for a second. Now: Rev3 Quassy! I raced this past weekend. I enjoyed it. It was the hardest race I've done yet, in terms of percentage of course that was flat (I estimate it at 1.7%, which "coincidentally" is 1.2 divided by 70.3), and also in terms of the quality of competition. I can't wait for next year! It was absolutely beautiful, and I really enjoyed testing myself under difficult conditions. We had a no-wetsuit swim, I definitely would have liked the extra buoyancy but the water ...