USAT Multisport National's Races

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Sitting in my hotel room in Montreal a week after competing at Multisport Nationals in Omaha, NE, I'm still beaming with excitement. It's been several years now since I competed at something more than a local event. Actually, 2019 was the last time I went to Nationals, and now I have returned again in 2024.

This time they combined Duathlon with Aquathlon, Draft Legal Sprint Tri, Mixed Team Relay Triathlon and Duathlon. It is now called Multisport National Festival, and a festival it was. There were a total of 11 events to compete in, and anyone who signed up for 5 or more would receive a Masters of Competition Buckle. Being that I don't swim, currently, I was not able to sign up for enough events to get a buckle, but to be honest I really didn't want one. 

This year's events that I signed up for were the Non-Draft Super Sprint Time Trial Duathlon, long name - short race. I also signed up for the Draft Legal Sprint Duathlon, and the Mixed Team Relax Super Sprint Duathlon. You must be wondering, what in the world are those? Let's start with Duathlon. The races are set up so you start with a Run, then Bike and end with another run. The Super Sprint distance was 1 kilometer sprint/run, 5 kilometer bike and ended with another 1 kilometer sprint/run. Yep, you can imagine this one is blazing fast. Done in under 18 minutes, and redlining it from the moment the whistle blew. 

The Draft Legal Sprint Duathlon was a little longer, but still just as intense, effort-wise.. This event starts with a 5 kilometer run, followed by a 20 kilometer bike which is draft legal, meaning we can work off one another, and finishes with a 2.5 kilometer run. When I talk about draft legal, that means that when you are on the bike you can draft off other riders, meaning you can get closer than in non-drafting events where you must stay anywhere from 3-6 bike lengths away depending on the rules of the race.

The Mixed Team Relax Super Sprint Duathlon was the same distance as my first race 1k/5k/1k but we had 4 people doing the exact same race then tagging the next until all four of us finished. The relay is supposed to be 4 people within the same 10 year age category, but there were not enough teams for my age category and 3 people from 2 age groups older than me needed one more woman, so I got assigned to the 60-69 age group. This race went male-female-male-female, and I was the anchor.

Back to the first day of the Multisport Festival my teammates and I all purchased the VIP tent passes for the week. Let me tell you that was the best thing we could have done. The venue itself didn't have many shady spots, nor did it have many comfortable spots unless you brought your own cushions, etc.. The VIP tent provided couches, a nice tent to keep us all shaded, ice cold refreshments, breakfast, lunch, coffee, and in the evenings beer and wine, though not many people took part in that until the last night. The VIP tent also had an on site massage therapist (for extra cash), and Hyperice Normatec Leg compression units for us to use as needed. Because the VIP tent was accessed only by wrist band, we felt safe enough to leave our bags in the tent. This came in handy when we wanted to go walk around the rest of the venue, go grab our bikes from transition, or go to our races. They even had secure bike parking in VIP. The best part about VIP is it sat right at the finish line, so when our teammates would be coming through we could see them and cheer them on their final, exhausted steps until they finished. 

Each morning before the day got started my teammates and I would ride the 3.5 miles from our AirBnB to the race venue, settle down in VIP, and mentally prepare for our events. My first event was on Thursday at 7am. I do love an early morning race, no time to sit and get nervous or overthink. Just get up, and get going. The Super Sprint Time Trial was my first event (1k/5k/1k) and they sent us off in groups of 3 in a rolling start with about 5 seconds between groups. This was due to it being a non-draft legal race and being on such a short bike course they needed to spread us out otherwise there would end up being drafting by default. As soon as the whistle went, I was like a slingshot, taking off at warp speed. I knew I wanted to get out front as quickly as possible and didn't want to get held up by any potential slower riders.

At the turn around for the first run, I looked at my watch to check my heart rate as I felt like I was definitely pushing hard. To my surprise it was not as high as I expected, but my pace was faster than I expected. I was keeping about a 6:20 pace with a 160 heart rate and feeling like I could maintain that intensity through the bike no problem. The transition was a long point to point transition so everyone's T1 & T2 were long, but I made it out on the bike in a good position, held that position through the bike and onto the second run. I was feeling pretty gutted by the time I hit the turn around on run 2. Again I looked at my watch to see my pace had dropped to 6:40 and my heart rate was now pushing 170. This is to be expected as I was nearing the end of the race and had been trying to maintain as much redline as I could for this short race. In the end I felt like I finished strong and I took 2nd in my age group, with my teammate taking 3rd. My finish also got me a 3rd place finish in the Masters Category (someone in two age groups older beat me by 2 seconds for 2nd place).

I got to enjoy Friday off and watch my teammates do their Sprint Tris and Aquathlon's. Everyone did really well in their respective events. I may have even been inspired to consider doing an actual swimming event next year. Maybe. We will see. LOL. My teammates and I ended up spending the entire day at the venue, so by the time we all got back to our AirBnB we were pretty tired. But first dinner. Let me tell you, you’ve never seen a kitchen get so busy than when you have 5 athletes cooking dinner at the same time. The amount of food, messes, bumping into one another, and laughter made it all worth it. At that point we all pretty much decided we would like to come back next year and stay together again. 

Saturday, the day of my draft legal race, we all could feel the humidity rising. This time my race was not the first on the day, we started about 10am. This in combination with my forgetting to bring my own electrolytes turned out to be a bad thing for me. This race was just long enough to be affected by my lack of electrolytes in my daily intake, and in my race fuel. I started off with the 5k moving quite well, though I knew I needed to keep a little in the tank so backed off the pace after a mile in.

I wanted to stay close to the front pack in hopes of being able to draft off them during the bike. This didn’t happen, since they were all running at about a 5:50 pace, and I was running at a 6:50 pace. I got out on my bike for the draft legal 2 lap course with 2 women just seconds in front of me and 3 more just seconds behind me. I worked my butt off to catch the first woman in front of me, telling her to get on my wheel and let's go catch the other woman up the road.

That move helped us three get away from the following group. We were able to stay together on the first lap, sharing pulls every 30 seconds. But on the short climb on the second lap we fell apart. With no one else to work with, the 3 of us had to do about 5k on our own with no help. But the time I got into transition I could feel something was wrong. My right leg was starting to get pins and needles. I only had 2.5k left to run so I shook it off and took off on the course at the turn around I felt my foot going numb and my quad starting to get muscle spasms. I kept trying to run but started to feel like I was going to trip so it became a weird wobble-jog.

By the time I crossed the finish line my pace had slowed by over a minute on my pace, and I lost 3 overall positions in the last kilometer, but luckily no positions in my age group. Turns out I was dehydrated and low on electrolytes. That actually came as no surprise since I had left my electrolytes at home and was not enjoying the Gatorade they had for use at the venue. This right here is one of the biggest things I stress with my athletes, remember your nutrition/hydration especially if you can only use certain ones. It took me 4 Gatorade bottles and 2 water bottles and 4 hours before I was able to go pee. That was a position I never want to be in again, and caution to my athletes to not get there. Even with the dehydration issue I still held on to 2nd place in my age group, for another podium finish, with my teammate on the 3rd step again.

We went out to dinner that night, I still had one more race the next morning at about 10am again. We went to the best steakhouse in Omaha, Brother Sebastian’s in an old monastery. I enjoyed half of my 8 ounce steak and sauteed mushrooms, plus my sides of wild rice, and a salad.

The next morning we all got up early and headed over the the race venue for the last day of races. All my teammates had the Mixed Team Triathlon Relay first, then when they were all done my Mixed Team Duathlon Relay race got underway. My group consisted of some very accomplished 60+’s, all of whom have not only podiumed at their age group and younger age groups, but have gone to the World events as well. We had a pretty good team but my age put us in a lower age category than they should have been in. No matter, we all put forth a wonderful effort. The first 3 racers set me up for a wonderful finish, bringing me close to the next 2 teams in front of us and I was able to pass both of them in the last half kilometer before the finish moving us up 2 places in the overall finish. Our team took 7th overall and 3rd in our age category. 

In all this was a great event. I plan on going back next year, as do all my teammates. We all also know that the bike course was not flat as we all were told. This means a slight bit of change for the bike training next year, working in short climbs and rolling in terrain more. Also something I learned was that I really need to not just double but triple check my luggage and make sure I have my nutrition stuff that is of the utmost importance. I do not want to suffer again like I did this year.