On Saturday I raced the Greenville Duathlon, which was without a doubt the coldest race I have ever done. I'm told that the air temp was 21 degrees when the race started.

I'm not going to belabor all of the details of the race in this post, but here are a few observations that stand out in my mind:

My choice of clothing for the race worked very well, with one exception:  My face felt uncomfortably cold during the bike ride. I was wearing a polypro balaclava, but the bottom part of it was under my chin and I couldn't move it during the bike ride because my chin strap was in the way. If I ever do another race at this temp, I'll take more care to protect my face from the cold.

My clothing array consisted of a tri suit as my base layer, technical T-shirt, arm warmers, bicycle jersey, long sleeved wind breaker, tights, wool socks, shoe covers, polypro balaclava, polypro glove liners and lobster claw mittens. I was cold while waiting for the race to start but was plenty warm by the time we had run the first mile.

I ran the first mile in 6:56 but then slowed down a lot on the second lap. Probably went too hard at the very beginning.

By the end of the bike ride, I felt dizzy and disoriented and I think this was because of the cold air hitting my face.

During the second run, I passed a guy early who then passed me later on and finished ahead of me. Maybe I ran too hard in the first part of that lap?

I can't say that this race was a whole lot of fun, but I can say I'm glad that I was able to do it and survived without hypothermia, frost bite or any other negative consequences!