My latest Big Stupid Idea.

Back in the good old days, my Big Stupid Ideas (term coined by Bubba) consisted of paddling my kayak into rocky sea outcroppings and starting cocktail hour at noon when we were on vacation. The fact that one of those ideas begets the other is not important. Or, at least, I should ask you to politely ignore your rational thoughts and move on.

Now, however, my Big Stupid Ideas tend to involve me getting up at stupid early hours in order to piece together training workouts for races for which I have not yet even registered.

It is likely that I am getting dumber and more delusional as I age, which would mean the rate of Big Stupid Ideas is about to take a big swing upward.

Yay! Who wants to be my emergency contact?

What? No takers? Jerks.

Evidence of this new trend: Yesterday morning (that'd be Sunday for those of you reading this on a day other than Monday, you late-comers. SHAME.) I got up at the impossibly early weekend hour of 6am so that I could walk the dog before attempting my first Run > Bike > Run workout.

Why the early hour, you ask? Are you trying to get a workout in before going to church, you ask?

Well, I'm still relatively new to the Biking For a Purpose Other Than To Go Get Tacos thing, so I wanted the roads to be as free and clear as possible so that I could get in a semi-uninterrupted dash to my randomly determined turnaround point without having to dodge those people who do go to church and then immediately flee the place all drunk on the idea of forgiveness pancakes.

Really, though, people - burning rubber out of the church parking lot? Isn't there some rule that says you have to be beyond the church grounds before behaving like an outright lunatic? I'm just saying that you're not going to catch much of a break on that behavior next week when it was witnessed all first hand, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, enough of my blaspheming, the point was to get out and rip the band-aid off this never-before-attempted training of running and then biking and then running again to see what would happen to my body and if, by some miracle, I could actually see myself doing it in two weeks when this event goes off.

Because the only viable duathlon in a 50 mile radius involving biking rather than swimming (for a funny note on how retarded I am with regard to this fact, keep reading) is being held on June 6th and if I want to quench this sudden and inexplicably strong desire for completing a duathlon in 2010, I'll have to jump on it and hope I don't die a shameful and chamois-crotched death due to lack of preparation and/or brain power.

Of course, this does mean that I have to set aside my super A/R Plan 700 Years In Advance For Everything tendencies and it will open me up to much greater opportunities for public shaming, but for some reason that super worry wart A/R part of my brain has been really quiet on the issue.

It's possible that this is due to the extension of Vacation Rules Cocktail Hour to your average at-home weekend, but who can be sure, you know?

Anyway, I went out yesterday morning and completed this, the first and potentially only brick workout and here is what I learned:

1. Running in spandex hot pants is not as terrifying as expected. Even with the My Pants Appear to Be Full of Something Syndrome brought on by the chamois.
2. Running after biking is, indeed, as being-chased-by-a-zombie-in-a-nightmare slow as suggested by all the other multisport athletes I've interrogated on the subject.
3. If I can't get my bike tuned up in time for this race, an awful fate could befall myself, the bike and those around me on the race course.
4. My Garmin is withholding information and I can't figure out how to make it do my bidding.
5. I actually need a water bottle and cage but will still feel like a douchebag shopping for them. 
6. I should probably register for this race if I'm going to waste perfectly good Sunday mornings proving to my neighbors that I'm a psycho who runs the neighborhood in spandex and then bikes the neighborhood in spandex and then OH WAIT THERE SHE GOES AGAIN runs the neighborhood in spandex. 

Fun times.

Actually, I quite liked my little faux-duathlon training test workout thing. I didn't use any official training method for piecing it together, because that would run contrary to all my previous training methods and don't we all know what a finely tuned and impressive athlete I am now thanks to that (ha), but since I know I can physically run and bike the distances this shortie duathlon calls for (1.5, 12, 2.5) I was mostly just curious about the transitions and also how bad it would *really* be going from biking to running.

As for the transitions, they were fine. I mean, I'm going Super Rookie for this first duathlon attempt and will likely leave my clip-in pedals and fancy Shimano shoes at home and instead bike on standard pedals in my running shoes.

Sure, I'll totally look like a douchebag newbie, but since I will be a douchebag newbie, I'm not too super worried about it. Now.

On race day, however, I'll totally bemoan my douchiness and how come I didn't just put my pedals back on and rock my hot bike shoes because why am I buying and having these things if I'm not going to use them because now everyone knows I'm a douchebag newbie all wearing running shoes to ride the bike, but I think I'll live.

Plus, nothing says douchebag newbie like crashing into someone at the turnaround because YIKES I FORGOT MY FEET WERE CLIPPED IN.

I'm just saying, it could happen. And then I'd be worse than Douchebag Newbie. I would probably have a few more swears tacked on and there would be a lot of public shame involved. More so than that of being the girl riding a bike in running shoes. I think, anyway.

So, my thought is that I should, 1 - sign up for the fucking thing and 2 - Save the pedals for duathlon # 2. Which would have to be sometime in 2011, given the shit-tay duathlon schedule for this year that places the only other duathlon in September when I'm scheduled to be out of the country.

And, to be clear, when I say "duathlon", I mean a running and biking duathlon. Not a running and swimming duathlon, which is a different concept altogether and something in which I'm not at all interested. But don't you know that when I was all searching for duathlons on Active.com, I got all pissed off at the results showing all these splash and dash events, which I know to involve swimming and not biking, because in my head a duathlon was running and biking so what are all these stupid running and swimming events oh-wait-duathlon-could-mean-any-two-events-not-just-running-and-biking-I-get-it-nevermind.

I really know how to put the Stupid in Big Stupid Ideas, is what it comes down to, I guess.

So, if you're a multisport athlete, if you've done duathlons or triathlons, if you've made a huge ass of yourself because you forgot your shoes were clipped in and summarily destroyed an entire age group's worth of race participants or you just know a lot about chamoises (chamois'? chamoi? What is this word, anyway? French? Fucking French.)  or tri tops - I'm all ears for your advice.

And you don't have to tell me how stupid I'm being because I know.