The race started at 10am and it was a warm sunny day. I got there in plenty of time, and I actually had time to practise the swim. There were 375 participants in this race; tris in Ontario have become quite popular in the last few years, and as well as being popular they have always become quite competitive. For example, even though this was a short sprint level race, the girl who won in my AG just finished Ironman Florida last season. This is just an example of how competitive the field for tris has become in Ontario recently; there were 47 women alone in my age category. This just shows the growth in popularity of tris over the last few years in Ontario.
I was in the last wave, and there were four waves of nearly 100 people in each wave. We started about 9 minutes after the actual start of the race. The swim was fine although I swallowed some water and had difficulty breathing for about a minute until the water in my lungs cleared out. I finished first in my AG in the swim with an 8:54 for 375m. I believe some of the first transition might have been tacked onto the swim time, because it seemed like it took me a really long time to get to the transition area, which was very far away from the beach.
After the swim we had to run up a large hill to get to the transition area which was about 300m from the beach. Unfortunately I haven’t done a tri for awhile and I forgot to set my stuff up properly which cost me some time. My bike helmet was done up and so were my bike shoes. This cost me about 20s in the transition area, which turned out to be a costly mistake. I felt like one of the three stooges trying to get my bike stuff on. One I got my stuff on the rest was easy.
The bike course was fairly challenging. It was really congested and I found it difficult to go really fast, because you had to be careful passing people. There were also cars on the course. It was a good thing that there was no yellow line, because I had to pass about 100 people once on the bike course. It was almost impossible to pass in some cases, and I am pretty if there had been a yellow line, I would have been DQ'd. Another challenge with the bike course, was that the first 1km we had to endure several speed bumps just to get out of the park. This was also a problem because it was just too dangerous to go fast. I don't know if the challenge of the bike course affected my race time, because my bike split seemed a bit slow. 21:49 for 10K. I did bike the day before the race, so lack of adequate rest, may have also contributed to a slower than usual bike split.
My final time was 48:16 which was my fastest time for this distance race. I ended up placing 2/47 in my age group, 20s behind the leader. I felt pretty good about my results considering that the leader in my AG is an Ironman athlete. Probably with better transitions, and a better bike split I would probably be able to do better in the next race, although this is a good result for a field that seems pretty competitive. I asked one of the athlete's near by to take a photo of me near the swim start.
Thanks to the WTC, subaru triathlon series for a great start to the 2011 tri season! Will not see you next year, but maybe the year after!
