Orillia triathlon 2011

I signed up for the Orillia race this year, with some slight reservations. I have done this race twice in the past, and will admit that it isn't my favourite race. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that there is a large dock located to the left of the swim course which makes it difficult to swim out to the first buoy, especially if you are swimming in a triangle. The large dock blocks the pathway to the first buoy especially if you are swimming, keeping the buoys on the left. I warned people near me to watch the dock because it is easy to get pressed up against it with all the kicking and splashing that goes on during the first minute of the race. The second reason is that the bike course is very difficult, it is hilly and full of twists and turns. I don't mind the hills but the sharp turns make the course quite tricky. It is the type of course that you can't bike at full speed either you risk having a crash. Nevertheless, the timing of this race was appealing to me so I signed up for it.
The morning of the race it was quite gloomy, in fact it threatened rain the whole way there. Luckily I left in plenty of time for the race, which wasn't a great plan because it actually started to rain right before the beginning of the race, so there was a bit of standing around in the rain. Unfortunately in all the hubub of finding a place to park, I accidently locked my keys in the car. It was a good thing I had removed all my equipment from the car before doing so. I decided to deal with the problem after the race, which of course probably didn't put me into the right frame of mind.

When the horn went off for the swim, I will admit I didn't go out slow. I actually ended up gulping a large amount of water, probably because I got splashed in the face by the person on my left. From now on I will most likely start out from the far left to avoid this happening in the future. I managed to cough out the water but it took me awhile to get my breathing under control after that. The next thing that went wrong is that I had someone grab me and use me and under person as a platform from which to spring up and over. I looked up and saw that this was a women from my wave. I couldn't believe that this behaviour occurred in a beginner race. Not Cool. This person's competitive maneover didn't pay off for her in the end, which I will discuss later. I was a little concerned because the other person was a weaker swimmer than I and heard one of the kayakers try to help them as they were trying to recover from the incident. I felt bad for the person, as it will probably be their last tri after something like that happening. I also had a bit of difficulty in the swim because I had trouble sighting. There didn't seem to be anyone to follow, and in the past I have always relyied on following other people to know where I am going. This swim, even though it beat me up quite a bit taught me a couple of valuable lessons. One being that I must start in the right position at the beginning of the race, so that I am swimming on the outside line, not the inside line during the swim portion. The other that I need to practice sighting. Now that I am a stronger swimmer, I am finding myself one of the people who is leading the pack and I need to learn how to sight as I swim. This was never a skill I needed in the past but I do now.
The transition from the swim course went quite well, except that the run up was again tacked on to the swim time, which doesn't give you an accurate swim time per 100m. When this happens it makes your swim in a sprint seem slower than it is. In this course my time was 9:04, which was the second place time in my age category.

The transition to the bike was long and awkward. I had a lot of difficulty running fast in my bike shoes, because the pavement was slippery from the rain. Once I was on the bike everything was fine. I biked fairly aggressively, except for the fact that it was a technical course and there were a lot of cars on it. The pavement was also slick from the rain. My bike time ended up being just over 22min which was also a second place time for my age category.
The transition to the run was difficult because it was long and there were quite a few people blocking me as I was running with my bike. Once I was able to get around everyone I picked up the pace, dropped off my bike and slipped on my running shoes as quickly as possible. I ran as fast as I could even though I had bike leg. I used the high turnover strategy to shake the bike leg off the best that I could. After about 2K the running seemed easy. I ended up rolling over the finishing line with a 3rd place running time of 12:29.

My overall time was 47:31 which was good enough to land me a first place finish in my age category. It turned out that the women who tried to push me under the water to get ahead is a weaker triathlete even though she appears to be a stronger swimmer. Sometimes it doesn't pay to be aggressive. I personally don't understand why you need to ruin another person's swim to get ahead. Next time I will steer clear of the buoys that is for sure. I just hope that other person won't give up tris as a result of some other idiot's actions! Thanks Subaru for another great race!

Training summer 2011

For the last two weeks of my training period for this season, I have been enjoying the terrain of the Haliburton Highlands. This terrain is definately not for the weak-hearted. Even though the air is clean and the country side is breathtaking, the terrain is relentlessly hilly. This is great for me because my spring training routes contain no hills. I have been on vacation in Haliburton and my legs are screaming obsenities at me as I try to put in my regular mileage.

The swim route is fairly benign, as it is all open water swimming in a small lake, however the bike route feels like one is biking on roller coaster, you are either climbing up a steep hill, or coasting down at speeds of over 50 km/hr. It can be quite the challenge especially if you have run earlier on the same route. I will admit some of the hills have got me into walking which is not something I am used to on my flat spring training routes. It is humbling and makes me aware of just how much more base building I need to do before my big race. As all Ontarians know Haliburton is considered cottage country and most visit to relax and rest. And sometimes partake in a little recreational activity. My friend Nat is one of those people.

She will often go out biking with me, and in the past we have been caught out biking in some interesting situations, like large thunderstorms. We even once had to be rescued. This year we have been lucky though and we got in two good cycling days. Although I think she is ready for physio now because the cycling routes have put her in the pavement. Other than that though it has been a great two weeks. Normally I spend more time in Haliburton, but this year it is only for a short period and then I am back to my normal training grounds. One last swim and then I return. See you next year Haliburton county, thanks for some great weather this year!

Bracebridge tri relay. 2011

It was an incredibly sunny and hot day at Annie Williams Park on August 6, 2011. I had to pick Tara up quite early (7am) to get there to register in time for the race. When I arrived at Tara's aunt's place, she was ready to go with bells on. It took us about an hour to get there and we had no traffic. Once we got into Bracebridge I wasn't exactly sure where the park and we ended up following someone who was also going to the race. Turns out he didn't know where he was going either, and we ended up making a wrong turn. It wasn't that complicated to find the park after all, and we were more than an hour early. Tara and I weren't allowed to register until Natalie arrived so we were left to wait for her in the transition zone. We started to panick around 8:45am when Natalie still hadn't arrived. The reason we panicked a bit was only because I needed to get our team's timing chip so that I could get ready for the swim. Other than that it wouldn't have been a problem. Finally at about 8:50am, 10 minutes before the start of the race, I went back to the registration desk and asked if we could our timing chip and the women reluctantly let us have our chip. In the meantime I sent Tara to get my cell phone which was in the car to see if Natalie had left a message. We found out that Natalie had left a message and she was running late. Natalie arrived just in time for the start of the race and Tara and I were once again relaxed.

I got my wetsuit on and went down to the river to warmup for the race. Interestingly, Bracebridge this year was a time trail race for sprint tri national championships, so instead of doing mass wave starts they let each person go on their own 5s apart. I was the third last to go and there were 290 people in the sprint tri in total so it took awhile to finally get to me.

It was strange starting by yourself because it was difficult to tell where you are going. In fact other than passing the odd person, most of the time I felt like I was swimming by myself. I found sighting very difficult and I actually wound up in the middle of the river halfway through the race. One of the kayakers was yelling at me as I was swimming in center of the river, and finally when she was able to get my attention, I redirected myself to swim near the shore. This wasn't good either because I ended up almost hitting a dock a few minutes later. I ducked so that I could swim under the dock which was fine but I am sure that swimming in this zig zag direction was not good for my overall time. I finally exited the swim with a time of around 15 minutes. The swim distance was 750m and it had a small transition tacked onto to the end of the swim and my official time for the swim leg was 15:31s. The switch of the timing chip to Natalie went very smoothly. Before long she was off and biking on the 20km bike trail leaving Tara and I together in the transition area.

Tara had to wait again while Natalie was on the bike course, because Tara was doing the last leg of the tri which was a 5K run. The Bracebridge tri has a really good 5K course. It is fairly flat and it is an out and back course. For this reason I decided run the run course in order to practise my pacing for 5K and 10K courses. It was a great idea because while Tara was waiting for Natalie to return from the bike course I got an opportunity to run the course twice. By this point in the day it was pretty hot and by the time I finished the second loop of the run I was ready to jump in the river to cool off. So I did.

I passed Tara on the run course and cheered her on. She looked fairly "fresh" compared to the other athletes. She ended up finishing the run loop in 24:56s.

And Natalie finished her ride in 49:31s. Overall our team did really well, we finished 4th out of 8 teams and missed the podium by about 1:35s.

This result was much better than expected since our Kushog Lake relay team came in last place last year. After the race, Tara's mom took some pictures of us.

We were just about to collect our bags when a women came over and grabbed Tara's bag and started to leave. Both Tara and I started to chase after her and the women was stunned when we tried to grab the bag away from her. She said: "this is my bag." Tara and I were both confused when we started to realize we both thought the bag in question belonged to our team and we had accidently placed all of Natalie's belongings in this mystery women's bag. Items included car keys, money, event Tshirt and a water bottle. We were horrified when we realized that it was lucky the women hadn't returned earlier and taken her bag before we had realized the mistake. What an adventure! All and all though I think we had a great time and I think Kushog Lake will be back in full force in the future! Thanks again MSC for another great triathlon event. See you next year when Kushog Lake returns for another shot at the podium.