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!