Milton Triathlon

First tri of the season. First tri since losing 20 lbs. First tri in a wetsuit. First time having to bike up the nigara escarpment. Also the First race in which I won

So going into this race I had no goals. I was secretly wanting a PR until I found out this wasn't a proper sprint distance race last weekend – this race was - 750 swim, 30K bike, 7.5K run. After I found that out I decided not to care about my time. I had three goals 1) be less nervous at the start of the race (HR is usually > 120 waiting for the race to start), practice swimming in my new wetsuit, and to get in a good workout (one of the most challenging courses in Ontario - we have to bike up the escarpment, and run up most of it. Both mean we get to go down too though, which was very nice.) In fact, I cared so little about Sunday’s outcome that I rode and ran 4 times last week, and swam 3 times, about 2-3 more workouts than normal, and I even rode 44 km saturday morning (then spent the remainder of the day wondering around the zoo in extreme heat and humidity. Definitely not ideal

Before the race I ran into one of the girls in the UW tri club. She won the series opener (a duathlon) in 25-29 and got 4th over all. She is a crazy good cyclist (sunday she averaged 34-35 km/hour on a very challenging course). It was nice to see a friendly face.

Swim (13:41, 13/29 AG 1:50/100m) The swim went well. Although my heart rate was way too high the entire time. It goes much higher in open water than in the pool. Weird stuff. It was also a big race. There were 610 competiters so the waves were much bigger than I'm used to. I had people swimming over me left and right, but I ended up finishing safely and in one peice. The run to transition was on gravel. And sucked. Big time. I'm sure my split is off because of that as well, I was probably out of the water like 12:50 or so.

T1 (2:04) Bad T1 time for me. I'm usually around 1:30 or so. I struggled a bit with my new wetsuit... and had very little room. And the stupid gravel we had to run along sucked big time.

Bike (1:00:46, 24/29 AG 29.6km/hr) Despite being at the end of my age group on the bike, this is a pretty good time for me, considering the race. The race started on a gentle downhill to bring us to the bottom of the escarpment and the next 5 km were pretty much uphill. Started with a gentle uphill, a short downhill, 90 degree corner, then up up up. On the first uphill section, I stopped because a girl right in front of me popped a tire. I yelled "DO YOU NEED A TUBE?" she did, so I stopped and got out my spare tube hoping I wouldn't need it. I probably lost a minute there, but seeing as I really didn't care about this race, I didn't mind. On the big hard part of the hill I saw two others stop with mechanical problems, but there was no way I was stopping for them. Had I stopped, I wouldn't have been able to start again. I was grunting, and heaving, and saying "Oh God" over and over. I'm sure I sounded like I was having sex or something. certainly didn't feel that good . I made it to the top though (going a wopping 7.5 km/hr) without having to get off my bike to walk it (as a number of other people were doing). I was proud of myself for that. Took me several km before I regained composure and didn't feel like I was going to throw up anymore. I was able to pick up the speed considerably after that though. On the big downhill I sat up. It was scary and there was no way I was going down that with no access to my brakes! still, my max speed going down was 76.7 km/hr. Yowzas! that is fast! One final thought is that there were a lot of packs riding together with no one making a concentrated effort of losing them. It pissed me off a bit, but I wasn't in this for competition so I just had to shrug. When the packs went by me, I actually sat up and slowed down a bit because I didn't want to draft. One of the tri club guys said that he had a guy on a P3 drafting off him. Nice. You have a $5000 bike, but you will still draft off another rider???

T2 (1:10) Ahh, much better with shoes on. Bike racked, bike shoes, gloves, helmet off, run shoes, visor on. and off I go.

Run (16/29 AG 42:10 5:38/km - exact same as my 1/2 marathon pace!) The run was also very challenging. Pretty much uphill with a few short downhills for the first 3 km, flatish for the next 1.5, then back downhill for the rest of the race. It was a pretty hot course and only half of the stations had gatorade. I wished more did (they usually all do, and was kind of counting on that given the heat and my hydration strategy. I only had one bottle of gatorade on the bike and with the heat, and the amount I sweat, that isn't enough for a 2hr race. Oh well, I finished, and with a pretty decent time. I'm impressed that I was so high in my age group standings since I'm generally not that great of a runner.

Overall time: 1:59:50 (including the stop to help the girl on the bike), 22/29 AG - BUT, I registered as a Clydesdale, and I was first there Albeit there were only two racers . Given last years results, I would have been third, but at least the 2nd place girl is now 40+, not 39-, so that was kind of cool. I got a hat that says race winner Stuck around for the awards to claim my prize. Ended up also getting a door prize - a timex ironman watch. I'm happy about that. I needed a pool watch for doing repeats and i can also wear it when I am doing fieldwork. As a side note: had this been the standard sprint distance, given my paces, today, I would have gotten a 1 min PR (over Peterborough 2005), but the course was by far the most challenging race course I have done. Those hills were crazy big.