Welland Long Course triathlon 2018

First triathlon of the year!

The story starts Friday night, with me being generally laid back and lazy and tossing all my shit together at the last minute. What a change from when Welland was my first ever tri a few years ago and I was Prepared and Ready and Organized. Now I'm all 'Whatevs, I'm sure it'll all work itself out'.

Spoiler: I kind of fucked myself over on this one. But that's getting ahead of myself.

Gear was all eventually located and organized, pulled the bike off the trainer, changed the tire, all looked good, oops it's too late to do a test ride, whatever I'm sure it's fine.

(ominous music plays)

Up early Saturday, hit the road by 6 or so, drove through absolute pouring rain and arrived at the Flatwater center at 7:15. I was having serious conversations with myself about the general wisdom of riding a bike in that kind of ridiculous rain, but somehow? In Welland it wasn't raining at all.

Checked the weather radar on my phone and sure enough, it looked like all the heavy rain was staying to the north and we were going to be clear for the race. Whew! And with the heavy cloud cover, that meant it wasn't feeling super hot out and there didn't seem to be any wind, which could set things up for quite the fast day.

I forgot to take another picture after I unpacked. Trust me, I set it up properly.

Kit picked up, set up, etc, etc. Checked the wheels on the bike and on the first spin the rear wheel seemed to be sticking on something but on a second spin it was fine so I didn't mess with it.

(ominous music intensifies)

Said hello to various friends, and somehow the time just disappeared like it always does pre-race at triathlons, and then I was working myself into my wetsuit and heading for the start. Where I promptly managed to cut the bottom of my foot getting into the canal (likely a zebra mussel, those little buggers are sharp - pro tip, get off your feet as quickly as possible to avoid sharp rocks/shells!).

Can you find me in this picture? I'm in there, I promise! #whereswaldo

There I am! Chatting with Phaedra while Fab tries to put on his wetsuit.

It was a long wait between waves this year to spread things out, which was nice, but now that I'm moving back into the old people's waves that meant we didn't start until 15 minutes after the first wave. And the canal was a little colder than I expected so my hands and feet were getting chilly waiting! But soon enough it was go time.

Swim: 41:05
Overall: 161/346
Gender: 60/141
Age group: 13/28

Little slower than I'd have liked to see, but part of that is the run up to get to the timing mat. My watch was almost bang on 40 minutes when I got out of the water. So right around 2:00/100m like usual. However, I took this swim completely relaxed and easy. I found my way to the guidewire early in the swim and stuck to it like glue, so there was no extraneous distance, and I kept the effort feeling very easy. And after 2,000m I wasn't tired at all and easily felt like I could have continued on at that pace indefinitely.

So no time improvement there over previous swims on that course, but I'm super happy with how it felt and it seems like a good sign for the Ironman in August.

T1: 3:11

Ooof. ugly transition. I mean it does include stairs, but there was also a struggle with the wetsuit and dropping my bike on the ground and then the REALLY long run out to the timing mats. Pretty much a gong show.

Bike: 1:49:48
Overall: 195/346
Gender: 62/141
Age Group: 12/28

So this started well, got up to speed quickly, started passing people...

But something felt off. I couldn't put my finger on it but I could tell something was wrong. And then about 8k in I started to hear a sort of thumping noise coming from the rear tire. So I pulled to the side of the road, got off, and tried spinning the tire to see what was going on...

And it blew like a gunshot. Blew clean off the rim, although not before I noticed that the damn tire bead wasn't seated properly before it went.

Damn it. Flat tire and it was my own fault for not being thorough checking over the bike pre-race.

I had a moment of feeling sorry for myself, then womaned up and got out my flat kit and worked through changing out the tube. I didn't rush it but tried to be methodical and careful because I only had the one spare tube, so if I fucked it up my race would be done.

Strava says the tire change took almost 9 minutes, which isn't terrible for a tube change. It felt like longer (so many people passed me during that time! but it was really nice how many of them asked me if I needed anything or needed help). Got back going again, cautiously at first and then when everything felt fine, I brought the speed back up and started working my way through the field again, mostly aiming to see if I could bring my average speed back up over 30 km/hr even with the flat. I had a few moments of 'aw man, this is such a waste of a great ride' because I was flying and feeling great - and I did end up with an overall speed for the bike of 30.6 km/hr, even including the stopped time. What's crazy is my final bike time? Only 2 minutes slower than my time from the last time I did the long course! So pretty happy with how I managed to salvage things on the bike overall.

T2: 1:48

Not my best transition, but I've done worse. I wasn't super pumped about running 15k, but I was feeling good so it was time to see what I could do on the run.

Run: 1:18:17
Total race time: 3:54:07.7
Overall: 176/346
Gender: 57/141
Age group: 10/28

What the hell? I moved up places from the bike on the run?! Since when has that ever happened?

So my entire approach to the run was to ignore my watch and just wing it; run by feel, not worry about the pace. And that's what I did. The run course this year was changed to a double out and back we did twice, which I really enjoyed because I got to see all my friends multiple times (and make sure everyone knew I GOT A FLAT and that's why I'm so far back, because god forbid anyone think I just biked slower than usual. Ah, the bruised ego.) My right foot was hurting a bit and I thought I was getting a blister, but eventually remembered how I'd cut my foot right at the start and sure enough post race it was obvious that the sore spot was the cut. But it wasn't anything I couldn't power through, so that's what I did.

Giving Michelle and Melissa thumbs up (I believe right after I complained that THIS ISN'T FUN AT ALL. WHEN DOES IT GET FUN.)

I ran and complained to everyone I knew (and some I didn't), walked briefly and drank water and coke at the aid stations, and crammed my tri suit pockets full of Endurance tap because that shit is expensive, yo. I only looked at my watch occasionally to check the distance (the course markings were clearly way off, and sure enough the actual distance ended up being 14.5 k rather than 15, but really, no one was complaining about the course being a little short). So I had no idea I was reeling off splits like this:

5:13
5:25
5:23
5:26
5:27
5:30
5:33
5:33
5:21
5:22
5:23
5:24
5:25
5:22
5:21 (half km)

I NEGATIVE SPLIT THE RUN. By 8 seconds. But it still counts. I'm not sure I've ever had a triathlon run over 5k that was that consistent before.

I'm smiling, sort of. Mostly enjoying all the compliments on the tri suit. I race mostly for the compliments, after all. (pic via Michelle)

Finisher pic! On the run I hadn't looked at the total race time at all, and then the finish line clock was of course 15 minutes fast but my brain didn't process that - so when I hit my watch and saw my total finish time I almost fell over. I was assuming I was well over 4 hours, so 3:54 was a very pleasant shock!

I'm not even sure how to handle the fact that for once the run was the best part of my day. I even passed multiple women in my age group (including catching and passing some girls who passed me early in the run and reeling them back in)! That means I've now had a surprisingly good half marathon and 5k this spring, and a shockingly good long course run. Very very happy with how I've chosen to approach my run training right now because it certainly seems to be working for me.

With Mary, Kris, and Fab post race, super happy because I had just finished and realized I still PBd the course even with the flat. In fact I PBd by something like 8 minutes, so without the flat, wow, that would have been a massive improvement! (OK so the last time I had done the sprint the day before and it was approximately 8 billion degrees out, but still. I'll take it)

With Fab, who also had a great and redemptive race and was also in a supremely good mood post race. The training is working!

Sweet finisher hats

Overall, the awesomeness of the run is my main takeaway here. I've moved on from the tire mistake, I feel really good about my running, I learned a lesson, the training is working, and now it's on to IMMT!