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!

Chilly half marathon race report 2018

Well then.

That turned out nothing like I expected.

I initially signed up for this year's Chilly because, frankly, I missed seeing my running friends and was having some serious Fear Of Missing Out. And not doing ATB this year was making me a little sad, so I figured this was a more sensible consolation race. Shorter distance, nice race shirt, could make for a solid catered training run with a medal at the end. No sweat.

So I didn't taper for it, or really change my planned schedule much other than skipping one swim (more due to laziness than anything else), shortening my Friday run, and skipping my Saturday run. I did my prescribed TrainerRoad workouts full gas, no changes, meaning I racked up quite a bit of training stress on Thursday/Friday/Saturday before the race. But hey, the Chilly would just be a training run, no biggie.

7 hours of cycling is not how I would normally prep the week before a race.

Saturday night I realized my lazy attitude towards the race meant I hadn't checked if I had any gels, and it turned out I didn't. On long runs I usually eat whatever random gummy candies we have around for the kid's school lunches, but those are tricky to eat while racing. Fortunately, Ivanka came to my rescue and said she'd bring me a gel. Whew. Note to self: buy a few gels to have on hand just in case!

Since the Chilly has a late start, Sunday morning was pretty leisurely. Ate a breakfast sandwich, drank some tea, and headed downtown to get a good parking spot and hang out with Zindine and chat Ironman training for a bit until the girls arrived. People asked me a few times what my goal was and to be honest, I hadn't really given it a lot of thought. I didn't want to run super hard and risk disrupting the next week's training with recovery, and I'd handicapped myself nicely with that whole three hours long bike ride the day before, but the race atmosphere worked its magic and I, almost unconsciously, decided I'd just run what felt good and see how it played out.

And I had absolutely no clue how it was going to feel. I've stuck almost completely to easy running for about 9 months now, aiming to loosely keep my heart rate down to a reasonable number. I don't subscribe to any particular number or approach (I'm not following Maffetone, for example) - more I use my heart rate as one signal to judge if I'm running easy or not. Some days the old ticker just insists on a higher heart rate for whatever reason (a poor night's sleep, hot weather, hormoes, etc), so I don't worry too much about the exact details, as long as the run feels truly easy. Whereas before I often pushed harder than I should have to make the final pace number on Strava look prettier, now I try not to let the overall run pace be a factor in how hard I run.

But this approach means I went into this race with no speedwork, no tempo runs, and no idea how it might feel to run 5:30s or 5:20s or 5:10s, or how long I could hold any of those paces (my training runs typically fall around 6:00/km). But I was feeling completely zen about the whole thing and ready to just let things unfold.

Waiting for the start

Got separated from everyone before the start, which was fine. I wanted to run my own race. The start corral was tremendously annoying, with people pushing to try and move closer to the front, but whatever. Zenlike calm. It's a half. No goal. Just enjoy yourself.

Pre-race selfie, right before some girl stepped on my foot

Gun goes off, shuffle shuffle, finally across the start, immediately start passing the pushy chicks who'd forced their way in front of me in the corral.

5k: 26:35
5:20-5:18-5:18-5:18-5:22

Nicole pretty quickly came up behind me and commented on the pace. I glanced at my watch. 5:10/km? "Well, I think that was downhill?" I said optimistically and slowed up a bit. Nicole had an assigned workout and pace to do, so she said she was going to drop back and I wondered if I should go with her, but I was feeling good and I could see the 2:05 and the 2:00 pacers not far ahead of me, so I figured I'd at least get ahead of the two hour pacer and kept going.

I didn't look at the pace on my watch too much, mostly I just glanced at the heart rate to see if I could keep it around 170 bpm for as long as possible. I was feeling comfortable and figured I wasn't running all that fast because it took 3 km to finally catch up to the 2 hour pacer - and as I was going past him I heard him say, oh shit, I'm 30 seconds ahead.

Huh. I don't feel like I'm running that fast, but considering I was probably at least 30 seconds behind him in the corral, if not more, I may be running too fast. But it feels so comfortable, I guess I'll just go with it?

So that's what I did. I kept half an eye on my heart rate but didn't pay much attention to the paces, and tried to shelter behind taller runners in the windy bits.

6-10k: 26:41 (total time: 53:17)
5:17-5:18-5:22-5:24-5:21

After passing back through downtown, I could see the ears of the 1:55 pace bunnies in the distance. Gradually, they started to get closer. Alright, let's see if I can catch up to them, run with them. 1:55 would be a solid race. I should probably slow down a bit. I mean, when's the last time I was running 5:18, 5:19/km? There's no way I can hold this pace!

At around 9k I caught them and started running with them. OK, this works, I'd be pretty thrilled to finish with a 1:55.

That lasted about 30 seconds. And I started to pull away from them. What are you doing?! Why does this feel so easy?!

11-15k: 26:07 (total time: 1:19:33)
5:16-5:12-5:14-5:14-5:13

I started watching for my friends coming back at the turnaround, and I don't think any of them were expecting to see me so soon because I had to shout at them to get them to notice me! Sam looked especially startled when I yelled at her!

Hit the turnaround at 13k, still feeling really, really good. And noticing my pace was, if anything, getting a bit faster?! OK. There's Marlene and Andy up ahead, let's chase them down and run in with them.

So I focused on Marlene's back for a while, eventually caught them, introduced myself to Andy who seemed somewhat puzzled by the fact all these friends of Marlene kept yelling at him, and then gradually started to leave them behind (they were pretty clearly doing some kind of workout and not running hard - Marlene is a much faster runner than I am).

The km were ticking off, still feeling good, and when I'd sneak looks at my pace I was seeing things like 5:12/km. I'd pick someone ahead of me, run until I caught them, then move on to the next target.

I have NEVER been that person late in a race. Usually I'm just trying to convince myself to keep going and feeling bitter at the people catching up and passing me! But not today. I just kept on reeling them in and moving on to the next one. Especially the guy who was not only playing his music through his iphone speaker (ugggggggh why people, why), but was playing Ed Fucking Sheeran. Really? REALLY? I had that stupid Gallway Girl song stuck in my head for like 8 hours after. Thanks ever so much, guy in bright yellow shirt.

16-20k: 25:51 (total time: 1:45:29)
5:09-5:11-5:12-5:07-5:13

At 18k, I happened to glance at my watch as it clicked over the km and saw my total time (I didn't have the total time displayed on the main screen). 1:34? But...

(here I tried to do math, which is always fun late in a race)

1+1 is 2? Right? Guys?

3k left. 5:10 per km, which is apparently a speed I am still capable of running, because that's what I'm running right now.

Holy shit that puts me finishing at around 1:51??!

What. The. Fuck.

Last km: 5:06

I kept running the numbers around in my head and they kept coming up the same, so I pushed hard, feeling weirdly amazing, finally to the right turn to the finish on Brant, up into a wind like a brick wall (my god that last 100m was hard!), and then across the finish with this showing on my watch.

WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED. I was so befuddled at the finish it took me 5 seconds to figure out how to stop my watch!

No race specific training. No speedwork. No tempos. And I was less than 30 seconds off my half marathon PB? I ran a beautifully paced race with a negative split of something like 80 seconds? Am I dreaming? Did that just happen?

Another #chillyhalf in the books with these gals. I love using this race as a long run workout! Nailed 14k at marathon pace while screaming out to all the friends that I passed on the out and back along Lakeshore. Congrats everyone 👊

A post shared by Sam J 🇨🇦 (@sammykaye71) on Mar 4, 2018 at 11:05am PST

If I had any doubts about stepping back and taking my easy runs truly easy to build a more solid aerobic base for my running, those are sure gone now. Something is working for me here. But of course I don't just run - I suspect all those Trainerroad hours have made a rather large contribution as well. I'm not doing running intervals or running tempo, but I've sure put in a lot of hours on the bike doing VO2 max intervals and the bike equivalent of tempo. I expect that fitness has crossed over.

But really, could I be any more pleased with myself right now? It was a crazy wonderful day that has given me a huge boost of confidence in my approach to training right now. This shit is working. I am excited to see what happens next!

(and now, of course, I'm a hair away from signing up for next year's Chilly half so I can really go for that elusive sub 1:50! Definitely a goal I think I'll be revisiting in 2019!)

Oakville half marathon, plus now what?

I don't have much to say about Oakville, really.

Stocking up at the Oakville Expo

It was hot.

Taking pics of the sunrise was pretty much the highlight of the day

It kinda sucked.

It was annoying.

I gave up on putting in any sort of effort about 2k, although that didn't stop my heart rate from being a billion beats per minute.

Expressing my feelings to Nicole at the finish.

In no particular order the things that irritated me:

1. The woman I kept crossing paths with who had her iphone in an arm band that was not only announcing her pace to everyone in the area at 30 second intervals, but SHE ALSO HAD HER MUSIC BLARING. Good god, no one wants to listen to your shitty race music (because let's face it, we all make poor decisions when it comes to our race music), and they especially don't want to listen a tinny version of Despacito blaring through your crappy iphone speakers.

2. The woman who said 'you are almost there!!' at the 4 km mark.

(In retrospect, when I reached about 10k it occurred to me she meant the small incline we were running up. And yes it irritated me enough I was still thinking about it 6k later...)

3. Seeing a somewhat well-known local runner drop an aid station cup on someone's front lawn when we were a good 2k past the last aid station and no where near the next one. I still regret I didn't scoop it up and hand it back to them with a snarky 'I think you dropped this'.

4. It was SO DAMN HOT.

5. The gel I grabbed at the aid station was coffee flavour. Blech.

But I got to see my girls (yay!) and I did meet a guy running his first ever half and gave him a high five at the finish, and now we follow each other on Strava, so hey, some good came out of it.

The crew! Yay!

One last sunrise pic. That group of swimmers had the right idea. I was wishing I'd joined them instead of racing!

And now what.

Well, I think I'm going to revive the whole training log aspect of this blog. I'm probably going to want some records to look back on when this whole Ironman adventure deal is done. I will probably start with monthly updates and move back to weekly once the real training starts in the new year.

For now, the plan is to have a solid October. Roughly speaking, that means each week I'm aiming to swim twice, bike three times, run four times, and lift weights (!) twice.

On the swim, I had a chance encounter at the pool with one of the better swimmers in my club, and she was nice enough to hang out for a few minutes, watch me swim, and give me some feedback. It wasn't my imagination, my stroke had gotten wonky this year (I mean, it was fairly obvious given I got slower...) and she gave me some advice about my catch phase that almost instantly brought my times per 100m back down to where I was last year. Woo! So I'm spending some time working on really locking that in, and also a fair amount of time with my fins, since practicing kicking seems to be helping my overall body position in the water a lot.

Whoa I haven't taken many bike pics lately. Here's Christina and I after a rather chilly early September ride.

For the bike, a couple of sessions on Zwift during the week and some outside riding on the weekend while the weather cooperates. Nothing really planned, just maintenance and keeping up the calorie burn.

Running, slow and steady, hopefully keeping that heart rate aerobic and building towards getting a little faster in November (the hills in my neighbourhood are not helpful. I have no problem keeping my heart rate down on flats, but any incline just disrupts everything. So annoying). Not worrying about too much beyond just laying down some miles and keeping injury free.

My 'I can't believe I'm really doing this' face. The DOMS after the first day of squats was...unpleasant.

And weights! I've done it four whole times now! I was cautious to start (mostly doing bodyweight/very light weights) but I'm ready to move back to the proper bar for squats and deadlifts and maybe even start working back to the point I can do pull ups. Although that mostly requires some weight loss, which in the post-40 world is proving to be a slow and profoundly annoying process. But now's a good time to work at it, and work at it I shall.

So, I'll be back in a month with an update on how October went. And probably some sunrise and fall colour pictures, because really that's the best reason to get outside this month!

Race report: Guelph Lake II sprint triathlon

OK, Subaru series, I love your races, but kind of feel like your graphics person ran out of energy by the time they got to this race...

Last triathlon for this year.

It was a good summer, with lots of steady progress after having my training in the winter so rudely interrupted by the death flu/bronchitis. So I was happy to have one last chance to string together a solid sprint distance swim-bike-run, and hopefully improve my series points from the 10th place age group in Milton (best three races count towards the series, and 10th doesn't get you many points...)

Leaving home at the crack 'o dawn

I left too early and scored a sweet spot in transition

It felt ridiculously cold when I got the race site, and after picking up my kit and getting transition set up, I started sizing up everyone carrying a Tim Horton's cup and debating who I could take out and swipe their coffee just to have something to hold to warm up my hands.

Swim start

transition photo I'm too lazy to rotate

Fortunately, before I could get myself arrested for grand theft coffee, some of my Iron Canucks teammates arrived and I was able to distract myself chatting with them and soon the sun had warmed things up enough I was no longer concerned I was getting frostbite on my fingers.

We were all debating back and forth what to wear on the bike - the lake temp was quite warm, but with the cool air temps I wasn't sure how that first few km on the bike would feel. I settled on leaving a set of arm warmers in transition and making the decision on the fly in T1.

Then it was off to the lake to warm up, where I stayed in the water until after the first wave had started, since the water temp was warmer than the air!

Swim - 750m
Time: 16:55.9
Overall: 125/482
Gender: 27/167
Age Group: 6/26

I positioned myself in the second row close to the start flag, and soon we were off. It was a surprisingly violent swim - I think I was on someone's feet almost the entire time (including one girl who I swear was deliberately switching to breaststroke and trying to kick me when I'd occasionally brush against her - WTF?! We are all getting groped and grabbed out here! No need for that!). It also ended up being a little bit choppy, and at one point I turned to breathe and unfortunately got hit in the head by another swimmer just as a wave hit my face and I got the fun experience of swimming and coughing at the same time. Yay!

(uh, to those now thinking 'fuck that I'm never doing a triathlon' it's not usually like that! I swear! You don't have to swim in the pack!)

Overall, it was a solid swim - I was out of the water in just over 15 minutes. The time looks longer because it includes a long run up a hill to the timing mat at transition.

T1: 2:13

I felt pretty warm as I stripped off my wetsuit, so I didn't bother putting on my arm warmers. Most of the bikes in my age group seemed to still be on the rack, and I also saw Fab one rack over and aimed to beat him out of transition, because what good is a friendly rivalry if you don't use it as motivation? He'd started a wave earlier so had a three minute head start, but seemed to be busy eating a three course meal or doing his nails or something and I ended up beating him out of T1.

As I exited, the announcer called my name and added 'she's been on the podium this season'. Whoa. That was a weird feeling.

Bike - 30k
Time: 57:28.6
Overall: 93/482
Gender: 13/167
Age Group: 3/26

Ah, the same old story on the bike. Going super fast, loving life, thinking wow I am going to have a fantastic time today!

And then hitting the turnaround.

And discovering the tailwind now turned headwind.

How did I not realize??!

I could see Fab was really close behind me at the turnaround, so kept pushing even into the wind and over the craptacular pavement of the last 5k back to the park, expecting to hear him come up behind me at any second. Sure enough as I reached my transition rack, I heard the announcer call his name and knew I'd have to hustle to get through transition ahead of him!

T2: 1:15

There were two bikes already on the rack (d'oh) but with Fab hot on my heels I didn't pay much attention and switched my shoes as quickly as I could. Would have liked to have had this one under a minute; not sure why it took so long. And I totally forgot to grab my run visor, too!

Run - 7k
Time: 37:54.5
Total time: 1:55:45.4
Overall: 111/482
Gender: 17/167
Age Group: 3/26

The run felt pretty awful, and I'm kind of surprised it took Fab a full km to catch me. Damn. I chased him for a while just trying to keep him in my sight, and listening to the footsteps coming up behind me to see if they sounded 'female'. Mostly it was guys (it usually is), but no girls in my age group went past me. At least as far as I could tell - at least one of the bodymarkers had put on the age groups in miniscule numbering and they were impossible to see!

Spotted Marlene heading for the finish looking great, and sort of marveled at how much smaller the hills seemed compared to running them at the Olympic back in June. The difference in temperature really made a big difference in how painful it felt!

It wasn't a comfortable run but I got it done, and I'm pleased with how steady I held the pace.

Not bad!

Crossed the finish where Fab was waiting, grabbed the nonachoholic recovery beer, took a sip, remembered I loathe beer and got rid of that in favour of a water bottle instead. Checked the results to find myself 3rd for age group! It felt pretty well earned. I raced hard and I'm very pleased with how that last race of the season went.

Iron Canucks Gang

With the very inspiring Esther post race. She just did IMMT and decided at 5 am she felt like doing a triathlon and showed up for GLII!

Awards

Lame attempt at artsy bling photo ruined by overexposure. Ah well.

Now, on to other things. Like that BIG GIANT addition to my race schedule up in the corner. That deserves a whole separate post...

Race Report: Iron Girl Canada 2017

I'd been looking forward to this race for a while, knowing my girls Amy & Sam would be there, along with a whole crew of Tri Chicks, coach Nancy and Natalie, and a few other assorted people I know (Janice, my friend from Milton Kristi, Jana, other people I'm sure I'm forgetting). Annnnd...well to be honest I'd looked at previous years results and had an age group placing on my mind. A hard effort on the bike and a not-entirely-sucky run would likely do it to hit the top 5.

Up early to go pick up Sam and drive to the race, snag a parking spot, and fortunately we got there early enough I was able to get a decent spot on the rack in transition. As I memorized the location of my rack, I started counting and realized there were five full racks of bikes for women 40-44. Holy crap. I've done races where there have barely been five racks for all women total! It was at that point the sheer size of the race started to sink in, and I was feeling some pretty heavy doubts about that age group placing thing. Really, you think you can be a top performer when there's this many people here? Over 700 women and over 180 registered just in your age group? Come on!

The Iron Canucks racing - Amy, Sam, some girl who looks weirdly tall in this picture, Louise

Can you spot Sam setting up her stuff in the background?

It's like 'Where's Waldo?' but with Iron Canucks around here.

So many 40-44 year olds

The news from the L.O.S.T race in Oakville the day before had been 8 degree water (yikes!) so we went to check out the swim exit and get our feet wet. Fortunately, because wind patterns weather blah blah blah stuff I'm sure a meterologist could explain, the Grimsby section of Lake O doesn't roll as often as the northern shore of Lake O, and it was downright pleasant. Probably 20 degrees (doable without a wetsuit, although I wore mine because security blanket).

So much calmer than at Niagara two weeks earlier!

Since the lake was looking calm we decided to swim the 500m from the swim exit to the start as a warm up, which I'm really glad we did. I was a little panicky feeling at the start and it gave me time to get my nerves settled down, plus observe the landmarks on the shoreline so I'd have some sense during the race about distance.

Shook out my pre-race nerves, watched the first wave start from the shore, then got in the water to make my way out to the deeper part of the start area. Floated (and let's be honest here, peed - we were all doing it, guaranteed) while the next two waves went off. I wanted to start further out from shore since the race encourages weaker swimmers to hug the shoreline and walk when they need to, and Coach Nancy had told us to make sure to stay further out with the stronger swimmers, and we'd be less likely to be caught up in congestion and flailing limbs.

Swim
Time: 10:26.9 (2:05/100m)
Overall place: 152/704
Age group place: 53/143

10 second warning, and we were off. I started at the front which was the right move - didn't get tangled up on anyone, and no one swam over me. Wasn't able to latch on to any fast feet, unfortunately, and just focused on trying to swim straight for the distant swim exit buoy. It was a very undramatic swim, except every time I turned to breathe towards shore I could see what looked like a seething mass of yellow and white swim caps. I was very glad I was clear of that!

At the swim exit I hit a bit of a traffic jam and used the opportunity as I was standing there waiting for the exit to clear to hit the lap button on my watch. I was a little disappointed to see I'd been longer than 10 minutes on the swim - I had tried to swim pretty hard and was hoping to be 9:xx. Ah well. My swimming remains competent and unspectacular!

I have no memory of Coach Nancy taking this picture. Post swim delirium?

T1: 1:48

Achieved my goal of beating my T1 time from Niagara two weeks ago (same transition set up, right down to being on basically the same bike rack in both races!). It felt like everyone else in my age group had come out of the water at the same time and it was kind of mayhem. Wetsuits and swim caps flying everywhere. I skipped putting on socks, which saved some time, but my wetsuit is still a huge pain in the ass to get over my feet. I really need to try some surgery on it to see if I can't improve things there.

Looks like I'm about to drop my bike here. Thank you Danielle for the picture!

Hit another bottleneck leaving transition when the two people taking up the whole road in front of me were sauntering towards the mount line like they were taking a Sunday stroll. I managed to sneak around them and get safely mounted and on my way. Eventually.

Bike
Time: 36:03.9 (speed 33.27 km/hr)
Overall: 17/704
Age group: 2/143

And this is where I really felt the difference between a mixed gender race and a women's only race.

I said 'on your left/thank you' a lot.

No one passed me.

It was pretty awesome. Although my legs were like 'um you know we have to run after this, right?' and my heart rate, once my HRM finally started picking it up properly, was up in scary 'how long do you think you can really hold this?' territory. Shut up legs, just push as hard as you can and we'll worry about the run later.

Heading out on the bike; photo via Ted.

I was definitely in my happy place. Once I hit the turn around, the number of people in front of me had really thinned out, which made things a lot easier - less having to pass clumps of people, more just passing individuals. I hadn't been able to see the numbers on anyone's legs due to the bright sunlight, but I was pretty sure I'd made good headway through my age group. Coming in towards the finish there was one woman wearing a brown tri suit who caught my attention because she looked really fast, but I couldn't quite overtake her and she got into the chute slightly ahead of me. Then we both got tied up behind someone who had full on dropped her bike on the ground. Bike in and out was just not destined to go well for me!

T2: 0:59

Transition was empty.

Like, really empty. I surveyed all five 40-44 bike racks.

No bikes.

WHAT.

The Tri Ontario official standing near my rack saw the expression on my face, laughed, and gave me a thumbs up.

Oh boy. Time to fly through this transition and see how long this lasts..

(I was, in fact, second off the bike - that woman right ahead of me coming into the chute? She was in my age group, and also a cancer survivor, so her bike was racked on a special rack for survivors right by the bike out/in, which I think is a pretty awesome thing for the race organizers to set up! Survivors also get special bibs and swim caps, and an awards category to themselves as well).

Run
Time: 26:13
Overall time: 1:15:29.8
Overall: 21/704
AG: 3/143

I got out of transition before the woman in the brown tri suit, but she caught me pretty quickly, running at a blistering pace. She didn't have an age written on her leg, so at the time I didn't know she was in my age group, but I had a feeling (she ended up winning not just our age group, but also the survivors category as well). I settled in to what felt like a maintainable pace and braced myself for a stream of people to start coming past me - but it didn't really happen. In mixed gender races I can count on a pretty much never ending series of guys blowing past me, but without the men, I found myself actually catching up to and passing people! That just does not happen to me on the run!

I wasn't looking at my watch (although I did take a few looks at my heart rate monitor until I decided that that was information I was perhaps better off not knowing, because dear god how am I not dead?!), and just focused on trying to catch the people in front of me. I could see someone not far off who I was pretty sure was Jana and focused on her, trying to slowly reel her in. At the turn around a woman with a 41 on her leg went past (damn - but she was motoring and I mentally congratulated her) and then shortly after I saw Natalie heading the other direction, looking unbearably cheerful and like this was the greatest thing that had ever happened to her. 'This is so FUN!' she yelled to me. I was like WTF dude no it isn't it HURTS SO MUCH. But knowing she wasn't far behind did help motivate me to maintain my pace. If they are going to catch you, I said to myself, make them work for it. Don't make it easy!

Amy wasn't far behind Natalie and we high fived, and then I was looking for Sam but somehow missed her completely. Probably too focused on not having my lungs forcibly exit my body. Sucks I missed her, that's the best part of the run out and back! Getting to tell your friends how much racing sucks!

I caught Jana around 3k in. I can't remember exactly what I said to her (something about it hurting, probably), but she seemed to agree with me on the subject.

Finally I was into the final km and coming up the hill that is way bigger on the way back than it was on the way out. Coach Nancy was waiting at the top to yell encouragement at me, which I was completely incapable of absorbing because all my brainpower was being used to just keeping my legs moving and all I managed to say was 'can't.....breathe....' and then she left to encourage a TriChick going the opposite direction while Ted took my picture.

This actually looks a lot better than I was feeling at this point. Note Coach Nancy is ON A MISSION to motivate everyone. She's the best!

And then I was sprinting for the finish and I could hear people yelling my name and Oh Thank God that's over.

Heading for the finish, pic via Danielle and the awesome Iron Canucks cheer squad.

Guys. You guys, these splits.

I mean, on the one hand, I've run a half faster than that pace, but after having to completely rebuild my run fitness since March? I'm over the moon happy about running that speed over 5k after a hard 20k bike. And negative splitting! Things are starting to come back together!

I downed the bottle of water I was handed at the end in about 12 seconds, got my medal, got congrats from Danielle, waited for Natalie and Amy and Sam to finish, and checked the results.

Age group place achieved, and almost cracked the overall top 20.

Wait for it...

Amy, me, Sam, back in the lake after to try and cool off and de-stink a bit before the drive home. I was terrified the entire time we were taking this picture that Sam's phone was going to fall in the lake!

Picking up the Big Bling (thank you Amy for taking the pic!)

Enjoying the podium a little too much (pic via Nancy)

Sparkly!

You guys the back is engraved! I didn't even notice until this morning!

Still can't quite believe it, really. I'm pretty proud of this race. Swim was fine, I pushed hard on the bike, and I didn't blow up on the run.

So of course I signed up for Guelph Lake II. I'm not ready to be done triathlons for this year, and these shorter ones are just too much fun! One more go around at the whole 750/30/7 deal until I pack up the wetsuit for this year!