My season finally got rolling again this weekend with the Bala Falls tri, or the start of a new season as I like to think of it. After six weeks of physio, rehab and a reset on my attitude I was genuinely excited to race for the first time this year.
So I had one last stop at physio on Friday to tape up my back and off I went to "The Cranberry Capital of Ontario" (I didn't see any cranberries) for one of the classic small-town races in the province. Just like St. Croix I was inundated with hospitality; I stayed in a cottage that was bigger than my house, was treated to some good food and wine, and I have decided that jet skiing is an integral part of my pre-race routine.
I drove the race course the night before to check things out and I figured it was going to suit me pretty well (I was wrong). I was going a little retro this time...no wetsuit, road bike setup...because this was simply a test and a tune up for draft-legal provincials next weekend.
On race morning the water temperature was measured at 75 degrees (cut-off for wetsuits is generally 78 for age-groupers, 76 for elites) but I decided I would go non-wetsuit since I've never done a race without one. There were a couple very strong swimmers at the race and I was in 4th position in a nice little pace line through 400m, until the guy just ahead of me decided that 400m was enough and completely stopped swimming. That type of thing may happen in the middle of the pack at these races...but I was a little surprised that someone in a paceline holding ~1:25's would do that. Unfortunately I couldn't bridge the gap after being forced to swim over the guy so I took the rest of the swim pretty easy and focused on feeling good coming out of the water.
I was 6th onto the bike and made up a couple places in the first 5k. As a prep for next weekend's sprint I went very hard from the start of the bike up to 20k, but I paid for that for the rest of the race. The course was constant long steady hills which I thought would be in my favour on a road bike, but they weren't steep enough or technical enough to really be better off than the guys on tri bikes. I could tell I wasn't as fit as I'd like to be, but I limited my losses and was off the bike 5th. I saw the leaders coming off the bike and I could see they were not runners so I was feeling good with my position.
By the first k I was in 3rd and I could see 1st and 2nd up the road. The leader off the bike was 4 minutes up when I started running and I made up 3 minutes through 3km, but 2nd place had come off the bike just ahead of me and we were running the exact same pace. Unfortunately I really started to feel my lack of race fitness around 5k with the very difficult run course. At every turn around I could see that I was putting time into the leader, and I could tell 2nd place was a strong runner but I had him locked in at about 100 meters up the road. My plan was to bridge up with about 1k to go and make a move on the last hill, but my lack of hard efforts in training lately showed on the uphills (there were about a million of them) as my legs were cramping whenever I tried to dig. I had to settle for 3rd about 20 seconds back of the leaders...but we all were beaten by Martin Rydlo in the second wave.
So 4th. Not bad all things considered, and I enjoyed racing for the first time this year. I haven't lost too much fitness over the last month, just felt a little rusty out there. Hopefully I can get some feel back in the water this week, and with a good effort on a very challenging course yesterday I should be ready to rock in Ottawa this weekend. I probably went too hard on the first half of the bike and run, but considering my race strategy for provincials is "race to the brink of death", that's probably not a bad thing.
I won't be where I had hoped in the swim but the plan is to annihilate myself on the bike until I bridge up to a group, then run a PB 5k off the bike. I can't wait!
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