Cobourg Sprint

Another weekend, another race. It's almost as if this is my job or something!

I always do my best every year to fit Cobourg in my race schedule. It's not a big event but it's one of the first races I entered and I've been back almost every year since. It's my favourite race for the beautiful venue/town and great course, and the guys at Multisport Canada always do an outstanding job putting it on.

When I got to the race site there was quite a bit more confusion, stress and general panic than usual. The water had turned overnight and the temperature had dropped to 55.6 degrees (usually mid-70s at this race) and wetsuits were mandatory (for good reason). I didn't mind in the least...I like fun challenges. But there were more than a few people pissed off at the world that the water was so cold. I don't get people who get so wrapped up in things as trivial (and uncontrollable) as water temperature at a race. To me that's why triathlon is so cool - everything can go to sh*t - and I just embrace it.

So I decided it wasn't worth a "warm" up in the water and did some dynamic stretching on the beach. When the horn went off I began to understand (just a little) why so many people were freaking out. It was COLD. There's always an initial shock when you hit water like that, but after about 200m I started to get my breathing under control. But as my hands and feet started to go numb I was getting bad pains from the bone in my foot that I broke last year. They made it a two loop swim due to the conditions, and not only did I have no idea how I was swimming with numb hands in rough water, but I wasn't sure if I had reinjured my foot or it was just sensitive to the cold. I was rather perplexed!

Luckily I survived the first lap and my foot was fine running through the sand...although my goggles had completely fogged up with the change in temperature and I more or less did a trip/belly flop diving in for the second time. I was second out of the water with what seemed like a disappointing swim, but really I have no idea how to judge it with the swim split being so meaningless in the conditions.

I was 45 seconds down getting on the bike and figured I would put a couple minutes on everyone over the 20k. But my legs didn't really want to respond and I had trouble staying over 280W (my goal was >300W avg). I put time into everyone else but felt like I was getting nowhere on the guy up the road. So I just focused on riding the uphills strong and descending fast. I think I have a lot of trouble finding a rhythm over a 20k ride, I need something longer to get going.

I figured I hadn't put any time into the leader getting off the bike and thought that if I put 15 seconds into him in transition I could be patient on the run and steadily take off 10sec/km. I came off the bike 30 seconds down so I was confident with where I was, although I really didn't want the race to come down to the run because I had a few hard runs the week prior and my calves were still pretty shot and didn't know how well I could run off the bike. So I stayed patient and relaxed and by 2k (just about when it started to get HOT) I was already in the lead and just maintained a good but controlled effort for win #2 in 3 races. And some more fun with post-race interviews :)

Overall I have to admit I wasn't thrilled with any one aspect of the race. I wasn't fast and I didn't race half as well as I did in Bala a few weeks ago. But I can definitely build off getting it done in tough conditions and reacting to feeling pretty flat on the day. At this point I want to keep racing every weekend but I'm going to take a couple weeks off to get some good training in before the Esprit.

I regret not setting a more concrete race schedule this summer after hardly racing June-July and now wanting to hit every event I can. So next year I'll put a lot more effort into planning out my season, likely around a couple longer distance events. The more I race the more I feel that long course is going to be my strength.