Do You Even Triathalon Bro?

My next race after the Subaru Valens Tri was supposed to be the K-Town Long Course Tri...likely my favourite race in Ontario for the uniquely awesome and challenging distance, and as I discovered last year the timing of it works really well to prep for a late season 70.3. Unfortunately after Valens I managed to catch the summer cold from hell...I wasn't deathly ill but just wouldn't go away and it forced me to take close to 10 days off training. Along with that I was struggling with some shoulder issues in the water and needed to get a handle on it before the 2k K-Town swim that can be really rough. So Coach James and I decided that it would be best to pass on Kingston and race Age Group Provincials the following weekend in Bracebridge.

Luckily the way it worked out I managed to get a bit of a mid-season break and a mental recharge along with starting to get my feel back in the water. I got some really good workouts in leading into Bracebridge including the longest brick of my life and some really strong runs. Its crunch time in my prep for 70.3 Worlds so the plan with Bracebridge was to get a solid Olympic distance race in my legs in the middle of a hard training block. And while I didn't exactly get the result I would have wanted, I accomplished that goal.

Last time I did Bracebridge I was a late entry and started in about 300th place in the TT format which made for a challenging race with most of my competitors finishing half an hour ahead of me, but at least I knew what to expect this time. I started in 37th this time so I figured if I had a solid performance the only athletes that would be ahead of me by the end would be the elite guys, of which there was a solid contingent.

My main goal for the swim was to get through it with a controlled effort and without having any shoulder issues. I was pretty disappointed when I saw my time after the race but given that I had missed some time in the water and a few weeks ago I couldn't swim 400m continuous without pain, I'm at least happy that I got through it without any pain...and it looks like all the swim times were on the slow side so I'm confident that its a step in the right direction.

The rest of my race is best described this way (don't click if you don't like cuss words)



Within the first 10 meters on the bike my bottle of sport drink launched from my BTA cage, and even if I had planned on stopping, it had broken anyway. Luckily I had packed 2 gels but only half a bottle of water as my main source of nutrition/fluid in an Olympic distance race is sport drink. I embraced the new challenge and got on with the task. My plan was to build the effort but when I hit the first short and steep climb 5k in I immediately knew it was going to be a tough ride. My legs were empty from a hard week of training. I tried to find a rhythm and bring up my power through to 20k but by that point I knew that I had to adjust my expectations and focus on climbing efficiently, descending well and staying aero as much as possible. I ended up riding at my goal 70.3 wattage but there was some comfort in knowing that at that power output I'd be on pace for around a 2:25 bike time in Tremblant on a similar course.

At least my Rudy Project Wing57 kept me looking fast

More than anything else for this race I wanted to put down a strong run. My Olympic distance run PB has held for 4 years despite getting extremely close in my last two Oly-distance races. And based on my recent run workouts I was pretty confident I could run 36-mid off the bike. But when my first km split was 20 seconds behind that pace I had a pretty good idea that it wasn't going to happen. I managed to bring my pace down over the next 3-4k but by the time I hit the turnaround I had nothing left. I was running at my half-iron pace and it felt like the last 5k of a half. At that point I knew that I just had to get the damn thing done regardless of the result...I was flat from a hard training block but it was a great prep for Tremblant, even if I had intended to finish 10 minutes faster.

So that's the way she goes. I had a bit of an existential crisis after checking out my splits, but it will be an important piece of the puzzle leading into my big race of the year. All my signs in training are pointing to me hitting my goals in Tremblant and I can't wait to get there.

Valens Triathlon

This past weekend I took part in one of the new races in Ontario this year, Valens in the Subaru Series. My goal this season is to get to the start line of 70.3 Worlds fit and healthy (ie. not burned out) in September, and knowing my tendency to load up the first part of my season I've had to make an effort to be patient with my race schedule and not overextend myself...or my wallet, before the important events.

Since banking a solid half in Knoxville and a couple good races in June, July is kind of a transition period before the higher priority races with K-Town Long Course and Worlds coming up. Valens worked perfectly in my schedule as a short low-key event and about a 20 minute drive from Amanda's place in Guelph. I was also excited to check out the new event with what looked like a fun run course.

Despite spending a lot of time in Guelph and riding in the area, I had no idea that Valens Conservation Area existed until I saw the new race on the Subaru calendar. But it was a great venue for a laid back local race. After a quick warmup and surprise visit from Coach James and a couple LPCers we were off, and Amanda followed a couple waves later in the swim-bike.

After the cramping issues I had in Guelph Lake I decided to take a conservative approach to the swim and tried to stay smooth and relaxed rather than flailing through the 750m as I often do. Its hard to tell how the swim actually went with all of the swim times being quite slow but I kept my effort in check and was out of the water in 3rd or 4th with one athlete about 15 seconds ahead and another who swam very well about a minute up on me.

When I got on my bike and could see the flashing lights of the lead vehicle through the rain in the distance I knew it was just a matter of time before I'd get up there. But my run was a bit of a question mark heading into this one since I badly bruised my foot during a brick workout after Guelph Lake and hadn't really put in a decent run since. So I wanted to take the lead on the bike early and bank as much time as possible in case I wasn't running quite to my capabilities. I also had a bit of extra confidence in my aerodynamics thanks to my brand new Rudy Project Wing57 helmet, which was super comfortable on a windy and humid day.

After about 8k of heading into a strong headwind I passed the second place athlete as he was overtaking the leader, then I had a long section of tailwind to put my head down and try to get away. I haven't been in the lead of a race since 2012 before I had the setback of missing most of the season with a concussion...man it felt nice to be chasing the lead vehicle again :) My power wasn't great but my Garmin had my average speed at 39.2km/h for the 25.5k which I was pretty happy with given the conditions and the tricky exit/entrance into the park which I DID NOT want to champ just because I was in the lead.

The pre-race email for this event mentioned that the majority of the run course was on trails, and if it was raining they would likely get very muddy. So I took my lesson from Xterra Milton last year where I made the mistake of wearing racing flats on a greasy trail run, and brought my Salomon trail racers this time which turned out to be the perfect choice for the terrain and conditions.

I ran well through the first 2k and loved the trails, but after that I started to get some bad stomach cramps...my first thought was "sh*t not now", and then the more productive thought came, "try to relax and belly breath." My stomach was off the night before but I chalked it up to pre-race jitters and didn't think about it again until then.

Unfortunately it only got worse for the next couple minutes until at just before 3k I was doubled over throwing up. I was about to start feeling sorry for myself thinking how embarrassing it would be that the leader of the race might drop out. But lucky for me Coach James was running the opposite way down part of the run course at that exact time and said "you're in the lead, have no choice but to suck it up!"

There was only one turnaround where I got a chance to see that I still had a comfortable lead, and based on the pace that the second and third place athletes were running I just had to keep running to keep the lead. So the rest of my run was at "puke threshold" which was slower than my half ironman pace, but luckily enough to take the win.

I had mixed feelings as I crossed the finish line at what Amanda described as a lazy jogging pace. First off I was thrilled just to be finished because it was a very uncomfortable run. I was also really happy to finally get another race win after 2 seasons with a lot of podiums behind some strong pro's. Then I was disappointed that I couldn't enjoy the run course because I LOVE trail runs, and I could have run 3 minutes faster on another day. I also felt like it took away from the result that I had a disaster run but still won the race.

But ultimately I got what I needed out of the race, my swim was more controlled and I'm slowly putting the pieces together to swim well in September, another good bike split which has consistently been my strength this year, and I sucked up a mentally challenging run. If I wasn't leading the race I more than likely would have dropped out, and I adjusted my effort and expectations to meet the realities of the day. And I only had that cushion on the run because I had the fastest bike split by over a minute, and I've worked hard on the bike this year. So maybe it wasn't my best performance ever, but I've had to wait a long time for this one! Its exactly what I needed as I switch back to gearing up for longer distances again...a little extra confidence and fitness after consistently solid efforts in the first half of the season.

I was just as happy for Amanda who has faced a lot of challenges this year, but took the win in the swim-bike and threw down the fastest bike split of any female on the day. She's worked extremely hard despite things not going her way this year and I can't wait to see her put it all together with the effort she's been putting in.

LPC Domination Triathlon (formerly known as Guelph Lake)

This past weekend was Ontario Club Championships at the Guelph Lake Tri Weekend. Despite it being practically a home-town race and one of the biggest events in Canada, somehow I had never done the Olympic-distance race at Guelph Lake. I've done the sprint many times, including one of my best results last year, but the one time I raced the Olympic in 2010 I pulled out on the run with an injury. Its a good honest course and always brings lots of strong competition, so I was looking forward to getting the monkey off my back, putting in a big effort and doing my part to help Team LPC with some championship points.

Coming off a solid race last weekend including a PB bike split I had some confidence that my fitness is going in the right direction but I was still a bit nervous not knowing what to expect from the course and a deep field. But there was an awesome contingent of LPCers at the race, with lots competing and plenty more coming out to support. Weather was perfect, warm-up was good and I lined up together with four other LPCers.

Swim: 24:03

My focus for the race was to be patient and build throughout each segment, and try not to get overly excited off the start with the strong competition. I had nice clean water off the start and slotted behind Mark and Chris knowing they would likely swim around 21 minutes. I held on to them for a while, then started to go backwards from 500m to the far turn on the course until I finally found find a bit of a rhythm on the way back into shore and brought back a bit of time and distance on the small group (pretty much all LPCers) ahead of me.

I was really looking forward to getting on the bike and seeing if I could ride myself to the front of the race, unfortunately my legs had other plans. When I got out of the water my hamstring cramped badly and would not let up as I ran, then hobbled, then walked up the long hill to transition. So I did the only thing I could, I sat on my bum and watched a stream of athletes run past while I took my wetsuit off and tried to stretch it out. Fellow LPCer Garrick Loewen aka my little brother (who won the sprint event!) ran down to see if I was ok, likely thinking that I had been bitten by a shark.

(photo cred. Ken Whitlock & BPT)

Eventually it loosened up enough for me to stand up and slowly make my way up to T1 and get on with my race. The good news was that I later found out, not counting my little picnic stop, my 1500m swim time would have been right around 22-flat, which is a solid swim for me and my best of the season so far.

Bike: 1:02:15
It would have been really easy for my to give up at that point with the race well up the road and not being sure how my legs would hold up on the bike. And Ryan from a few years ago probably would have. But I put it out of my mind and changed my focus to putting down a good bike split and going from there. After all it was Club Championships and I wanted to contribute some points to LPC.

Luckily I felt ok getting on my bike and settled into a good rhythm. My plan was to focus on not burying myself on the early hills and really work the flatter middle 30k of the course. My power wasn't as good as in Welland last weekend with my hamstring a little twitchy but I was still making progress and picking off athletes. I managed to move up quite a bit with a relatively good bike split, not my full potential but some reassurance that my bike fitness is continuing to improve with my big races still many weeks out.

Run: 38:23
I had the run in the back of my mind through the whole bike wondering if my legs were going to cooperate with me. But I settled into a good rhythm right away. I really wanted to take down my Olympic-distance run PB which would mean aiming for sub-37. I really liked the run course with a mix of terrain and surfaces that seemed to make it go by faster.

I was right on pace through the first 5k (18:22) and it felt manageable to hold. I had made my way into the top-5 on the road and I could just barely see Coach Mark up ahead around 7-8k. I decided to take a bit of a risk and pick it up knowing that I'd have to put in about 15sec per km to catch him. And then everything cramped up again. My last km was at Ironman shuffle pace just trying to hold it together without getting re-passed with my quads, hamstring and diaphragm cramping up. I was a little too optimistic with my pacing, but I'm not going to take down any PBs without taking a risk now and then. I ended up in 6th with Mike Hay just nipping me in a later wave.

So it may not have been the smoothest race I've ever had, but I met my goals of a strong Olympic-distance race/effort and helping out the team with some points. And I can't finish this without sending special congrats to Jack Laundry and Garrick for picking up the overall wins this weekend. LPC ended up going 1,3,4,5,6 for the men and 2nd for women in the Olympic, and had equal domination in the sprint. I haven't yet heard if we've officially won the club championship based on participation and age group placing, but there was no question that LPC is the dominant club in Ontario these days and its a lot of fun to be a part of it.

Obviously the biggest question I had coming out of the race was where those cramps came from, and how I can avoid that happening again. I'm confident that it wasn't nutrition related, but I've identified a few potential causes that I'm addressing moving forward with my training and prep leading into my higher priority races. All things considered it was another successful race in my season-long prep for 70.3 Worlds. My fitness is good and still going in the right direction, and I've got plenty of time to work out the kinks. For now I'm back to some more hard training with a few weeks before my next race.

MSC Welland: 2 for 1 Race Reports!

A month after opening my season at Rev3 Knoxville I couldn't wait to get my Ontario racing season rolling. I had planned on starting out with Multisport Canada's Binbrook race the week prior, but with Amanda racing the Welland Half I decided to hold off for one more week and make it a weekend getaway to this flat and fast event.

I couldn't have been happier with my race in Knoxville to start my season, and after recovering well from the race I put in a few good weeks of training in preparation for some shorter and faster races through the middle part of my season. I had posted some solid bike workouts and I was looking forward to seeing what I could do in Welland, which is just about the flattest bike course out there.

Swim: 11:10 (1:30/100m)

The sprint event in Welland is a time trial start, something I've done once before in Bracebridge a few years ago. Some people love the TT start, I guess I'm pretty impartial as it means racing through a steady stream of athletes through the first half of the race.

The one advantage of a TT start is not having to start as fast as a mass start race, but I kind of threw that out the window right away and took it out hard...I guess out of habit. The 750m went by really quickly and while it wasn't my best swim I felt better than in Knoxville and I'm alright with my time. I think I have to accept that if I'm focusing on long course racing without the luxury of training full-time, I can't expect to be PB'ing every swim and still see steady gains on my bike and run fitness. Regardless, I had a not-bad swim and was set up well to push the bike.

Bike: 44:16 (40.7km/h)

After a quick T1 I was steadily moving past athletes who started ahead of me, and by 4-5k into the bike I had settled into a good rhythm and knew I was riding pretty well. We were heading into a pretty good headwind on the way out but I managed to keep my average speed at 39km/h at the 15k turnaround. At that point there were only 4-5 athletes ahead of me despite starting in 57th position.

Once I made the turnaround I was pushing my biggest gear most of the way back and felt strong with my average speed slowly creeping up. Its been a long time since I've felt that good on the bike in a race and I was riding with a lot of confidence. I had a lot of fun on the bike course but unfortunately I got stuck behind cars on the way out of, and back into town. After getting my average speed close to 41km/h near the end of the bike I got stuck behind a couple cars and had to come to a complete stop as they made their way through a stop sign, not wanting to risk going around them and getting DQ'd.

It was really tough to keep my frustration in check given how well I was riding but I knew that nothing positive would come from dwelling on it. Its a reality of local races with open roads. Fortunately my little slow down didn't affect the end result at all, but I was agonizingly close to grabbing the top bike split from pro Wolfgang Guembel. But if that's the only minor complaint I have with my race, I guess it went pretty well! I ended up with my fastest bike split ever, a nice confidence boost moving forward.

Run: 28:47 (3:51/km)

I was 4th onto the run course and by that time the race was totally spread out with the varying start times. I felt pretty good despite pushing the bike but I had no idea what my position was relative to the three athletes ahead of me who had all started quite a bit earlier.

Not much happened on the run besides a good amount of suffering, and I ended up in 3rd with the 3rd best run split (behind the two who beat me). I felt pretty good and I'm confident that I ran faster than my half ironman pace, and after spinning over the run course the next day it looks like the course was 300-400m long. Regardless it was a fun race and I was really happy with the result and how I felt throughout. I'm looking forward to continuing to build on my fitness and see what I can do for the rest of the season!

Race Report #2!

After finishing my race it was time to change roles and become support crew/gear sherpa for Amanda's race the following morning. Having experienced a whole lot of ups, downs, blowups and gear malfunctions in my long course racing, I tried to give her some words of advice and encouragement, but the great thing about long course is that ultimately the only way to get to that finish line is to go through all of that yourself and find the mental strength to come out the other side. I know that Amanda is not one to write up race reports but having seen her put so much time and effort into her preparation for this race, I feel like talking about it on her behalf!

So after some nerves (mostly mine!) the gun went off in her race and off she went, along with a few LPC teammates! I managed to catch her swim start and - unique to Welland's course - again about 1500m in thanks to the swim course going under a bridge before turning around and finishing. Her plan was to stay relaxed and swim comfortably and she nailed it. I barely managed to see her get on her bike after a fast transition and away she went for a fast 90k.

I had expected her to ride around 2:40 (a conservative effort for her), so when 2:45 rolled around and I still didn't see her I started to think that something happened out there. Turns out she took a page from my book and flatted around 37k. Luckily for her, our friend Jason was racing in the swim-bike event and he just happened to be only a couple minutes behind her at that point and helped her fix it. I know far too well how much it SUCKS to flat in a big race and I know that she was really bummed because without the flat she was right on her target wattage and well under her target time. I did my best to give her a quick pep talk on a short out-and-back at the start of the run and told her to forget about it and take the run 1km at a time.

Unfortunately her bad luck wasn't done, and around 7k of running right on goal pace she tripped on some loose gravel on the run course and took a big spill and had to tough out an extra long 22km run course! But through all of that adversity she made it through and got to the finish in a very respectable time despite everything. I know that she was disappointed with how everything unfolded, and for good reason considering everything that went wrong, but I'm confident that she will take a ton away from this race and she's going to be strong for the rest of this season! We've both bottled up lots of motivation to tackle this race again next year and take some serious time off our previous results there.