Canmore Triathlon

I'm a little late in putting up this post. I was in Canmore last weekend for the Canmore Tri It Triathlon. The weather was fantastic. I did the Olympic distance and it was the most beautiful race I have done to date - difficult, but beautiful. The day started off on kind of a funny note. At our pre-race briefing, the race director said "Couple of things - there's a moose in the lake". Everybody cracked up. Apparently this moose was coming down to the lake on a daily basis for his morning swim.

The swim was in a small lake called Quarry Lake and it was very clear. I could clearly see bodies in front of me, not green images of something that looked like a body. Three laps of the lake and I was done. My slowest time ever for this distance. I'm going to blame it on the thin mountain air - we were way above Edmonton elevation, after all.

Off to ride 40 km. The route was four laps on the Three Sisters Parkway and it was as smooth as glass, not a crack or pothole along the entire route. I was enjoying the ton of downhills, but where there's a downhill, there's an uphill. Plenty of times I broke the speed limit.

The run was 10 km - 2 laps at the Canmore Nordic Centre - and my first lap was not good. I had stomach cramps and had to walk a lot, but at least the scenery was beautiful. The run path is reserved for biathletes and not open to anyone else, but an exception was made for us on race day. The second lap was much better and I was speeding up, but not fast enough to make my overall time great. This was the slowest triathlon by far that I have ever done. If you're interested, check out my results here. I've never been so far down in the results in my age group, and I'm not just using the thin air and hills as an excuse; it was damn hard. It's nice to know that I still have the fitness to make it through a race, so I feel pretty good about that.

Stay tuned for my next triathlon (my last this year) on August 9 in Devon. The swim is in an outdoor pool, so it will bring back childhood memories. Until then!

Great White North 1/2 Ironman

The day had finally arrived, but I wasn't sure I was ready for it. Oh sure, I have done five half Ironmen in my triathlon career, but my training is usually more disciplined and I usually swim more often than once a month. It is what it is.

After the comedy of events at the Mountainview Triathlon in Hinton last month, I decided to pack my gear bags on Saturday afternoon being careful not to forget the things I forgot to take to that triathlon:
Goggles - check
Race belt - check
All other necessities - check

There is much more to remember for a half Ironman than for a shorter distance and I couldn't afford to forget anything or the race would just not go well.

Up at 5 a.m. The first thing I did was turn on The Weather Network. It was going to be a glorious day and that started my day off on a good note. I had a long shower to stretch a bit, had my traditional race morning breakfast of oatmeal and then started getting ready for the day.

It was a short 25 minute drive to the lake and transition was all abuzz. Everybody was chatting and doing their thing. Five minutes to race start and all the athletes were channelled through the starting gantry. The National Anthem was sung and the gun goes off to start the race.

2 km swim - It's a flurry of flailing arms out there and it's each man for himself. There was so much congestion that I had to stop swimming several times to reposition myself, which slowed me down. A guy swam past me and I was sure he was naked from the waist down. I thought "how is he going to get out of the water; there's no public nudity allowed". Then it dawned on me that he must have a two piece wetsuit and wasn't wearing the bottoms; instead just his swim suit and would put his cycling shorts on top. My brain goes to mush when I'm racing. My swim went well. Good thing I have a swimming background, but as we all know, in a long distance triathlon you could be a world class swimmer, but still lose the race if you're not a good runner and if you're a good runner and a terrible swimmer, you could still win.

T1 must have been five minutes long - or at least it seemed that long. I discovered that the tri suit I was wearing isn't a good choice for long distance as it took too long to put gels in my wet pockets. Have you ever tried to deal with wet spandex?? I got a good tip from a friend - put gels in the pockets before the swim because they're under the wetsuit anyway, so you won't lose them. When I got to the mount line, I had to adjust my brakes and that took some time as well, so my transition wasn't very quick. Off finally to start the 90 km bike.

The bike went well. The new bike set-up has definitely helped my cycling. There was a bit of tail wind, but where there's tail wind, there's head wind on the way back. I had to stop a couple of times to pee, but all-in-all I had an OK bike. A friend of mine had a crash. He is sore, but OK. Can't say the same thing for his bike though.

I have triathlon racing shoes where I don't have to wear socks, but I've never ran a 1/2 marathon in them. I taped my feet so there are no pressure points and it has worked to date. I thought I would give it a try and run the race without socks, but I took a pair with me in case I needed them and I'm glad I did because I needed them within a km. The rest of the run was uneventful except for the fact that is was hot. There were kids along the course who had super soakers. They loved using them on the athletes. I took full advantage of that.



When I crossed the finish line, the race director was there to put my medal around my neck and said "I get to hug all the hot women." I hadn't heard that one before. Check out my results.