Chinook Olympic Triathlon – Race Report

So if you read the prelude to my race report for the Chinook Olympic Triathlon you may be discovering what the word of the day is: crap!!!!  So without further ado, let’s talk about the race!

The Swim: 1500 m

We crossed the timing mats and stood on the beach, waiting for go time.  I seeded myself about 3/4 of the way back, just behind some men.  9:15 came and it was time to go!I took a few steps into the water, then started swimming right away.  For all my worries about the cold water, race adrenalin is a pretty amazing thing.  I didn’t feel cold.  I was able to put my face in the water and breathe normally.  I tried to stay within a pack, swimming and popping my head up every once in awhile to sight.  We were swimming to yellow buoys, but there were some further out orange buoys from the half Iron distance swim.  The yellow buoys were a bit smaller and I was having trouble seeing them.  We were swimming in a triangle, two laps of 750 meters.  As I rounded the second buoy heading back to the shore I realized I was right next to my friend Tara.  She moved in front of me and I decided to just slip in behind her and hang on to her feet.  All of a sudden I was back at the shore.  I ran out on to the beach, around the buoy and got in for lap number two.  Let’s get this done!  I was amazed that I was still within a pack of people on the second lap.  I tried to hang on to feet.  On the final lap I realized I’d better hurry up and pee on the swim so I worked hard on that.  Peeing on the swim is important to me, especially in Ironman!  It is free pee time, right? :)

Anyhow, all of a sudden, the swim was over.  I was close to the shore and people were standing up around me and walking in from there.  I waited until I could grab sand in both handfuls.  I stood up, grabbed the neck of my wetsuit as I stood up to let water in and tried to start getting that wetsuit unzipped.  Over the timing mats.  All done with part one!

1500 meter swim: 36:17 (172 out of 247)

Transition:

I tried to get my arms out of my wetsuit and have it around my waist before I got to the wetsuit strippers.  All the strippers were busy though and myself and a lady got to a guy to strip at the same time.  She hadn’t unzipped at all and he started helping her right away.  Argh!  So I just pulled off the wetsuit down to my ankles, sat down and someone came over to pull the suit off.  Let’s go!I ran down the pathway and into transition, put the bike gear on and got ready to ride!

The Bike: 40 km

It was crowded coming out of transition and the adrenalin was pumping.  I really wanted to have a great ride.  The traffic was really heavy as we turned on to Highway 22X.  The drivers didn’t really have a clue what was going on and I almost had to come to a stop as I was trying to merge on to the shoulder and a driver was trying to merge on to 22X.  The ride is a fairly rolly out and back.  I played leap frog with a few people, passed a few people and a few people passed me.  It was a slight uphill on the way out so I really wanted to push it on the slight downhill back.

I decided to try something different on the ride given that this was an Olympic distance race.  I recently made up a new formula of Infinit for my long training runs.  It doesn’t have any protein in it and I decided to drink my calories instead of go for water and gels.  200 calories on the bike, just like at Oliver.

All that pushing it and I was back to transition.

40K bike: 1:14:24
40K bike + transitions: 1:18:48 (84 out of 247)

Transition:

I made it to the mount line, got off my bike and ran the bike into transition.  I flubbed a bit trying to push the bike by the seat, the front wheel whipped off to the side and I almost tripped over my bike.  Oops!  I racked my bike, changed out shoes, grabbed my hat, fuel belt, Garmin and booted it out of there.

Run: 10K

I decided I wanted to try something different, I was going to run with a fuel belt.  I wanted to know how it felt in case I wanted to use one at Great White North or at Ironman.  They were also serving Heed on the race course, of which I’m not a fan, so I decided to run with Infinit instead.  I struggled to put the fuel belt on, turn my race number around and I hadn’t even put my Garmin on yet.As I tried to move the race number around it came off.  Crap!!  Two races in a row with race number issues.   I folded the number up and put it in my back pocket.  As I put my Garmin on I looked down.  What on earth?  I had it set in “Other” sport mode from my open water swim on Thursday and I had forgotten to set it back to “Run” mode.  Crap!  I wouldn’t know my average pace for the entire run, but oh well…

I also discovered as I forged on was that my legs were dead.  Hmm, maybe I had biked too hard?  I slowed it down hoping that my legs would come around, but the feeling never changed.

My nervous stomach from earlier in the morning also reared its ugly head.  Ugh.  Stomach problems, seriously?  Crap!!  It was one slow 10K run.  There would be no sub-1 hour run today.  Thank goodness for the finish line.  Someone yelled at me that there was a girl right on my heels so I managed to find a second gear to hold her off.  Good thing too, as she was in my age group!10K run: 1:04:14 (207 out of 247) sigh….

Final results: 2:59:18 (happy to squeak in under 3 hours)
Overall: 158 out of 247
Women 30-39: 21 out of 31

Lessons Learned:

• I hate running with a fuel belt.  If I could have ditched it and gone back to pick it up later I would have.  It bounced around and it just drove me nuts.
• Stomach problems…again?  Ugh…  There are a few possible culprits.  My heart rate was really high on the bike – like run rate high.  Did my stomach shut down thanks to that?  My stomach was already having issues long before the race, before I ate breakfast…  And then I remembered the carbo load and the meat lasagne I ate.  Ugh oh….beef and I are not good friends when I eat it the night before a race.  Sigh…  Who knows, maybe it was a combination of many factors?
• More important than bike splits and run splits are bike + run splits.  Going hard on the bike can wreck a run…
• SPF 30 is just not nearly enough SPF for me.

I’m not disappointed in my race though.  I think I learned some important lessons, and 2 out of 3 isn’t bad, right?  After the race I was chatting with friends, I reach up around my neck and realized my chain was funny.  It turns out the chain broke during the race and I lost my RoadID tag.  I have a new one ordered already though.

So that’s it for the short races.  The Great White North Half Iron distance triathlon is coming up in less than two weeks!  Thanks for all of your great comments!!

Chinook Olympic – The Prelude

I’ve been having a lot of dreams lately about not making it to a race on time.  Needless worry?  Premonition? 

Well on Saturday, it just about came true!  I had been stressing about the set up of this week for awhile.  On Thursday at 7:30 I had a practice swim at Lake Midnapore (the lake we would be racing in) booked.  On Friday we were all supposed to attend a pre-race meeting/carbo load way down south, on the other side of town from where I live, at 6 pm.  Then our race started, way down south, early Saturday morning.  Transition opened at 7 am and all bikes had to be in transition by 8 am.  Between all of this there seemed like very little time to actually pull my gear together and get ready for the race.

The carbo load was pretty fun.  I was able to run into some old friends I haven’t seen for awhile.  Dawn was there, as she was racing her first Olympic tri.  I also ran into an old co-worker who first told me about Angie and Team Tri Life and he now coaches too.  Martin Parnell was also there to talk to us about his quest to run 250 marathons this year.  But I was getting stressed.  As we approached 8 pm the meeting was still going on and I still needed to get my gear in order.  After listening to the talk about the swim, the bike course and the rules I decided to head home so I could pack up.

All of that stress made me wired and I finally rolled into bed around 11 or so I think.  Needless to say when the alarm went off at 5:30 I barely remember registering it.  All of a sudden my eyes snapped open at it was 6:30.  Crap!!!!!  I bolted out of bed, hurried up to get ready, took my breakfast to go and started the drive to the race site.  Thank goodness for minimal traffic as the drive only took half an hour.

The car was parked at 7:30, everything unloaded, and then a short walk to transition.  Wow, all the bike racks were pretty full…  I found a few teammates and made some space for myself on the rack.  I’m sorry, but you do not need to be laying a big huge beach towel out on the ground to save a bunch of room for yourself in transition.  I gently moved the edge of the big huge beach towel in, hung the bike on the rack and started setting up.  Friends were finding me to say hi and I was just one big bundle of nerves.  But my bike had made it into transition by 8 am so I was in good shape, right?

Then the race director came by with a big megaphone informing us that transition would be closing in 15 minutes.  Crap!!!!!!  There is also a half Iron distance race that starts at 8 am.  Our swim wouldn’t start until 9:15 am, but we still had to be out.  Panic!!  I laid out my bike gear and run gear, kept all of my dry clothes, wetsuit and swim gear in my bag and headed out of transition.  I sure I hope I hadn’t forgotten anything!

After the stress of getting to the race site and getting set up in transition, it was now just time to hang out and wait.  We watched the half Iron athletes start their swim and we cheered them on as they would come out of the water, finishing their first lap and jumping in for lap two.  There was one poor guy who cramped up right away and had to be helped up the beach.  He tried to work it out, got back in the water again, but after swimming maybe 250 meters his day was over and he got a ride back to the beach.

As we hung out I realized I’d better hit the bathrooms before wriggling into my wetsuit.  I was actually trying to save myself for peeing in the wetsuit, but uh oh, my stomach was getting nervous.  Darn it…  Visit to the bathrooms done, it was time for the wetsuit.  Luckily some folks form Tri-It were on hand to help us with adjustments.Then it was time for a gel and a warm up swim.  Wow, the water was still really cold.  I was having trouble putting my face in the water so this may be interesting…By the way, I forgot to mention our timing chips.  Check that thing out!  I wasn’t sure if it was a timing chip or Lindsay Lohan’s alcohol monitoring ankle strap…Before I knew it we were being called out of the water and back on to the beach where we had to cross the timing mats first.  It was time to race…

Where are we?

I feel as though somehow in the middle of the night, someone picked up Calgary and put it back down at the exact latitude and longitude of Vancouver.  The weather has been uncharacteristic here this June as it has been mostly grey, rainy and cool.  More like Vancouver!  It really feels as though the ELF’s post On Success has been the theme for this week!

Yesterday the rain and wind continued, but there was speed work on the schedule.  Time to suck it up and get out there in the rain!  I threw on capris, a long sleeve tech shirt, a rain jacket and a hat and met up with Kelly over the lunch hour.  For interval work I’m a big fan of setting up a workout in my Garmin so that it will beep at me at the appropriate times as opposed to me watching the time.  Finally the Garmin caught satellites and it was time to go.  The rain was nice and soft as we got started on our ten minute warm up.  I then had 8 intervals of 2:00 hard, 2:00 recovery.  The first interval felt pretty good and then I slowed it down for the recovery.  All of a sudden the recovery was over.  Was that really two minutes?  I wasn’t paying attention.  I ran through the second 2:00, then looked down when it was over.  Oops!  I had accidently set the recovery time for 1:00, not for 2:00.  Oh well, less recovery, who cares?

The intervals in the rain felt good, but as we finished up our last interval the rain was starting to get heavier and heavier.  Good timing to be done!

On Thursday night I had a practice swim at Lake Midnapore for my Chinook Olympic Triathlon on Saturday.  As I’ve mentioned, it has been grey and rainy all week.  I was a little scared of how the water would feel.  I struggled into my wetsuit, but luckily Brian from Tri-It showed up for his practice swim and he was offering to help people with getting wetsuits on and adjusted.  It is amazing the little tweaks you can make to the comfort of a wetsuit by pulling it up properly around your arms, shoulders and neck.  Luckily the good folks at Tri-It will be on hand race morning to help us out with wetsuit adjustments!

Ok, now the wetsuit was on it was time to suck it up and get into the lake.  It was supposed to be 18C…maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t?  Wow, I don’t know if I’ve ever been in water that cold.  My feet went numb within a minute.  A few brave souls dunked and started swimming right away but I wasn’t sure if I could get my head underwater.  I doggy paddled it for a bit, but that wasn’t going to help me at all.  Time to just go for it and dunk! 

BRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As I started swimming I kept my breathing to one side as it seemed like my face didn’t have to get as wet that way, then eventually I was able to start bilateral breathing.  I swam along the edge of the lake for a bit, then picked a spot across the lake to swim to and practice sighting.

Once I got to that spot I decided that was good enough for me.  I had gotten in my wetsuit, gotten in the water and practiced swimming and sighting.  Staying in the cold water with the wind blowing wouldn’t help me too much more, so time to swim back.   It was good enough for 600 m or so.

So there we go….now time to race on Saturday!  Hope everyone has a great weekend!