My Triathlon and Training Adventures

Road to Hope Half Marathon - Nov 6, 2011 Race Report

2011-11-08T22:18:00.001-05:00

I signed up for this race a little late, not knowing what my fall was going to be like.   After some decent training, I thought I was ready to make an attempt at a fast paced half marathon.   I've only done one other stand up half marathon race in the 8 years since we moved back from Bermuda, and that was the Run for the Grapes in St. Catherines.   That was a few years ago and I thought I had run a decent race finishing in about 1:28 or so.

I knew that the Road to Hope course is a net downhill, so I thought it was a perfect race to try and go after a NYC marathon qualifying spot.   To do that, I had to run under 1:23 for my AG.   That works out to about a 3:55/K pace, and although I'm totally comfortable doing that for a 10K, I've never attempted to run that fast for a full half marathon.

Conditions on race day were more than ideal (for the most part), as we had a nice south wind and dry sunny skies.    Darryl Huras (also from New Hamburg) and I showed up at Confederation Park in Hamilton around 7am or so and quickly picked up our race kits and grabbed our gear bags before hopping on one of the many school buses that were there to shuttle the racers to the start line out at a high school up on the Niagara escarpment (key word UP!).

By the time Darryl and I arrived, there were already a lot of people in the school keeping warm and loose.   We quickly found an open space up stairs in one of the hallways to get into our running gear and pack up our bags for the bag check.   After dropping our bags off at the bag check, we headed out to the running track to do a few warm up laps and some stretching to loosen up.   Before we knew it, the marathon had started and in a few more minutes, so would the half.

While at the start line, I ran into Larry Bradley who was also running the half with the aid of his coach Tyler Lord pacing him to a planned sub 1:19 finish time.   That was well faster than I had really wanted to go, so although it would have been great to start off fast with them, I really wanted to do what I thought I could handle.

Shortly after 8:30am, the starting gun went off and the race was on!

I knew that we had a few kilometers before we were going to hit the downhill section of the race on the Red Hill Valley Parkway, but the beginning of the race also seemed pretty fast. The wind was from the south and we were running west at this point, but it seemed to be at our backs. There were also a few slight downhill grades, so I was pretty much cruising along, hardly working doing about 3:45 K's. Darryl and I were both shooting to go sub 1:23, but right from the start, I pulled away, as he wasn't too comfortable going out at this pace (more on this later though!). At about 3.5 or 4K, we made a couple right hand turns before making a left onto the on ramp to get on the parkway. At this point, the pace really picked up. The next several kilometers as we ran down the escarpment with the wind at our backs, I was easily doing sub 3:40 K's. I think kilometer 5 to 6 was at a 3:28 pace! I was running in a small group with two other guys, so I was just tucked in with them and was flying along.

When we went through the 10K marker, I wasn't really surprised that I was almost on my 10K PB time. The fastest 10K I've ever run is 37:04, and I believe I passed the 10K marker in this race in 37:10. I'm pretty sure that if I was only running the first 10K of this course, I could have done it in about 35 minutes! Wow!

Just past the 10K marker, we got off the parkway and onto Barton street. This is where the race started to get tougher. We had to go uphill to get to Barton and then we were dealing with a cross wind. It wasn't too long though before we got onto Woodward Ave., which is also part of the Around the Bay course. Just before the 12K marker, there is a set of train tracks, and when I was only a few hundred meters from them, the lights started to go off and I thought what the fuck??? Anyway, the arms went down and sure enough, an Amtrak passenger train was crossing the road. Luckily though, it was short and before long, the arms were going back up. Perfect timing really, as the arms started to go up when I was only about 10m from the tracks. I didn't have to slow down at all.

The course continued down Woodward before finally going under the QEW and getting on Beach Blvd. (again, same as the ATB course). At this point, I was running closer to 3:50-4:00/K's on average, and this would continue until we turned right off of Beach Blvd and got on the Lakefront trail at about the 16K marker. This is where things started going fairly quickly downhill. We were now running east back to the finish line at Confederation Park and had to deal with a nasty southeast wind whenever there was an open area.

The fast pace that I started out at was quickly catching up with me and I found myself struggling to do 4:00-4:05 K's. I'm sure that a few of the last K's in the race might have been over 4:10. For some weird reason, my Garmin did not save this race, so I don't have the ability to look back and see what I was really doing in the last few K. All I was really concerned about was getting to the finish line!!

So as I said earlier, I never saw Darryl once the race started, and I had no idea where he was. I did look back a few times but never saw him, so I wasn't sure. Well, with only 1K to go, he caught me, which was great (for him at least!). I thought "Cool, we can finish together again like we did at ATB", but that was not to be. He had more juice than me in the final stretch and I just couldn't keep up. Finally, we passed the finish area and had to make a very short loop around before coming back to the finish line. I was very happy to see that line, as I really didn't have much left to go any further.

In the end, I finished in 1:21:59, beating my goal time by just over a minute, which is awesome. Darryl finished 12 seconds ahead of me, meaning that if we both wanted to, we could go to the NYC marathon in 2012. Having Boston and NYC under my belt would seem sufficient from a marathoning perspective.

Here is some cool finish line video showing both Darryl and I finishing:

So overall, I was very happy with my time, but just a bit disappointed in how I couldn't manage to finish as strong as I would have liked. Overall, I finished 34th out of 1,721 runners and 8th in my AG out of 87. Unfortunately, in the last few K, I likely gave up 7 or 8 spots overall, and possibly even 5th place in my AG and maybe a podium?? Not sure really, but at least I kept pushing when I really didn't have much left. I know that feeling will come in handy when the Ironman training kicks in again next year for Mont Tremblant.

This is the last race of the year, and now it's time to get organized for a solid off season. Hopefully more swimming and I'd like to keep a good amount of base mileage going for running, but likely back off on some of the distance runs.

It's been a good year and I look forward to another one next year!

Tour de Hans 100K Road Race

2011-10-05T23:01:00.001-04:00

This was my first attempt at a pure cycling race.   There are many things that make this different than the cycling portion of a triathlon or duathlon, but mainly, it's the ability to draft off of other riders that makes it a lot more fun and exciting.

The predicted weather forecast leading up to the October 2nd race wasn't looking good.   Highs of 7, winds at 25-30 kph out of the north and a bit of rain/snow mix to keep it interesting.   Race morning arrived, and we had two out of the three conditions, but lucky for everyone, the rain/snow did not show up until after the event.

The host venue for the race was at Hubertushaus, just west of Mannheim, which is really only minutes away from my house in New Hamburg.   That meant I didn't have to get up super early for this event.   I arrived at about 7:30am and went inside to finish off the registration process and get my bib and timing chip.   After a bit of friendly conversation with fellow riders, including a duathlon friend from Mississauga, Larry Bradley, I went back to the van to put on my many layers of clothing, gloves and booties for the day.

Going into the race, I wasn't really too sure how it was going to pan out, but I was hoping to get in with some decent riders of similar ability to make the race fun, fast and exciting.   I know Larry has been doing some great riding lately, so I was hoping to hook up with him and his friend Richard Westwood.   They are both more seasoned riders than myself when it comes to road racing, as they both participated in the 100M Centurion race up in Collingwood a few weeks ago.   In addition, Scott Dickie and Don Andrews from Waterloo had shown up, so there were at least 5 of us who could tackle this race together (if we could only stick together, which is not nearly as easy as you may think it is....more on this shortly).   Here's a few pics from just before the start of the race.   Simon Whitfield was a celebrity guest rider doing the 50K race, so it was cool to meet and talk with him prior to the race.   The other pic is with a few other local athletes including Scott (2nd from left) and Don Andrews (middle).

At about 8:45, the race got under way (sort of anyway). The first 5K was into Mannheim where we did a loop to Trussler and then back towards the start line. Once we crossed the start line, the timers officially started, and the race was on. Lucky for me, I was already at the start, riding just behind Simon Whitfield. Here's few pics as we approach the starting line after the 5K neutral start. That's Simon, on the left at the front. I'm in the 2nd row on the right.

As soon as we passed over the timing mats, the action kicked into high gear. The stronger riders all began moving up to the front, and I was sort of stuck over to the right hand side of the road. Everyone was moving to the front on the left, but I was boxed in and pretty much had to stay to the shoulder. It pretty much remained like this all the way to Foundry street, just south of Baden where we had to turn right. Most of us negotiated this no problem, but some of the people at the front decided to keep going straight on Bleams because that's where the police escort went. Not sure why, but I knew we had to go up to Baden, and there were signs pointing us in that direction anyway, so I had no issues. Those that went straight quickly realized they were heading in the wrong direction and did some aggressive short cuts across lawns/ditches to get back in the game.

The strong wind out of the north hit us immediately when we turned onto Foundry street, so I just tried to stay tucked in behind other riders to stay sheltered. Once we got to Snyders road in Baden we had to negotiate the railway tracks. Apparently, things like this are where the elite level riders like to make their move, which I was not aware of unfortunately. Once over the tracks, there was a small incline to get out of Baden, and this is where the race quickly changed for me. I was still caught in behind some riders when the front pack took off, and I could not hook up with them. Before we even got out of Baden, I knew I was in trouble. For the next 1.5K or so to Nafziger, I tried to catch up with the group, but just couldn't do it. By the time we hit Nafziger and headed north towards Wellesley, the lead peloton of 20 or 25 riders were a few hundred meters up the road. I got into my TT position on my bike, and tried to bridge the gap, but after 300m, I knew I wasn't making any headway with them, and I was putting out a tonne of effort. I decided to just drop back at this point, and this is where I hooked up with the main group of guys that I would do most of the remaining race with. In this group was Scott, Simon Whitfield, Richard Westwood and Bruce Martin, also from Waterloo.

"Most" of us in the group worked pretty well together, pushing the pace through the nasty north wind all the way up to Wellesley, where we had to do a short trip into Lisbon before hooking up on Hutchison Road, just west of Wellesley. Shortly after rounding the curves on Hutchison, the turn off for the 50K riders was there, and that is where we lost Simon from the group. The rest of us carried on through the hills and wind up to Crosshill.

During the hard stretch from Wellesley to Linwood, the group remained together for the most part. We might have lost a few off the back on some of the hills, but we were also picking up a few riders who fell off the main peloton. Just west of Crosshill, we picked up Don Andrews, another triathlon friend of mine from Waterloo. This was a good pickup, as Don was a good asset to the group and took his fair share of the workload up front.

After what seemed like a never ending struggle against the wind, we finally made it to Linwood and turned right onto Ament line and got the benefit of the northwest wind. The pace picked up considerably at this point as a number of us took some solid pulls at the front. A few kilometers east of Linwood, I went out front of the group and took a very solid pull for 5 minutes or so. I got into my aero bars that I still had clipped onto my bike and just cranked it up. It felt good to go fast after seemingly going so slow for the past hour into the wind. Once I had enough, I eased back into the group and allowed a number of riders to go up front, and they all said something like "Strong pull" which made me feel good, as I was hoping to get some respect out of the "cycling" crowd.

A bit further up the road loomed the KOM time trial over the Hawkesville hill. I was feeling OK, but I definitely didn't hammer it up the hill. Of our group of guys, I was likely the 4th or 5th to get to the top and as we crested the hill, things changed. A few guys fell off the back and 3 guys hammered it hard down the hill and around the curve. At this point, I was somewhere in the middle, and I knew that if I eased up, the small group up front would leave me. It was good that I noticed that when I did, so I put my head down and pushed really hard for a few K until I was back on the wheel of this smaller group, that still included Don Andrews.

As we made our way into Heidelberg, the pace had picked up again, as we had the benefit of a stronger tailwind. We continued to pick up stragglers who had been dropped by the main pack, and this helped keep our group strong enough so that we could all take some turns up front. One of the riders we hooked up with was Bruce Grant, also from Waterloo. He would end up working with us right up to the end of the race.

Over the next several kilometers, the raced weaved past Paradise Lake, into Bamberg, south to Gerber road and then we made the left turn onto Sandhills road, which would give us a solid tailwind for the next 15-20K all the way to New Dundee. As we turned onto Sandhills I told the group we needed to take advantage of the tailwind and I immediately went to the front to hammer out a few K at a solid pace. I dropped back after a bit and let some of the other guys lead out, and it appeared that everyone did a good amount of effort up front.

By the time we got down to New Dundee, my average speed had gotten up to 35kph, which was decent enough for the difficult conditions on the day. However, we still had a very tough 5K left to get back to the finish line. For the most part, this was uphill and again into a pretty strong headwind. The pace very quickly slowed down and it seemed like nobody was wanting to work hard up front. For 2 or 3 K, I simply did what the group did and stayed with them. With about 3 or so K to the finish line, I ended up back out front, pulling the group along up a hill and into the wind. We weren't going too fast, but this was definitely making me tired. I knew I was in a terrible spot for the sprint finish to the line which was coming once we got back to Bleams road. Since age group awards mean nothing in cycling races, I didn't get to bothered by the fact that I pretty much knew I was going to get dropped by the guys sitting in behind me when the time comes to sprint. As expected, when we got to Bleams and with only 500 meters or so to the finish line, 4 of the 6 guys we were riding with blew past me. I put in what I could, but the legs were heavy and I just pedaled my way to the finish line, happy that I had put my first road cycling race into the books.

At the finish line, I chatted with Larry Bradley for a while as he had finished 5 or so minutes ahead of our group. He had a great day, and was waiting to see where Richard and the rest of his cycling team ended up.

Eventually, I got all my gear off and the bike put away and headed inside for some tasty post race refreshments and food. The venue was serving up classic Oktoberfest wiener schnitzel, sausages and cold beer. What better to fill your belly after a hard race!! I chatted with Larry, Richard and a few other local athletes I know before eventually heading home. As I was leaving, the rain was pouring down, so we really dodged a bullet with the weather. The cold and wind was one thing, but throw in some rain, and that would have been miserable!

Overall, I was happy how the race went, being my rookie road race performance. I finished the timed 95K in 2:46:35 which resulted in an average speed of 34.5kph (yes, we lost .5kph in the last 5K of the race) and 267 average watts. This time put me 29th overall out of 184 racers (and since we finished as a group, I was really only 6 seconds out of 25th). I was 4th out of 20 in my age group as well.

Here's the garmin race info.

Tour de Hans 100K Road Race Garmin Data

I look forward to participating in the race again next year, and hope to add the Collingwood Centurion 100M race to my calendar as that is a significantly bigger road race as well.

As we get more into the fall, I want to do the Hamilton Road to Hope half marathon in early November, where I would like to try and go sub 1:23 and qualify for the NYC marathon.

Over the winter, I will continue to work on my cycling and try to have a solid base by spring. I am making the inaugural Ironman Mont Tremblant my A race next summer, and if all goes well, will go after a Kona slot. Lots of work to do for sure to get that!!

Muskoka 70.3 – September 11, 2011 Race Report

2011-09-15T22:28:00.000-04:00

Race Details:

Swim - 2K
Bike - 94K
Run - 21.1K

I've done this race every year since it started in 2008 and have learned something new every time and also improved my race time each year. This year was again no different, and I was hoping to improve upon my time of 4:56:26 from 2010. I thought I could do this by improving each area a little bit, based on the training and racing I've done this year.

I headed up to the beautiful Deerhurst resort in Huntsville, Ontario very early Saturday morning with Scott Dickie from Waterloo. The trip up was pretty uneventful other than the 40 minute delay for a truck fire on Hwy 400

We arrived at Deerhurst around 10am, and since our room wasn't ready, we decided to park and head down to the swim start for a practice swim. The weather was awesome this weekend (sun and warm temperatures) and the water temperature felt great. Scott and I swam out to the first turn buoy and came back for an approx 800-900m swim. After our swim, we headed out for a short bike ride to make sure everything was working ok. When we got back, our room was ready and we unpacked the van.

The rest of the day included getting registered, attending the expo, checking in our bikes and heading to the grocery stored for some dinner. We were staying in a 4 bed condo unit at Deerhurst that had a kitchen, so we could just eat in the room. Scott and I were staying with two other guys from the Waterloo Team Energi triathlon club (where Scott is a member). In addition to the 4 of us, a few other Team Energi guys came over for dinner. There was plenty of healthy carbo loading food to go around, and other than Scott almost burning the condo down and a seagull attempting to steal our food, dinner went great and I was FULL!

It was getting late, and around 10pm, we all decided to shut it down and get ready for bed. I slept pretty well that night and 4:45am the next day, we were up. I once again had my typical oatmeal, banana/peanut butter wrap and some coffee to get the day going.

Shortly after 6am or so, we all headed over to the transition zone to get our gear and bikes ready. After setting up and going for a quick run to loosen up, I was pretty much ready to head down to the swim start.

Once again, it was a long walk to the swim start from the transition zone, but we had plenty of time, so it was relaxing. I was in the 5th wave going off at 8:25 or so. After getting a nice warm up swim and the wetsuit adjusted, it was time to head to the starting line. It didn't seem very busy at the start and before long, the gun went off, and the race was on!

I went out comfortably from the start, and didn't experience very much contact which was good. I actually found some feet to get on relatively early, so I just followed them to the first buoy feeling very good and relaxed. After we made our first right turn, we already started running into some of the slower swimmers from earlier waves, but it was also starting to spread out. I continued to go in and out of drafts while still feeling comfortable and relaxed. I thought I had a good pace going, so I didn't bother trying to push it much more. About halfway through the swim course, I saw I was swimming beside Patti Warr who is a friend from Baden. That somewhat surprised me, as I am usually ahead of her, so she was either having a great swim, or mine wasn't as good as I thought it was. Knowing this, I decided to pick it up a bit, and eventually made it over to the swim exit. After getting out, I checked my time and was surprised to be at about 34 and a half minutes. I figure it must have been a 2K swim, because I can usually do 1.9K in the pool in 32 minutes or so. I left my crocs by the swim exit, so I quickly slipped them on and started the long uphill run to transition. Once I got to my bike, I struggled a bit to get my wetsuit off my feet, but eventually I got all my bike stuff on and was on my way to the bike start. T1 took 3:46, which is a bit slower than prior years, but my AG rack was also further away from the transition entrances this year.

Once I was on my bike, I slipped into my shoes, and started to hammer down the road.   The general trend for the first 30K is uphill, so I knew the watts were going to be a bit higher than normal.   After 15-20 minutes of biking though, the average watts were close to 290, so I knew it was time to back it off a bit.   The excitement of getting on the bike and hammering past other racers, especially those in my age group, was pushing me a bit harder than I should be going, as I knew I had at least 2.5 hours of biking ahead of me.

There was a stretch of road on South Portage that was all tar and chip.   It was much like biking down a gravel road, which definitely slowed the pace down.   I didn't once go in my aerobars down this stretch, but still managed to pass a tonne of people.   Once we got off this stretch and up to Hwy 60/35, I decided to put my head down and just crank it up!   Unfortunately this year, there seemed to be a bit of headwind coming out of the south, and the stretch of road going south is a lot more open than when we turn back north from Baysville.   This meant that we had to fight the headwind, but when we turned, we were protected from the wind by the trees, etc. so did not get much benefit from tailwind. Oh well, everyone was in the same boat, so deal with it I thought.

Just before the first bottle exchange in Dorset, I finished my aerodrink and put my only bottle I was carrying (double concentrate of Infinite) into my aerodrink and then I grabbed a bottle of water.   Along the way, I was taking in a salt tab about every 30 minutes or so. I wasn't sweating at all really, but wanted to make sure the sodium levels were good, because this course can cause cramping, simply because of all the hills if you are pushing hard.

By the time I hit the second aid station, things had really spread out.   I could see a few other racers up the road, but by 60K in, I had already made my way past most of the slower riders, and those that remained on the course at this point were a bit harder to catch.   At least this year there were people around me still because of starting in the 5th wave.   Last year, when I started in the 2nd or 3rd wave, after the Baysville bottle exchange, I swear I spent about 30 minutes biking completely solo.

So throughout the last 30K or so, I just tried to keep a steady effort and pick off any riders up the road one by one.   I was really hoping to end up with a 35.5kph average this year (up from my 35kph average in the prior year) and with only 10K or so to go, I thought this would happen, as I was at 35.5kph.   However, once we turned back onto North Portage road, I was quickly reminded of the nasty set of hills that we had to deal with.   There were times that I thought I could get off my bike and run up them faster, but I just carried on, happy that there were a few spectators out there cheering us on right near the top of the hills.   Eventually, I reached the top of the last hill, and it was pretty much downhill back to Deerhurst.   I pushed hard through this final stretch, but by the time I got to the dismount line, the bike computer read 35.3kph and 2:39:32.   Oh well, not quite 35.5, but at least I was 2 minutes faster than last year and an average wattage output of 268! Pretty sweet!

2011 Muskoka 70.3 Bike - Garmin Data

Once off the bike, I quickly made my way back to my transition spot, grabbed all my run gear and made my way out onto the run course. T2 was decent enough in only 1:06, 3 seconds better than last year despite having a worse spot in transition. This year, I decided not to carry a fuel belt, and just take what was on course. The only thing I used was my salt stick dispenser.

I could tell right away that the run this year was going to be harder than any other year. We started off right into a headwind and the sun/temperature was already pretty warm. At this point, I really had no idea where I stood within my AG. Not too long into the run, I did pass someone in my AG, so that was good.

The little stretch of road on Cookson Bay Cres. was tough, as we descend down a steep little hill that hits the quads hard, run along a short flat stretch before coming back up the hill, which again, taxes the already tired legs. Once back up on Hwy 60 though, I started to get into a rhythm and focus on good leg turnover, forefoot striking and leaning forward. A few guys passed me on this stretch, which I would later pass back in the final few K of the race! By the time I reached Hwy 3, just north of Huntsville, my legs were feeling plenty tired. This is also one of the toughest parts of the course, as there is a pretty good hill at the 8K mark.

With the sun beating down, I just took quick short steps and made it about half way up before I took a very short walking break to stretch things out. I was running just behind a guy at this point, and he never really got much ahead of me. By the time we got to the top of the hill, I was back with him and decided to just run with him, as I hoped that would keep me motivated to keep moving along. We both finally made the right hand turn that takes us down to the 10K point and the turn-around point. At this point, I was actually feeling a lot better, which is good, as we had a few K of downhill running to enjoy before getting on the nasty trail section through the woods.

By this point, I also saw Claudia Johnston (from my IM Austria group) just up ahead. I continued too run with this other guy (sorry, can't remember your name) as we eventually caught up to Claudia at the start of the Fairy Vista trail. I took my time going through the aid station at the top of the hill behind the water treatment facility. All three of us that were running together seemed to take our time through here, so I didn't lose any ground to anyone.

As we continued along the trail and into the wooded area, I eventually pulled away from both Claudia and the other racer I was with. At one point, I passed someone who was being attended to by race organizers and volunteers, and then I passed paramedics heading out to help him. Obviously, something serious was going on, but there were lots of people helping him out, so I just kept going. It's never good to see anything like that!!

I eventually got off the trail and back onto Grandview Dr. and eventually Hwy 60 again. Only a few K to go, but I still had that tough Cookson Bay Cres downhill/uphill to deal with. I must say, the uphill was tough, but I eventually got to the top and it was pretty much a nice downhill back to Deerhurst. This is where I ended up passing the couple of runners who blew past me earlier on the run. Last year I walked a bit of the uphill back to Deerhurst, but this year I was determined to finish strong and I pushed up the hill and rocked my way around the transition zone to the finish line. I really wasn't sure what my time was, but I was able to hold a 4:30 pace that brought me home with a 1:34:42 run and a 4:53:21 overall finish time. The run was almost 2 minutes better than last year, which was good.

2011 Muskoka 70.3 Run - Garmin Data

I must say, that after this race, I think I felt as tired/exhausted as I did after doing Ironman Austria. The hills on both the bike and run really took a toll, and my left knee was feeling a bit sore. After getting my medal, I sat over in the recovery tent and put a bag of ice on my knee and refueled with some Powerbar Perform and water. Eventually, I made my way out and ran into Scott, who finished a few minutes before I did. We both made our way inside to grab some food and hopefully get a massage, only to find out there was no massage this year...MAJOR disappointment for sure!! In addition, the food was pretty crappy as well. As we headed out to go back to the condo, results were posted, and I finished 4th in my AG (a bit more on this later).

Scott and I eventually made our way back to the condo and we both had an ice bath and hot shower which felt great on the sore legs/knee. Eventually, Joel and Jason got back and we all headed back to Deerhurst for the awards and World Championship roll downs. As I said earlier, I got 4th, but as it turns out, the guy who was in 3rd in my AG had a slow swim/bike and a crazy fast run (like 38 minutes for 21.1K, so something was messed up). Later, he was reported as a DNF, but during the rewards, this still wasn't sorted, so I ended up having to take the 4th place plaque. I've contacted Trisport though, and I think I should be able to get the 3rd place one, which will go great along side my 5th and 4th that I already have.

Scott ended up 6th in his AG! but ended up getting (and taking!) a World Championship spot for Vegas in 2012. I also got a spot, but decided for various reasons that I wasn't going to take it this year.

Overall, the race was another success and I was happy to improve upon my time once again and cap off another successful triathlon season with a good race.

Up next for me is the 100K Tour De Hans bike race in the Kitchener Waterloo area. In addition, I might try to get in a 10K road race and perhaps a half marathon. I'd like to see if I can meet the NYC marathon qualifying time of 1:23 for the half marathon. Now that could be quite the challenge!

Belwood Triathlon – July 24, 2011 Race Report

2011-07-28T10:00:00.000-04:00

Race Details:

Swim -1K
Bike - 30K
Run - 7K

This was the third time I've done this race.   Previously, I've come in 3rd and 2nd in my age group, so I only had one finishing spot on my mind.....top of the podium!   Depending on who shows up, I thought I'd have a chance. I can name 3 or 4 guys who will beat me every time, but if they're not there, I thought my chances were good.

I was heading to the race site with a friend from New Hamburg (Darryl Huras) that also signed up.   We were a bit late getting there and found ourselves in a bit of a lineup to get into the conservation area.   After finally getting in and parked, we grabbed our gear and bikes and made our way to transition.   We were both in the M35-39 age group, but the rack was nearly full (which goes to show how late we were).   The overflow rack still had some spots, so we decided to just drop our bikes there, which turned out better for us anyway (better spots closer to the end of the rack).   Once our bikes and gear were in transition, we went through the registration process and then back to the transition zone.   By this time, it was pretty much 8am, and the race was at 8:30, so there was clearly no time to warm up.

Once I got all the gear properly laid out and my wetsuit on, it was already about 8:15 or 8:20, so I headed to the swim start to get a quick practice swim in and do a final wetsuit adjustment.   I likely only got about a 75 or 100m warm up swim in before I had to get back to the line for the start.   It had been pretty warm for the last week, so the water temp was pretty high.   They were still allowing wetsuits, but many people decided not to bother.   I wore my new sleeveless XTerra wetsuit that I got last fall.   Even being sleeveless, I felt pretty hot by the time the swim was over.

At 8:30, the horn blasted and since I was in the first wave, I was off.   I decided to try and go out pretty hard for the first few hundred meters, but that still didn't get me out of the thick of things.   As normal, there was some grabbing and pulling going on, but I just kept on pluggin away.   Normally, I drift a bit to the right, but today, I felt like I was drifting left.   I started about 10-15m to the right of the buoy line, but about half way out, I had made my way all the way over to the buoy's.   Oh well, at least I was still on course.   Along the way, I tried to grab some feet whenever I could.   People seemed to be swimming all over the place, so I think I was in and out of drafts for most of the way.   Finally, we made it back to shore and the swim exit, and my garmin showed 16:02.   That works out to about a 1:36/100m pace, so I was happy with that.   Once out of the water, there was a decent run up a hill to transition.   When I crossed the mat, it was 17:05 and I was already 1 second faster than last year and 38th overall in the swim.   Good stuff!

I quickly made my way to my bike, got my wetsuit off, helmet and shades on and was off. T1 took 1 minute, which is slightly longer than last year, so I lost some time. I really need to do these transitions faster!!

Once out on the bike, I quickly got into my shoes and up to speed. The first 10K are pretty flat and fast. There was a bit of a cross/tailwind and the speeds were approaching 40kph+ and I was making my way through a number of racers. After the first out and back section, we had to deal with some hills and headwinds. At this point, I was likely in about 10th place overall and the field had started to spread out, such that I found myself biking all alone. I tried to work with another guy to try and bridge the gap to a small group just up the road, but eventually, he just fell off the pace and I was by myself. Once we got back on Wellington Rd. 18, it was a slight downhill and nice tailwind back to transition where I was averaging about 43kph. I arrived back in transition from the bike with a split of 46:14, good for 7th overall with an average speed of 38.9kph. Interestingly, this is where I improved the most over last year, as I did the bike course about a minute and half faster this year. I quickly racked my bike, got my shoes and visor on and was out of there in 42 seconds.

Garmin Bike Split Data

At this point, I was just behind an athlete (James Corcoran) who I battled with at last years race pretty much the entire way. I only slightly outran him last year, so I thought I might be able to catch him. As we started off, we stayed consistently close (I was about 100m behind him). After a few K though, he started to pull away. I kept running along at a decent pace, just under 4 minute K's. The run had two out and back turn-arounds, so after the first turn-around, I noticed I was in 8th place overall and running pretty much by myself. There wasn't even anyone in front of me to go after, and the nearest person behind me was about 25 seconds back, so my goal was to stay in 8th and not let anyone pass me. After the second out and back, I noticed I was gaining on the racer in 7th, but there just wasn't enough time to catch him. I still held a decent lead over they guy behind me, so I just maintained a good pace all the way back to the finish line which I crossed in 1:31:58. My run split was 26:59, good for a 3:52/K pace and an improvement of 13 seconds over last year! My total time this year was about a minute and a half faster than last year, which was all due to the faster bike split. The one thing that might have helped this along was the fact that last year, I rode my Zipp 808 rear, but this year I had my disc?....or possibly, I might be more fit from all of the IM training. Likely a little bit of both!

Garmin Run Split Data

So after the race, I waited around for Darryl who finished about 9 minutes later (Interestingly, our swim and bike splits were nearly identical, but my bike is a lot stronger, which shows that if you want to do well in triathlon, you pretty much need to be strong in all three disciplines!). We both got a massage before getting something to eat and grabbing our gear. Once the results were listed, I checked to confirm my 8th place overall and hopefully first AG win in a Subaru series. Lucky for me, I did keep 8th and did win my AG, so it was a solid day!

Up next for me will likely be the Muskoka 70.3 up in Huntsville for the 4th year in a row. I hope to get a few solid training weekends in throughout August so that I can shoot for another podium spot up there, to hopefully cap off another successful triathlon season!

Ironman Austria – July 3, 2011 Race Report

2011-07-12T12:30:00.004-04:00

Race Details:

Swim – 3.8K

Bike – 180K

Run – 42.2K

I signed up for this race a year ago when I got an email from Personal Best saying they were taking a group of about 70 to Austria. I had heard a friend of mine from Baden, Patti Warr was going, so after a bit of wavering, I decided to sign up and take a slot. This would be my first Ironman, so I thought I’d make the first one a memorable one, and go as part of a group to Austria to partake in it. As it turns out, it was a great decision.

Leading up to the race, I was feeling pretty decent. I did at least 3 180K rides, and I definitely was doing more running (at least 5x week) since the Boston marathon. I wasn’t doing too much distance running, as the longest run I did post Boston was a 30K. I had done a number of 25K runs though. I figured training and doing Boston gave me a good running base, so I didn’t want to push the run distances and times for fear of potential injury. In the end, I think this was a good decision.

On Tuesday, June 28th, Deanna and I drove to the Toronto airport to catch our 8pm flight to Munich, Germany, where we would then catch a flight direct to Klagenfurt, Austria. I’m not a great sleeper on planes, so I didn’t get much sleep on the red eye flight to Europe. When we landed, it was approximately 9am local time. After a short layover, we got on our flight to Klagenfurt and arrived around 1pm. For the first two nights in Austria, we stayed at a hotel in downtown Klagenfurt called the City Hotel zum Domplatz. It was small, but provided us with everything we needed, including breakfast in the mornings.

After arriving, we made our way over to a small town just outside of Klagenfurt called Krumpendorf. This is where our bikes were delivered to. We took the bus over there which was simple enough. After getting my bike assembled, I rode it back to the hotel and Deanna took a lot of my gear that we stuffed in the bike box when we shipped the bike.

Over the next few days, we did a number of easy workouts to stay loose and keep fresh for the race on Sunday. I did two swims down at the lake (around 2-2.5K each) with other members of the Personal Best “Team Canada” group. In addition, I did a ride with Sean Bechtal, who was along to act as one of the coaches for the group, Claudia Johnston and a few other members of the group. We likely rode the first 15K or so of the bike course before turning around and coming back. I knew right away this was going to be a fast and very exciting bike course. The roads over there were so smooth and fast. Much better than most of the roads here in Ontario.

Pictures while driving the bike course

Team Canada Group

On the Thursday night, all of the Team Canada participants and family members met for a group dinner at a restaurant called Gastof Krall. It was a good time and there were a couple of guests that Barrie Shepley had arranged for us. The first was Kate Allen, a former Olympic gold medalist in triathlon and former podium finisher at Ironman Austria. The other guest was another excellent triathlete named Marko Albert. He was a former ITU racer, but has done a number of 70.3 races. He was participating in this year’s Ironman, which was his first as well. He sat right across the table from me and we chatted a lot. As it turns out, Marko would end up getting 3rd overall in the race this year and was actually the first athlete out of the water. He had an incredible first Ironman race!

On Friday morning, we checked out of the City Hotel zum Domplatz, and checked into a seasonal hotel that was just opening called the All You Need Hotel. This place serves as a student residence for Klagenfurt University during the school year and converts to a hotel over the summer. It was conveniently only a few hundred meters from the transition zone, so it worked well for race morning.

On the Friday night, Deanna and I, as well as most of the Team Canada group attended the race organized pasta dinner. It was ok, but nothing special.

On Saturday morning, I did one last short ride on my bike and a short run to make sure everything was working ok and that I was staying loose. Everything felt good and at 10am, we all attended the English version of the race meeting. Nothing surprising came of this, and after the meeting, I was certainly very excited to get the race going. A short while after the race meeting, I took my bike and my transition bags to the transition zone to be checked in.

The race machine

After this, Deanna and I headed back to a restaurant just outside of the hotel to grab some dinner before turning in early for the night. Due to the time change, I still hadn’t really gotten into a good sleeping routine yet, so I was hoping I was tired enough to get at least a decent night sleep before the race. I believe we were in bed by 9pm, and lucky for me, I don’t think it took long before I fell asleep. I actually don’t believe I even woke up much that night, and before I knew it, it was 4am race morning when I decided to get up.

As usual, I stuck to my normal oatmeal, whole wheat wrap with peanut butter and a banana for breakfast. The hotel opened the dining room early at 4:30am, so I was able to grab a bit of coffee as well. After eating, I headed down to the transition zone which was only a few minutes away. I got all my bottles and food ready on the bike and pumped up my tires. It was actually pretty chilly race morning with low’s around 8 or 9 Celsius. The sun was coming up though, so it wasn’t going to take long to warm up thankfully. After getting everything ready in transition, I headed back to the hotel to chill out a bit. A little while later, I grabbed my wetsuit and post race bag and made my way to the swim start. After dropping off my dry clothes bag, I headed to the water to get my wetsuit on and get in a quick practice swim.

I thought for sure there would have been way more people trying to get a quick warm-up swim in, but it wasn’t too busy. After a quick warm-up, I made my way to the starting line. The Austria swim start is pretty generous. All athletes start between three large piers that had about 60-70 meters in between each one. Since we had to make a slight turn to the left halfway out, I decided to start on the right hand side. I was told that if you think you could go 1:10 or less, that you should start near the front. My goal was somewhere around 1:03-1:05, so I took my chances up front.

Just moments before 7am, they told athletes to start moving into the water to the starting line. I think I heard them say something like 30 seconds to the start, so we all started swimming out to the line. I was thinking we had to stop in the water and wait for the cannon, but what actually happened was that the race started as soon as we got to the starting rope. I scrambled to get both my Timex watch and also my Forerunner 310 GPS watch started as we crossed past the starting line.

I must say, I remember thinking to myself that the first few hundred meters weren’t too bad. I was able to just swim, and was able to get on some feet right away. This would soon change though, because when we got about 500m out and near the first slight turn to the left, it jammed up pretty good. It was like we hit a wall and couldn’t move forward much. However, everyone from behind just kept coming. There were people climbing over top of me, and I think this might have been the worst experience I’ve ever had in a race. At least I was expecting something like this, so I didn’t panic too much. It didn’t last long, and we were able to get going again fairly quickly. The first real turn on the course wasn’t for about 1500m, so I was able to get on some feet and draft pretty well. Once we hit the first turn buoy, things seemed to jam up again. Like last time though, I was able to get out of it fairly quickly, and again, find some feet to get on. The second turn buoy was about 200m past the first, and after rounding this one, we were headed back to the canal. What is interesting about the IM Austria swim is that the last 800 or 900m are up a canal not more than 8 or 10m wide. As we headed back towards land, things seemed to be going well. I did a fair bit of drafting and didn’t seem to be working very hard at all. I thought we were going along at a decent pace, but when you’re drafting, you don’t really know. You just sort of hope you are following somebody that is a bit faster than yourself.

The swim up the canal

Once we reached the canal, the final 900m or so seemed to go by very quickly. This might be one of only a few races around the world where you can get some serious motivation from the crowd during the swim, as they lined the banks of the canal on both sides. Finally, we reached the Linder Hotel and the swim exit. Once out of the water, I took a quick look at my watch. It was just over 1hour and 4 minutes. This was right on my goal time, but honestly, the way the swim felt, I thought maybe I’d be closer to an hour. Later, looking at the results, I would come out of the water 500th overall (out of about 2600 starters or so) and 80th in my AG (out of about 375 or so). Not amazing, but decent enough and I was happy.

Swim Exit Video

Swim Pics

Run to T1

We had a decently long run back to transition. I’d say it was about 400-500 meters or so. At least it gave us enough time to easily get our wetsuits off, as there were no wetsuit strippers at the race. Once in transition, I took my time and went to the washroom and quickly put on my cycling gear (which included putting on bike shorts). I don’t normally do this, but I also wanted to make sure I was as comfortable as possible for the 180K ride. I felt like I didn’t “doddle” around in T1, but my time seemed pretty slow. I eventually got on my bike and started the ride, feeling very good.

The bike portion was a closed to traffic, two loop 90K course. I had driven it with some other athlete’s in our group a few days prior to the race, so I knew what to expect. In addition, a bunch of us rode the first 15K or so of the course before turning around and coming back. As a result, I knew that it was going to be an amazing ride with tonnes of great scenery, smooth roads and some challenging hills with fast long descents. I closely watched my heart rate and power and tried to keep the power below 240 (on average) for the whole ride. It was almost impossible to not go above 300 on some of the hills, but as long as I quickly settled back into a comfortable range on the way back down, I was not going to get concerned. I found myself in and out of groups on the first loop. There was some definite pack riding going on, but I wouldn’t say there was any clear cheating. Guys would just get jammed up a bit on the hills and everyone would move around until it would open up on some of the descents or “flat” stretches. Most of my rides this spring were solo, so it was so much fun to get out there and ride 180K with lots of other fast guys. With incredible mountains and lakes all around, the time just flew by.

My nutrition plan was pretty simple and one I’ve followed in training. I started with a normal concentrate Infinite in my aero drink bottle and I had 2 double concentrate bottles in my rear hydration system. This was the equivalent of 5 bottles for the ride. I supplemented the double concentrate bottles with water from the course and took a few bananas and gels throughout the ride as well. In addition, I likely took about 8 or 9 saltstick capsules.

I’d say there were 3 significant climbs on each loop. They were definitely challenging enough, but the crowd support and music blasting made them much easier to deal with. As you reached the top of two of the climbs, the road narrowed due to all the fans, and it was like doing the Tour de France. It was incredible. What made this course fast were the descents after the climbs. Instead of picking up crazy speeds on hard downhills, they were long and gradual. My Garmin 500 is setup to record every 5K split that I do. On each loop, I had at least one split where I did 5K in 6:14. That works out to about 48kph. I completed the first loop in about 2:24 I believe.

Onto loop #2, things continued to go pretty well. I actually found myself biking all alone for a period of time, which was definitely not as good. Time seems to go along much faster when you can get in with a group of guys and work together (non drafting still of course!). The hills on the second loop weren’t much harder to get up and over compared to the first loop, so I took that as a good sign. I continued on getting my nutrition and simply enjoying the day. It really did seem to go by fast. The last 20 or 25K back into town after the last big Rupertiberg climb were awesome. It seemed like we kept going down and down. It was nice for the last 5K to be flat so that we could spin our legs to get ready for the run. I finished the ride in 4:54:57. I believe the course might have been a few K short, but hey, still a decent ride where I averaged 35.7kph with an average HR of 142 and an average power output of 234 watts. I finished 223rd overall on the ride which moved me up to 48th in my AG.

Ironman Austria Bike Split Garmin Data

Bike Pics

Into T2, I quickly racked my bike, took a port o potty break and grabbed my run bag. I changed out of my bike shorts and into my tri shorts and was off for the final leg of the journey.

Like the bike course, the run course was also a two loop 21K course as well, that took athletes out to a small town outside of Klagenfurt called Krumpendorf, which was across the lake from where we swam earlier. From there, we come back past the tents and finish line in Ironman city, and traveled into the heart of Klagenfurt and around the Dragon/Lindwurm monument before coming back to Ironman city along the same trails, just to repeat the same thing all over again.

The run course is 99% flat, as there were only a few small hills as we made our way out of Klagenfurt city centre. In addition, a good part of the run course was shaded as we ran along the tree lined canal into the city and through the Europapark. Most of the course was lined with spectators and cheering fans which was totally awesome and motivating!

I felt pretty good for the first 10K averaging about a 4:35/K pace. I didn’t carry any nutrition with me on the run other than some saltstick capsules. I decided I would use what was on the course, alternating between cola and water. In addition, I likely took in about 5 or 6 gels and 6 saltstick capsules throughout the run. The aid stations were plentiful, so getting nutrition and cold sponges were not a problem. The sponges were great. I’d stuff them down my back and shirt and wring them out on my head quite often. It wasn’t scorching hot, but when the sun was out, it was definitely warm. At least it didn’t seem too humid.

After making my way into the city and around the Lindwurm for the first time, I had a bit of cramping in my hamstrings as we climbed one of the few hills on the course. I stopped and stretched out my hamstrings which seemed to help and then carried on. I don’t recall too much muscle cramping from that point on. I finally made it back to Ironman city where the finish line was, completing my first loop and feeling not too bad. The pace continued to slow down a little bit, as I averaged 4:41 for the first 21K. It was at about this time that I started to get some cramping in my lower stomach and intestines. It wasn’t a show stopper, but it was making me feel uncomfortable. The last half I started taking a few walking breaks whenever I felt a bit too uncomfortable. They were never for a very long time, but just enough to give my legs and muscles a break/stretch. Running the whole marathon was never my goal, I simply wanted to get through the marathon as best I could, and if that meant I had to stretch or walk for a short period of time, then so be it.

From 25K on, it was just a matter of survival and getting to the finish line. The last 15K the pace slowed down a lot to about a 5:18/K as I took quite a few breaks. Eventually though, I saw Barrie Shepley and some of the coaching staff with about 2K left. At this point, I knew it was almost over. There were tonnes of crowd support in the final few K, and then I finally got to the finishing chute. Firstly, you had to run along the lake for a few hundred meters before turning left for the final 50 meters in front of the bleachers and down the blue carpet to the finish line. Unfortunately for me, I saw that I was still under 9:30 and I thought that I might have a shot at going under this. I ran really hard through these final 50 meters to try and go sub 9:30 rather than soaking it all in (looking back, that was just dumb!) I don’t even recall them saying my name and saying I was an Ironman! In the end, I came across the finish line right as the clock hit 9:30, and I was super excited. So much so, I think the next 10 minutes were just a blur! My official run finish time was 3:21:17, but similar to the bike course, I do believe the run course was a bit short. Possibly up to a full K. After finishing the run, I had moved up to finish 199th overall (out of close to 2,800) and 41st in my AG (out of close to 400).

Ironman Austria Run Split Garmin Data

Run Pics

Overall, I was VERY pleased with my effort and how things went during the race. Not knowing the course very well and how I would do in my first Ironman, I was targeting a finish time of about 10 hours. So to beat that by a full half an hour feels very good.

After the finish, I made my way to the Ironman dome tent, where I grabbed my dry clothes bag, took a quick shower, had a very nice massage and then grabbed some food. On my way out, I ran into Deanna and we hung out for a bit at the finish line before walking back to the transition zone to get my bike and head back to the hotel to get cleaned up. After grabbing some dinner at the hotel, we walked back to the finish line area and watched more finishers come in. The atmosphere at the finish line was amazing, and we hung around for a few hours. At about the 15 hour mark, we decided to head back to the hotel. It would have been amazing to stick around till the end, but we were both pretty tired. Lying in bed at midnight (unable to sleep still), I heard all of the fireworks go off at the finish line. It sounded loud, and I am sure it was insane. As it turns out, the last finisher in the race was a Canadian, Susan Cole as part of our group. I was told she was personally given her medal by Marino Vanhoenacker, the winner of the race.

As for me, it will be nice to not have to worry about putting in the long training days on the weekend for at least a little while. I have signed up for Ironman Mont Tremblant in Quebec in August 2012. I will be doing the Muskoka 70.3 again this September, so I’ll start to get back into the training groove shortly, but I won’t need to put in the same amount of hours as I did for Austria.

Some other interesting stories/finishes that came out of our “Team Canada” group in Austria were:

• Ex NHL player Scott Thornton who was part of our Team Canada group finished the race in 11:38:22, and in the process now holds the record as the fastest Ironman by an NHL alumni by besting Pat Lafontaine’s old record of 11:54:05;

• Patti Warr, a friend of mine from Baden got 2nd overall in her AG (45-49);

• Claudia Johnston from Ontario got 3rd overall in her AG (35-39);

• Robert Knuckey from Ontario got 2nd overall in his AG (60-64);

• Hans Porten and Sue Akenhead both owned the top of the podium in the 55-59 AG

Grand Rapids, Michigan Half Iron Triathlon – June 5, 2011 – Race Report

2011-06-09T09:12:00.002-04:00

Race Details:

Swim – 1.9K
Bike – 90K
Run – 21.1K

I decided to do this race when I found out a number of the Ironman Austria group members were going, and also when I heard a friend of mine from Waterloo, Henrique Reis (Rique) had decided to sign up as well. At least that meant I had someone I could go down to the race with. Travelling that far for a race solo is a bit boring. Only after Rique and I had signed up, another buddy from Waterloo, Scott Dickie also decided to race.

The timing of the race worked well; given it was a month out from IM Austria on July 3rd. The only tapering that took place for the race was the break from training I did on the Friday and Saturday before the race travelling down there.
Rique picked me up at my place nice and early Friday morning. Unfortunately Scott had other commitments Friday night, so he had to come down on his own Saturday morning. Rique and I had wanted to get to the Grand Rapids race site mid day on Friday so that we had a chance to go check out the swim course and maybe take a tour of the bike course. After getting the bikes on the roof rack and all the gear in the car, we finally took off from New Hamburg about 7:30am Friday morning. The weather this day was fabulous and the drive to Grand Rapids was uneventful. After about a 20 minute delay at the border and a quick restroom stop, we made it to Grand Rapids around 1pm. Once in Michigan, the one thing we did notice were the large number of deer that had been hit and killed on the interstate down there. I’d say there were at least 10 that we counted on the way to Grand Rapids. On the way back, there were 11. That’s for sure because we counted. That’s much more than you normally see driving in Ontario. Maybe we do a better job of cleaning them off the side of the road when they are hit than they do down there?

Anyway, after arriving, we grabbed a quick bite to eat at a restaurant just outside the hotel, then threw our wetsuits in the car and drove down to the race site which was about 10 minutes down the road in a small town called Ada. After doing a quick review of the swim start area, we decided to drive the bike course. This isn’t something I normally “have” to do, but it was good none the less. We got to see what the road conditions were like and the big hill that was around the 30K point of the ride. There were also a number of train track passes that we had to make, so seeing the condition of these was also a good idea. The bike course is a simple out and back, so once we reached the turn-around point, we decided to just head back to the race site, rather than retrace the entire bike course again.

Once back at the swim start, we put our wetsuits on and tested out the waters. It was definitely not clear water, but at least it wasn’t cold. It was in the Thornapple river watershed, which we were told was one of the cleanest rivers around. That was good to hear, but it still didn’t make it anything like a Muskoka open water swim. After about an 800m or so practice swim, we headed back to the hotel to get cleaned up for dinner. Rique and I ended up getting some Mexican burritos for dinner that night. We thought this was a safe call since it wasn’t the night before the race.

On the Saturday, Scott arrived from Ontario around 10am. We met him in the lobby and then the three of us all went back to the race site so he could see it and get in a swim himself. After this and checking out a bit of the bike course one more time, we grabbed some lunch and headed to the expo/race kit pickup. This was a pretty small expo and the one thing that was strange is that they decided to do body marking the day before the race. Didn’t seem like a good idea, and I’m pretty sure the hotel would agree when they saw the bed sheets from us Sunday morning...strange.

After the race kit pickup, we met up with some of the Ironman Austria group members at an Italian restaurant for our pre race dinner. I stuck with my whole wheat pasta, bread and salad that I feel comfortable eating prior to an endurance type event.

By the time dinner was done and we were back at our hotel, it was nearly time to hit the sack. The three of us did our final race bag packing and then went to bed around 10pm.

We were all up shortly after 4am for the 7:15am race start time. After grabbing some coffee and some food in our room, we packed the bikes and made our way to the race site and transition zone. We had to park a fair distance away and use a trolley service, but this all seemed to work out fine. Once in transition, the biggest issue were the mosquitoes. They were out in FULL force this morning, attacking everyone. It was crazy. Luckily I was able to come across someone with some bug spray, so I put a bit on which seemed to help.

Once everything in transition was setup, I grabbed my wetsuit and headed to the swim start for a quick warm-up and the mandatory athlete’s meeting at 7am. They counted absolutely everyone that went in the water which is a good idea, so they can count the number of people that come out. Anything less than the same number would be a bit of a problem. They don’t seem to do that in any of our Ontario races.

At 7:15, a very “casual” race start began. They simply said 3, 2, 1 GO! No horn or anything. That was different! So on that note, the race was on!

They had broken the start into only a few waves. The first was the 39 and under and second was the 40 and over. With only about 375 registered in the half iron race, this made for a pretty spacious swim start. There wasn’t much “washing machine” action taking place in the first couple hundred meters, which was good. I was able to just find my own line and start swimming. The course had a slight bend to the right for the first 900m or so, where it turned left for 50m and then turned left again for the remaining 1K back to transition. The first 400 meters or so of the swim seemed to be against a decent current as it came around a small corner of land. This part of the swim seemed to take the longest to complete, but once past this point, I made a bee line to the first turn buoy. Things seemed to be going well, but I couldn’t find anyone to get a good draft off of. I just swam on my own for the most part. By the time we hit the first turn buoy, it was nice and spread out, so I just focused on taking good strokes. Once on the way back, it seemed like we were with a bit of a current and didn’t have to fight the water as much. Things felt very good at this point, so I decided to pick up the pace a bit. Once I made it back to land, I took a quick look at my watch and was happy to see it was just less than 32 minutes. That was more or less what I was hoping for. I was a bit surprised to see Scott just ahead of me as we ran through transition. That was a great swim for him as well, and I think he even surprised himself. My only issue in transition was when I thought I lost my goggles. I often leave them inside my right swimsuit arm when I take the suit off. When I got back to my bike, they weren’t in there which pissed me off, but luckily a volunteer had seen me drop them and ran them back to me. I thanked him for returning them, and then set off on the bike.

As mentioned, the bike course is an out and back that was kind of in the shape of a fish hook. The first 30K was pretty flat before climbing a decent set of hills for about 3 or 4K. After that, it flattened out again to the turn-around point and coming back the exact same route. As usual, getting on the bike after the swim, my heart rate was higher than I would normally see in training rides. This is always the case, and nothing I’ve come to worry about. What I tried focusing on was my power and that my heart rate wasn’t getting any higher and that it eventually settled into a comfortable range.

As usual, the first 5-10K of the bike, I was passing a fair number of athletes. There wasn’t too many in front of me though, since my swim was decent. About 2 or 3K into the bike, I passed Scott, who managed to get out just ahead of me. I believe at this point, he was having a few nutritional issues that he was working out. I felt very comfortable on the bike, despite averaging about 275-280 watts for the first 30K. I watched this closely in conjunction with my heart rate as I wanted to make sure I had legs still for the run. On the other hand, I was curious what I could do and the impact it would have on the run. In my two 180K training rides to date, my power was only about 220-225 watts, so I was well above this. I felt comfortable though, so I just kept pushing. Since the trend to the turn-around point was uphill, I knew the watts were likely to come down slightly on the way back. In the end, they fell to 265 watts, but this is still pretty decent, and a lot higher than I’ve done in training. I think this tells me that I can likely hold a slightly higher average wattage in my Ironman race, compared to what I have been doing in training. This is likely due to the “race” effect.

Nothing else too memorable came out of the bike ride. At one of the turns, some of the volunteers were not doing their job and sent some of the leaders off course for a slight bit. Given the fact that I was pretty comfortable with the course, I had no issues, and proves that it is worth the time to study the course in advance. Once back to the race site, my Garmin had the course just slightly long. According to my Garmin, I had covered the 91.12K in 2:24:51 at 37.8kph. I was quite happy with that, and quickly racked my bike, got on my running gear and started the run.

Grand Rapids Half Iron Garmin Bike Details

Based on the number of athletes I saw ahead of me at the bike turn-around, I figured I was in a top 10 spot. The run course was a two loop course that was about 11.5K per loop. For the most part it was flat, but there were two “moderate” climbs on each loop. I switched my Garmin over to monitor my heart rate and not worry at all about my average pace. I wanted to run this much like I might the marathon in Austria in a few weeks. I tried to keep my heart rate similar to where it was on the bike. This was in the high 140’s. I focused on a nice turn-over, some forefoot striking and a nice steady pace. The only time I felt like I was working hard was when I was climbing the hills.

Over the first 5K of the run, I think I passed about 3 or 4 half iron competitors that came off the bike before me. To my surprise, at least 2 of them were in my age group, so that was good news for sure. When we started the 2nd loop, we had to run around a small park. As we exited the park and got back on the street, a volunteer told me that I was in 4th place. I wasn’t too surprised at this given the position I thought I was in when I started the run, and the number of people I passed on the first loop. However, not more than a minute later, another half athlete passed me to push me into 5th. He was going at a pace much faster than I wanted to run, and since the difference between 4th and 5th didn’t really mean anything, I just let him go. I wanted to keep a steady pace. Finally, I completed the two hill climbs on the second loop and knew at this point, there was only just over 3K to the finish line. It was then that I decided to pick up the pace a bit, knowing the race was almost over. I did a quick check over my shoulder to see if anyone else was gaining on me, but there wasn’t. I just wanted to finish the race feeling strong, and that is what I did, doing the last three K in 4:15, 4:17 and 4:09. Crossing the finish line, I felt pretty good and still had plenty left in the tank. I completed the 21.1K run in 1:33:12 which works out to a 4:25/K avg. pace and 5th place overall for now.

Garmin Rapids Half Iron Run Details

I quickly grabbed some food and water and proceeded to get my gear all packed up in transition. After that, I went back to the finish line where the results were being posted. Luckily, nobody in the 40+ age category that started 3 minutes after my wave did better than me, so I did hold onto my 5th place finish overall, and 2nd in my age group in a total time of 4:34:35.

Later, I ran into Scott and eventually Rique, and we all packed up our gear and bikes and started heading out. Scott also finished 3rd in his AG, and lucky for us, we were able to just grab our awards, well before the official half iron awards ceremony.

After getting back to the hotel, we all chilled out a bit, taking a dip in the hotel pool and using the hot tub. Later that day, the three of us all had some dinner at the Outback Steakhouse, where I enjoyed a large pint and a big steak. Both well deserved!!

The next morning, we packed up pretty early and headed back to Canada. Overall, I was very pleased how this race went and with a few more LONG training sessions before the Ironman Austria race on July 3rd, I feel I should be ready. I’ve been asking myself if I’ve done enough training for Austria, and although I think it would have been nice to have a gotten a few more long rides and runs in; I think I should be ok. We are now only just over 3 weeks away, and I’ve been feeling pretty good (I hope that is not a bad thing). Only time will tell, and right now, time is flying!! IM Austria will be here in no time at all!

Victoria's Duathlon - May 23, 2011 - Race Report

2011-05-24T17:09:00.002-04:00

Race details:

4K Run;
30K Bike;
4K Run

Just like my last race, this was only a "training race".   That being said, I wanted to put out a good "speed" effort and see how things went.   I was not well rested leading up to this race, as the Saturday before the race (the duathlon was on Victoria Day Monday), I did a 180K ride and a 10K brick run off the bike.   In total, it was just over 6 hours of training.   By far the most I had ever done in one day.   On the Sunday, I just did some family stuff and got ready for the race the next day.

The start time was a casual 10am start. I got to the race site a bit before 9am to get setup, registered and do quick pre race ride and run.

About 9:45 or so, I made my way to the start line.   I decided to start in the first wave as an elite age grouper.   I do this in most races now, as I think I deserve it.   It gets you out on the course with the rest of the other speedy racers that also move up.

At 10am, the horn blasted, and we were off. I found it a bit crowded at the start, but eventually found some open space and started cruising.   You start by going down a decent hill and then immediately going back up one and making a right hand turn down towards Laurel Creek.   The first K marker was just around the corner and I went through it in 3:41.   Not blazing fast, but pretty quick.   The second kilometer went downhill slightly before leveling out to the turn-around.   The 2nd K marker was right at the turn around, and I went through this one in 3:47.   The next 2K is simply retracing your steps back to the transition zone.   It's slightly uphill on the way back and these K's were around 3:52 each.   I spent most of my time running with Scott Dickie, a local athlete that I've done some training with around here lately.   We basically got back to transition together and headed out on the bike portion together as well.

T1 was just over 40 seconds, as we hustled over to the bike mount line. I struggled a bit more than normal getting on my bike, as one of my shoes was dragging on the ground and caused me to lose my balance a bit. Eventually, I was on, strapped in and cruising down the road.

The wind was strong today and coming out of the south for the most part.   The bike course is primarily west/east, so there were going to be some strong cross winds.   The wind was never really an issue until we made the left hand turn off of Kressler Rd.   I decided to use my disc wheel today, but looking back, it might have been better to use my Zipp 808.   The disc certainly did seem to catch a lot of wind, and I had to get out of my aerobars on a few occasions to ensure I didn't crash.   Scott had an incident with a race official at the left hand turn off of Kressler Rd., and this where I caught up to him, as he was starting to pull away a bit.   From this point forward though, we did a bunch of cat and mouse moves, where he would lead and I'd stay "legally" close, and vice-versa.   The speeds heading west were actually pretty good, as the average started moving up closer to 36kph.   We were definitely fighting with the wind though at this point.

Eventually, we turned left again and headed toward Bamburg.   This part was directly into the wind, but sheltered at times by trees.   Luckily, it was short, and we quickly made the right hand turn in Bamburg out towards the turn-around point, approximately 5 or 6K out.   A few k west of Bamburg, I eventually passed Scott, and started picking off a few other racers. It was pretty spread out at this point, so there wasn't a lot of passing going on.   I just stayed aero and kept the pace up as hard as I could.   I was definitely feeling some fatigue in my legs, but I just kept pushing.

The turn-around point was up at the top of a large hill.   At this point, it looked like I was somewhere around 10th overall.   Given the wave starts, you never know for sure, but I was definitely feeling good about my efforts so far to this point.

After the turn-around point, we get to go back down the hill, and I used this to pick up as much speed as I could and to try and hold it for as long as I could. I don't think I passed anyone on the way back to transition, and with approximately 5K left, Scott passed me at the top of a hill. We remained pretty close the rest of the way back, and as we were within about half a K of transition, I passed him back one more time, as I decided to wait for the last 100m to get out of my shoes. He started doing this a bit early in my opinion, which allowed me to get ahead of him before T2. I got off the bike in about 47 minutes which was worked out to about 37kph. The course is about 1K short, so the results had our average speed at about 38.4kph, which is not true. I had no issues in T2 and was pretty much in and out of there in 35 seconds.

Starting the run, my legs were feeling heavy. It didn't take Scott long to pass me, and I tried to stay with him. I pretty much did for the first K, which I did in 4:00 (20 seconds slower than the first time). At this point, he started pulling away and I couldn't go with him. I was feeling pretty tired at this point, and just focused on running my race. Just past the turn-around point, I saw another athlete (Ming Chang Tsai) who I knew was in my AG. I tried to hold him off as long as I could, but today, the legs just didn't have a lot of kick. He eventually passed me at about 2.5K, and surprisingly, didn't pull away much. I ran fairly close to him back to the transition zone and finish line, but could not catch him. Eventually, he finished 9 seconds ahead of me. At the finish line, I was absolutely finished. I had a good kick for the final K which I ran in 3:51, despite being totally out of gas. I needed to hold onto something once I crossed the finish line in 1:19:10

Eventually, I recovered enough to chat it up with other athletes.   The general consensus was "now I remember why I hate duathlon's".   It was a hard effort in less than ideal conditions.    Shortly after finishing, it started to rain, so I grabbed some food and drink, went and picked up my gear bag by the fence and went over to our van to get changed into some dry clothes.

Once in some dry stuff, I made my way to the food tent and had a great pulled pork sandwich.   Thank you very much Pig Out Roasters!!   After wolfing down my sandwich, I made my way inside to see how the results shaped up.   I was happy to see I finished 4th in my AG and 19th overall.   This was a much better effort than I was expecting, so I was very pleased.

Up next is the Grand Rapids half ironman on June 5th.   I hope to be a bit more rested for this race, as I would still like to put forth a solid effort once again, despite it only being a "training" race in preparation for IM Austria on July 3rd.

May 14, 2011 New Hamburg Hamburger Hill 7 mile road race - Race Report (sort of)

2011-05-17T15:45:00.000-04:00

I say this is "sort of" my race report, because it wasn't really much of a race for me.   The prior day, I did a 4K Ironman swim, a 135k bike ride and a 10K brick run off of the bike.   In addition, since I wanted to get a long run of about 21K in this weekend, I decided to do this race twice.   Doing it once and then turning around and doing it again wasn't really what I wanted to do, so I decided to run it before the race.   I got to the race site at the New Hamburg Wilmot arena a little more than an hour early.   I was one of the first ones to get my timing chip and race number, and then I got ready to head out and do the race course once before coming back for the official 9am start time.

I left the arena about 8:10am planning to arrive back at the start line with about 5 minutes to spare before the race start.   The weather wasn't very good this day, and it off and on rained quite steadily.   The one good thing was that it wasn't too cold and it wasn't too windy.   There was a slight headwind heading east towards Sandhills road, but it wasn't too bad.

I was taking it fairly easy (about a 4:28/km pace), and after reaching the 5K marker of the race (the turn around point is just past 5.5K) I simply decided to turn around and head back to make the first run an even 10K.

With about 5-10 minutes to the official start of the race, I got back to the arena and put my water bottle that I was carrying for the first lap in my car, put on my race belt and jogged over to the starting line.   The race was a few minutes late to start, but eventually it got going.

Last year, I won the Wilmot township division for fastest male, finishing just over 43 minutes I think (or about a 3:51/km pace).   This was not an option this year, as I just would not have been able to run that fast with all the training I've been doing (distance vs. speed).   I was happy to just take it easy and run comfortably.   I ran the first 4K of the race with George Clark, a friend of mine from Kitchener.   We were together until the big climb at Sandhills, where my legs started to get fatigued, so I encouraged George to carry on, while I back off the pace a bit.   Up until this point, I was doing about a 4:16/K pace, which quickly dropped off as I made my way up the hill on Sandhills road.   From this point forward, I was on my own.   There really was nobody to catch, and there wasn't anyone coming up on me from behind to run with.    So I decided to just run comfortably back to the arena and give words of encouragement and a few hand slaps to all the people I knew.

There was one other runner that stayed about 30-50m back of me for most of the return trip back to the finish line.   I kept watching to see if she was coming up, but she never really gained much ground, so I just kept trucking along back to the finish line.

The rain continued off and on throughout the race, but it didn't really matter.   Once you were wet, you were wet and it didn't really impact things at all.

Crossing the finish line, I was all smiles and barely out of breath.   I knew there was another runner from Baden (another small town in Wilmot township)that was well ahead of me in the race, so there was no chance of even "accidentally" winning the Wilmot township division this year.   As it turns out, there were two speedy guys from Baden, both finishing within about 45 seconds of each other, and about 5 or 6 minutes ahead of me.   In the end, I still got 3rd place in the Wilmot Township division in a time of 48:59 (last year I ran 43:26).   I really didn't care what my time was, as I just wanted the distance today, after yesterday's big training day.   Getting 3rd was just a bonus.

The following link are the race results:

Hamburger Hill 7 mile road race - Wilmot Township division

The great thing about this race is after the race.   One of the ice pads from the twin pad arena in town has the ice taken out, so everyone gets to relax and refuel inside out of the elements.    There was massage and some ART provided by the race sponsors.   I got some ART from Adam Willliamson of Dearborn Health.   This is actually who I go to see normally, so it was great to get the "free" session after the race.

In addition, the post race food here is some of the best around.   There was lot's of gatorade, chili, pizza, fruit, bagels, buns, cookies, etc.   Honestly, as the race director, Ted Seyler has told me, "This is the best race you have never heard of".   The turn-out is never too big, despite the challenging course and awesome venue for the post race activities.   There was also sufficient shower facilities if you wanted to get cleaned up after being out in the rain.   This year, there was a 200 m and 1K kids fun run which both my kids participated in, a 3K, 5K and the 7mile race, so lot's of different variety and something for everyone.   Overall, there was likely only about 200 or so people that participated across all three races (not including the kids races).   Hopefully in the future, we'll get better weather for this and the turnout can be much higher.

So overall, I was pleased with the day, and glad that a pretty large training weekend was done.   Between the brick run the night before and the double race, I did 31K of running to go along with 135K biking and 4K swimming, and making another decent step towards Ironman Austria on July 3, 2011.

Here's my Garmin data for the "race"

Hamburger Hill 7 mile road race - Garmin Data

Product Review - Tommie Copper Compression Sleeves

2011-05-11T15:12:00.000-04:00

I first heard of Tommie Copper through a mutual friend at my gym. Lucky for me, this was right around the time I started having pain in my left knee after doing the Around the Bay 30K road race. I was doing the Boston marathon three weeks later, so I was looking for something to get me back on track.

Even though the Tommie Copper compression gear can be worn during a workout to ward of fatigue or simply as an all day garment underneath clothing to aid in recovery, I was solely using it as a recovery tool.

At night time, I would ice my knee and then put the knee sleeve on and wear it to bed all night.

When it came time to run the Boston marathon, I did so with minimal pain in my left knee. I'd like to think that the knee compression sleeve had a lot to do with that. Below is a picture of the knee sleeve.

The other piece that I received from Tommie Copper were the calf compression sleeves. Again, these can be used for either training or recovery, but I have typically used them as a recovery tool. I am currently training for Ironman Austria, so I have been putting up some decent training miles in both biking and running. I use the sleeves after all big workouts to help me recover as quickly as I can. They seem to do a really good job at this. The copper infused yarn used in the material is likely the secret to the quick heeling effects.

Below is a picture of the calf sleeve.

Overall, I found both pieces to be supportive to the muscles and not constricting to movement or circulation. They are washable & very soft. I would highly recommend them to anyone.

Their full line of products can be seen here http://tommiecopper.com/
Follow Tommie Copper on Twitter

Boston Marathon - April 18, 2011 Race Report

2011-04-29T14:55:00.001-04:00

I qualified for the "big show" by running 3:00:49 at the Ottawa marathon last spring.   In a way, that kind of came out of nowhere.   It was only my 2nd marathon.   My first was Mississauga in May, 2009, where I crashed and burned badly.   There, it was just a bad nutrition plan that did me in, and I finished in around 3:20.   A year later, I figured a few things out, salt capsules being one of the biggest!

By the time I ran Ottawa, my running partner from New Hamburg had already qualified by running a 3:05 in Waterloo.   I know he wanted to get to Boston, but didn't want to do it by himself.   I knew he was waiting and hoping for me to qualify at Ottawa. When I did, I'm pretty sure he was as happy as I was!   Luckily, we were both near a computer and signed up the day Boston 2011 opened up last September.   As I'm sure you know, it sold out in only 8 hours.   It would have really sucked if either of us didn't get in because we didn't sign up in time.   At the end of the day, we both got in, and considered ourselves lucky.

My training for Boston certainly didn't go according to plan.   After a great race at the Around the Bay 3 weeks prior to Boston, I ended up with some very annoying knee pain.   I had an MRI done because of some constant "clicking" in my knee.   The results came back clean, with no meniscus or ligament tears.   It looked like I had a bit of a bone bruise, but either way, I had run a grand total of 11K in the 3 weeks leading up to Boston.   Pretty sure that's far less than any marathon plan would call for.   That being said, I still kept the fitness up by doing a decent amount of swimming and biking.   So needless to say, I was a bit concerned leading up to this race.

On Saturday, April 16th, Darryl Huras and I drove to Buffalo to catch our flights to Boston.   We arrived in Boston with enough time to take the T to our hotel, check in, and get to the expo to pick up our bibs and do a quick tour of the expo (at least part of it).   It's a huge expo, so we only got through about a third of it.   Enough time at least to get our Boston marathon jackets.   This was the one thing that I definitely wanted to get.   It's almost a ritual that if you've done Boston, you've got at least one Adidas Boston marathon jacket, so I needed mine.

On Sunday, the day before the race, Darryl and I got up and headed downtown to watch the start and finish of the BAA 5K. Wow, some fast runners in this with the winners coming home in just over 14 minutes! After that, we did the Boston Tea Party Canada brunch at the Vlora restaurant which was ok, but nothing great. When we were finished, we met up with a friend of mine that I know from Waterloo who was down to watch his wife run the race. They offered to give Darryl and I a preview of the race course from Hopkinton to Boston, so we took them up on their offer. It was nice to see the course, and even better to see the start under normal circumstances, not when there are 25,000 runners waiting to race.

The night before the race, we took the T to Government Centre and participated in the race organized pasta dinner. We were amazed at the speed and efficiency in which they moved athletes through this. The meal was again ok, but nothing great. Lot's of carbs for the next morning at least.

Race morning started early.....awfully early at 4:30am.   I normally don't have too much of an issue sleeping before big races, but I think I got about 2 or 3 hours sleep max that night, so by 4:30, I was ready to get up and get going anyway.   I made my normal whole wheat wrap with peanut butter and a banana to get the day started, had a quick shower and a coffee and we were out the door with our gear to catch the subway at around 5:15, or so we hoped.

After a bit of a delay at the subway, we eventually got on the first train about 5:40am that morning and made our way to the State T station.   This only took 10-15 minutes, so we had lot's of time, as we were supposed to board the buses between 6am - 6:30am.   Going to the first stop past Boylston was a really good call, as the lineups to get on the bus were significantly less at the end of the long line of school buses.   We quickly got on the first available bus, and about 15 minutes later, we were off to Hopkinton.   The bus ride out there seemed to take almost an hour by the time we got to athlete's village.   The time went pretty quick though as we chatted with other runners, many who have done the race plenty of times before.

When we got to the athlete's village, we quickly got in line for our first of many port-o-potty breaks before our 10am start.   By this time, we still had about 2 hours to kill before making our way to the start line.   Being some of the first people out there, there were still plenty of spots to choose from.   It was a cool and windy day, so we found a spot along a sheltered fence that was in the sun, and got out the garbage bags to cover us up and keep warm.

They had lots of food and drink out in the village to help hydrate and fuel up. I had a few coffees, half a bagel and some Gatorade to pass the time. After a bit more sitting around, stretching, port-o-potty breaks and chit-chat with other runners, the time finally came for us to drop our bags and start walking down to the starting corrals at 9:15am. Darryl and I changed into our running gear, but still kept on some disposable clothes that would ultimately go to charity when we took them off near the start. Speaking of the start, it was almost a mile walk from athlete's village. Nobody really cares about that, as the walk there is a good way to loosen up prior to the race. After one final washroom stop, we were off to the starting line. Darryl was in coral 4 while I was in coral 3. I decided to start back with him, and we'd run together as long as we could. At 10am, shortly after singing the national anthem, the gun went off, and our journey to Boston began. I was hoping to see the fighter jets fly by, but none were to be seen this year.

The first few miles were very tightly packed.   Since we were all running with people of similar qualifying times and fitness, this didn't actually cause too much slowness in the race.   The first K was done in 4:24 and the second in 4:30.   In the back of my mind I was going to be happy with a 4:30 average pace for the race, so this was good.   After the first few downhill K's, I got into a good rhythm and we just kept cruising along.

This was clearly the biggest race I'd ever been in in my entire life (by a LONG shot).   Previously, the Around the Bay 30K was likely the biggest race (in terms of numbers) that I have been in, and that was only about 6,000.   There were 25,000 runners in this race!   What people say about the crowd support was 100% true.   It's hard to believe, but except for the first K or so when we had to run through a bit of a wooded area, there were spectators the ENTIRE 26.2 miles of this race, often 2 or 3 deep in spots.   There was zero sense of loneliness out there.   It is a day off in Massachusetts and people make the most of it to come out and cheer on the runners.

Through 5K, things seemed to be going well. I planned to use the aid stations as I did in Ottawa, taking water at one and Gatorade at the next.   Little sips at a time, but staying fully hydrated.   In addition to the aid stations, I decided to carry my fuel belt in order to make sure I got a decent amount of salt.   I dissolved 3 salt stick capsules into each fuel belt flask and had a half Gatorade, half water solution.   This seems to have worked for me in the past, so I kept up with tradition. In addition, I had two powerbar gels that I planned on using every 10K of the race.   We went through the 5K marker in just under 22 minutes, feeling very good and relaxed and giving lot's of high fives to kids and plenty of other fans, since there was no shortage of them.

By 10K, I had already started to feel a bit of soreness in my quads from the net downhill to this point.   In addition, I could feel my left knee getting a bid tender, but neither issues were anything that were causing me to slow down, they were just in the back of my mind.   At this point, my average paced had settled in at a 4:20/K.   Looking back at my Garmin details, I would hold this average pace all the way through until 20K of the race.   This made sense, as this stretch of the race was relatively flat.   I can't think of anything too memorable other than talking to a guy that was doing the race in a speedo (and only a speedo).   I had asked him if he lost a bet, but he jokingly just said that he was working on his tan.   Running beside him for a bit, he certainly got lot's of cheers and some boo's from the crowd.   It was kinda funny actually.   In addition, around the 15 or 16K point, I passed Team Hoyt.   If you have not heard of them, just google them.   What they have done together is truly amazing.   Another very notable event was running by the girls of Wellesley Collage at around 20K.   I'd heard of these "loud" girls well before doing the race.   They offer free kisses to anyone that wants them.   Given the fact that I was actually running better than I was expecting to at this point, I decided not to slow down and "hang out" with them.   Instead, I just watched as others did.   It was quite entertaining to watch, and it was definitely a very loud cheering section.

At the 20K mark, my pace slowed down to a 4:21/K average.   The next 5K were relatively flat, so I just focused on maintaining a nice rhythm.   I would hold this pace through until the 27K mark where the hills began.   Actually, the first major change in elevation was a big downhill at the 25K mark, that was quickly followed by pretty decent climb.   This was the first of 4 pretty decent climbs through the Newton area.   The last of course, is Heartbreak Hill.

By this point, my legs were starting to hurt.   My right quad, just below my hip was getting moderately sore.   I was still feeling a bit of pain in my left knee also, but it just never seemed to get much worse than when I was at the 10K mark.

Before I knew it, we were climbing Heartbreak.   After hearing people talk about it, I knew it wasn't anything to get too concerned about.   It's a decently long climb, but not too steep.   I just kept moving up the hill and pumping my arms.   I remember thinking to myself this isn't too bad, and after this, it's all downhill.   Looking back, those downhills were the worse part.   I had never experienced any sort of pain running downhill before, but the downhills in Boston really hammer the quads.   In the final 8K, there were a few spots where the descents were pretty steep.   I felt like I couldn't just take longer strides and pick up the pace, because my legs were hurting.   So even though the elevation dropped 70m in the final 8K, my kilometer splits continued to increase. I was simply in damage control mode and really wanted to get to the finish line.

The closer we got to the finish line, the bigger the crowds were.   At some point, it was ridiculously loud!   I wish I could have taken some video just so that I could remember it.   It's something you'll only experience in a few races around the world (New York city might be another).

Once to Beacon street, I could finally see the Citgo sign.   This is the sign that means you're almost home.   The sad thing is, that you can see this sign from almost 4 or 5K out.   It certainly seemed to take a long time to finally reach it.   The stretch on Beacon was tough, as I also started to feel some sort of rubbing or blister forming on my left foot.   I was almost tempted to stop and take my shoe off, but I decided to just keep going.   I was almost done.   I did take a few walking breaks at some of the final aid stations, just to get my HR back under control.   I certainly wasn't alone at this point, as a lot of other people seemed to be really suffering at this point too.

Once we got to the Massachusetts turnpike, I saw the sign for only 1 mile to go!   We had to climb a small overpass to get over the turnpike and then run past Fenway Park.   As it turns out, the Toronto Blue Jays were playing the Red Sox that afternoon as we ran by the stadium.

I recall only one more hard part of the race, and that was going under Massachusetts Avenue.   I took one more small walking break as we climbed back up to street level, and made the final stretch to Boylston Street.   Almost home!

A quick right turn and then a left onto Boylston, and there it was, the big blue finish line chute of the Boston marathon.

It's a good half mile run down Boylston, but at that point, the pain was gone. The crowds were large and loud, and I knew I was almost done. I picked up the pace and just ran pretty much as fast as I could to the finish, coming across the line in 3:10:11.

After finishing and moving through the finish area a bit, I turned to see if Darryl was anywhere to be seen. Only a minute later I saw another friend, Kevin Tearle from the Burlington area come across the line. He's doing the Lake Placid IM in July also, so this was a bit of a long training run for him too. After waiting for a few more minutes, I decided to start making my way through the various finish line areas. First came some water, then the medal, followed by the thermal foil blankets and then some food. I just grabbed everything that people were handing me and kept stuffing it in my bag. I really loaded up on the bars and Gatorade recover drink.

After this, I made my way to the busing area to retrieve my warm up clothes that I left out at Hopkinton.    Sitting down and changing was certainly not the easiest thing to do right after the race.

Once I got this all done, I decided that I would just head back to the hotel and wait for Darryl, but just as I was heading out of the athlete area, I ran into him, which was pretty amazing, given the thousands and thousands of people all around.   We grabbed our stuff and made our way to the Arlington subway station to get on the T back to our hotel.

Going down those stairs into the subway station were absolutely painful.   It was so funny seeing all of the runners hobbling around the streets and stairs into the subway.   It took a bit of time, but eventually, we got on the train and then off about 10 minutes later down by our hotel.   The walk back to the hotel was very slow.   I was physically unable to do anything other than walk slowly at this point.

After finally getting back to the hotel, we got cleaned up and then I actually tried to make a bit of an ice bath in the bathtub for my legs.   The water coming out of the tap wasn't very cold so the ice I added quickly melted and the water only felt cold for a few seconds.   I thought to myself that this is better than nothing, so gave each leg about a 10 minute soak.   I had to do one leg at a time, since the tub wasn't even long enough for both legs to sit straight out.   After the ice bath and a shower, I sat on the bed and put some ice on my left knee to keep the swelling down.

After a few hours, Darryl and I decided to head back up to the Prudential center and go for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory.   It was about a 50 minute wait, so we put our names down and headed into the mall area to try and walk off our soreness.   It definitely felt good to move around, and I hope that helped with the recovery a bit.   Once we got seated, we had a nice dinner and I had a Sam Adams beer, that tasted just AMAZING!

The next day, we grabbed a bit of breakfast at the hotel, before getting on the subway back to the airport.   At the airport, it was neat to sit around and talk with many of the other runners who were also heading home.

So overall, I am very pleased with how the race turned out.   Only one week prior to the race, I was still unsure if I could or should run it at all.   I set very low expectations for the race, so to do a 3:10 and actually qualify again for next year if I wanted to, far exceeded my expectations.    My biggest relief is that it appears that my left knee is actually better after the race than it was before.   I have no idea how a marathon can make the clicking issue I had go away, but it did.   I continued with some icing for several days after the race, but was able to do a 113K bike ride only 4 days after Boston, and then a 12K run 6 days after the race.   My legs are still feeling a bit tired, but they are getting better every day, which is good, as I have some serious training that needs to happen to get ready for my July 3, 2011 Ironman race in Austria.

Here is the Garmin data for the race:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/80296648

I was able to find some video of me crossing the finish line as well.

Hamilton Around the Bay 30K Road Race - March 27, 2011 Race Report

2011-04-02T12:31:00.000-04:00

The Around the Bay road race takes place in Hamilton, Ontario.   It starts and finishes at Copps Coliseum, after runners do a complete loop of Hamilton harbour.

Once again, the weather for the day was going to be sunny, but very cold (for the end of March).   It was around -10 overnight, and highs for the day were projected to only be about -2.

I was up at 6am for the 9:30am start time.   I was getting picked up by Darryl Huras at 7am for the 1hr trek to Hamilton.   This gave me lots of time to eat some breakfast, which was a banana wrapped in a whole wheat tortilla with peanut butter.   I also had a small amount of oatmeal and coffee to get started for the day.   After eating breakfast, I went downstairs and rode my bike on the trainer for 10 minutes. This helps get the legs loosened up and ready to roll.   It would likely be better to do this about half an hour before the race start, but what can you do.

At 7am, Darryl showed up and we were off to Hamilton.   We had to make a small detour over to Dundas to pick up our race kits that had been picked up the day before by another friend in New Hamburg running the race, who was staying at her sister's place.   This didn't take long, and by 8am or so, we were parked and making our way into Copps to hit the washrooms and to walk around and stretch.

After killing time for 45 minutes inside Copps, we headed back to the van to get organized for the race and get to the start line.   At about 9:15am, we were off doing a light jog to the starting line and join the other 6,000 people ready to run this race.   We were planning on running together, so we seeded ourselves approximately 10 or 12 rows from the front.   At 9:30am, the horn sounded, and we were off.   It took about 10 seconds to actually reach the start line after the gun went off.

As expected, it was a bit busy for the first few minutes of the race, but after the first K, things opened up nicely and we were able to find a nice rhythm.   We went through the first K in 4:04 and feeling good.   The race is pretty much a triangle shape.   The first 9K are more or less a straight, flat run going due east.   This part felt really nice, as we likely did not have any wind, and it was right into the sun.   At times, I felt like I was actually getting a bit warm, but all in all, it was comfortable.  There were times during this part that it was totally silent, and I thought that was a bit strange.   There were a few spots were there wasn't any fan support and all you could hear were the sounds of running feet.   This seemed like the exact opposite of 20 minutes ago at the start.

At 9K, we turned north on Woodward Ave. and into a bit of a headwind.   It felt cooler for sure and the pace slowed down a little bit. At about 11K, the course went under the QEW and onto Beach Blvd.   At this point, the fan support was much higher.    The people living along this street did a great job of coming out and cheering runners on.   This helps a lot as we went through the middle part of course.

My nutrition and hydration plan for this race was fairly simple.   I took my fuel belt with two bottles filled of half water and half gatorade.   In each bottle I dissolved about 1 and a half salt stick capsules in each one.   Trying to use my salt stick dispenser with gloves on wasn't going to happen, so to make sure I didn't get any cramps, I just pre-dissolved them.   In addition, I ended up taking in one powergel at about 12 or 13K and I would try to get a drink from every aid station, alternating between gatorade and water.   This all worked well, and I didn't have any nutrition or cramping issues during the race at all.

Back to the run, at 18K, we made the left turn south onto Northshore Blvd. where the race really begins.   The good news is that the next 8K or so are all through mostly residential areas, so the fan support is good to push you along, but the bad news is that this is where the hills are.    Doing this race for the 4th time now, I really know what to expect, and other than two or three challenging hills on the course, the rest aren't bad.   I actually enjoyed the rollers as we got into this section, as it seemed to give the legs a chance to use different muscles which helped.   Just past the 20K mark, we go up what I consider to be the first challenging hill at LaSalle park.   It's not too steep really, but it goes up for a while, so you have to grind it out.   Once at the top, there is a pretty good downhill, and this is where I first started to have some concerns with my knee.   Going into this race, I've had some problems with my left knee.   Going up stairs, etc. it had been a bit "clicky", and the downhills on the run seemed to make it worse.   I just tried to keep a steady pace and not "brake" too much, which made it worse.

After reaching the bottom of the hill at LaSalle park, there is another decent climb back into a busy residential areat.   Once at the top here, it's a nice gradual decent for a few K until you make the quick right and small climb back up to Plains Rd. West.   At this point, I was feeling pretty good again, and started to pick it up as the next 2K are pretty much downhill as we turn left on Spring Gardens road and go down past Woodland cemetery and the Royal Botanical gardens.   During this point, Darryl and I passed a few runners and headed down to meet the "midget" or "little person" to be more politically correct.

Just before making the decent to the bottom of "The Hill", there is a "little guy" who is always in the same place every year blasting out "We will rock you" by Queen.   It has become a ritual of doing ATB to "slap the midget".   He gives out high 5's to all those who want them.   It's a great place to get some motivation before tackling the Valley Inn Road hill.   This is the hill every talks about (or fears) when doing this race.   It's a pretty steep and decently long hill that challenges runners between the 26-27K point of the race.   Once at the top though, you end up back on York boulevard with a 3K downhill finish to the end INSIDE of Copps Coliseum.

At this point, my GPS was showing a 4:09 average pace, which is under a 2:05 finish time.   The problem with this though is that my kilometer markers were consistently coming up before the official race K markers.   The last few were coming up about 100-200 meters early, so for some reason the course seemed a little "long" this year.

We ran hard for the last few K (with the last one a 3:53/pace) and as we were just about to turn down into Copps to finish, my 30K lap marker went off on my GPS.  I only had about 15 seconds to get to the finish line, so it didn't look like I was going to go sub 2:05 today.

As Darryl and I got inside Copps, we were side by side and we then shook hands as we crossed the finish line.   You can see this in the cool finish line video below or some of the pictures at the end of this blog.

We both finished in 2:05:15 officially. I was 141st out of 5,882 total runners and 23rd out of 414 in my AG.

Below are the splits in Garmin details for the run.

2011 Around the Bay 30K road race - Garmin Details

After the race, and as soon as I stopped running, I could tell my knee was going to be a problem. We went through the food line and then found a place to do a bit of stretching, but I could tell my knee was starting to tighten up. Any more running was definitely not an option at this point. My fitness seemed good and it wasn't from a lack of energy or muscle soreness that I could not run any more. Simply the fact that my knee had had enough.

The day after the race, my knee was very swollen and the only thing I could do is swim. So I did that for some recovery. By Tuesday, I could bike, and since then, swimming and biking are the only things I have done. It is now 6 days after the ATB and although I don't seem to have any more swelling in my knee, it is still "structurally" sore and bothersome. I have a physio appt. for Monday morning and actually an MRI on my knee planned for next Saturday. I have had what I would describe as general "weakness" in my left knee for a few years at least, but it never really caused me any issues when I run. Once warmed up, it was always fine. That does not seem to be the case now, and with the Boston marathon in a little more than two weeks, I must say, I am concerned. I hope things can fix themselves quickly, or running Boston might not be in the cards. Especially with IM Austria in July. Time will tell I guess, but I'm definitely crossing my fingers.

Below are a few other shots from the race.

Waterloo Refridge-Eighter 8K Road Race - Feb 20, 2011 Race Report

2011-02-20T19:31:00.001-05:00

You can't ask for better race conditions in the middle of February.   The previous day, the winds were whipping around at 60 km/h, and tonight, we're expecting heavy snow, so today's race was sandwiched between two nasty winter weather days.

The race taking place at RIM Park in Waterloo was welcomed with sunny skies, dry roads and calm winds.   It was however cold early in the morning.   It was -12 when I left my house in New Hamburg, but it was expected to be -7 by race time.

I arrived at RIM park just before 9am to get my race kit, and get warmed up a bit before the race.  This still left me with a lot of time to kill.   It certainly doesn't take nearly as long to get ready for a running race compared to a triathlon. After chatting with some friends and other runners for a bit, I made my way to the starting line for the casual 10am start.

This race was both an 8K and an 8M race.   I was entered in the 8K race, as I was doing it with two other people from work as part of a corporate relay.   I couldn't convince them to do the longer race, so the 8K it was.    I'm training for the Boston marathon in a couple of months, and this race was between a 32K run last weekend and a 36K next weekend.   This race was obviously short compared to the training I've been doing, but the pace was going to be significantly faster, making this a good training day none the less.

After the national anthem was sung, the race kicked off right at 10am.   The first couple of K were slightly downhill, but into a light headwind. They were the two fastest K's of the race going 3:39 and 3:40.   My garmin race data can be seen below:

Garmin race info.

Right at the 2K mark, there is a nice little hill to slow the pace down.   Up to this point, I was running with a few other runners.    Going up the hill though, I made a break from them and found myself running all alone.   There was another runner about 75m up the road, but I wasn't gaining a lot of ground.   Around the 3K mark, there was another gradual uphill section.   Nothing too steep, but enough to make you work.

At the 4K mark, we turned right onto Bridge street and started heading back towards RIM park.   The next three K, were very consistent.   It was mostly flat, which made for consistent pacing.   In fact, kilometers 4, 5 and 6 were 3:45, 3:46 and 3:46.   Pretty even pacing for sure.   At the start of the 7th K, we had to start making the climb back towards RIM park.   Again, it was not a steep climb by any means, but long and gradual, and after pushing the pace for 6K, it was a tough K.   It turned out to be my slowest one of the race in 3:57, but once I got to the top of the hill and the 7K marker, I started feeling ok again, and picked the pace up a bit more.   I still found myself all alone out there since the 2K mark.   The same runner that was ahead of me back then, was still ahead, but only by about 50m now.   I was pushing hard, but knew it was unlikely I could catch him.   I finished my last K in 3:45 again and finished the race in 30:14, 5th place overall and 1st place in my M35-39 age group.   This beat my time from last year by 17 seconds, which was good to see.   I keep getting older, but my times are continuing to get faster.   I'd say conditions were similar, this year to last, so not much to compare to other than fitness.

Other than a few hills to slow the pace down, I was happy to have pretty consistent pacing throughout as can be seen by my splits below:

After finishing the race, I caught my breath, received and gave a few congratulations, and then started to back track through the remaining runners to pick up a female runner in our corporate race team. The other runner on our team had a great race and finished in 33:38, 14th overall. I likely ran about 1.5K back into the race before I ran into her. I turned around and ran with her to the end. She doesn't run too much, so her effort was very good overall, and I think she was pleased with her results as well. We ended up getting first place in the corporate division as a result of all of our solid efforts.

After finishing (for the second time), I headed back inside for some post race food and I actually was lucky enough to get a quick massage without having to wait for very long.

The Refridge-Eighter race is the first in a series of races in the Waterloo area each year.

Waterloo Running Series

It's a fun and challenging race (either 8K or 8M) that is a good test for your winter fitness. I've been working hard this winter in preparation for the Boston marathon in April and my first Ironman in July (Austria), so this race gives me some comfort, that I am well on my way to meeting my upcoming race goals.

I'm famous......almost

2011-02-08T12:19:00.000-05:00

Big thanks goes out to Larry Bradley for doing his age group profile on me this past week.

You can check it out here..

http://larryofteamrunningfree.blogspot.com/2011/02/age-grouper-spotlight-luke-ehgoetz.html

Bike Fit Pics

2011-01-23T19:02:00.000-05:00

I am likely going to get a bike fit done at Multisport Zone in London, Ontario. http://www.multisport-zone.com/ZOM/. They are certified using FIST and Retul 3D image systems.

I'm posting a few pictures and video of my fit before any changes done. It is also for them to take a look at prior to going down to the shop.

Pics and video of me on my Look TT bike

Pics and video of me on my BMC Road Bike bike

So what's new?

2011-01-04T21:14:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been a while now since Clearwater.   I certainly haven't sat around and done nothing, but for the most part, I've just been winging it.   Just before Christmas I got into a routine that I think I will get going again in January (starting next week when the new swim group I'm going to be in starts up).

I see the next few months going something like this in terms of weekly training:

Mondays:
Trainer ride at home starting around 5:30-5:45am for about an hour.   This gets me done, cleaned up and out the door to the gym by around 7:00-7:15.   I can usually be at Northfield Racquet Club (NRC) by 7:45.   This gives me a half hour or more to do some strength training and to get to work by 9am.   At noon, I'll swim for an hour or so at Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU) with a group of triathlete buddies from the Waterloo area.

Tuesdays:
Starting next week, I'm going to be joining a coached masters swim workout 2x week (Tues & Thurs) at 5:30am at the University of Waterloo (UofW).   Yes, that is awfully early, but something has to give when you are training for an Ironman.   The swim is coached by UofW swim coach Jeff Slater.   I did a couple of sessions with him in December, and he is a great guy.   At only $60/month for coached sessions with feedback, it's a great deal!   By 6:30am, the swim is done and I can still get to NRC for a 30-40 minute run (either tempo or some intervals on the treadmill) and 30 minutes of strength training. To work again by 9am and feeling like I accomplished something that morning!

Wednesdays:
Another trainer ride at home for 60-90 minutes and then to NRC by 7:45 for more strength training...around 30 minutes.   At lunch, I'll head down to WLU for another hour of swimming (hopefully with the guys).

Thursdays:
Back to UofW for another 60 minute swim session with Jeff Slater and a few local triathletes.   Again, after that, over to NRC for a 30-40 tempo or hill run on the treadmill.   I'll get outside for these runs when the weather gets better, but in January and February, I feel I get alot more bang for my buck doing treadmill running.   I used to find it totally boring, but I have found quite an improvement in my speed and form doing more treadmill work.   Plus, you just don't have to put all that "gear" on.   That saves 10 minutes for sure (5 minutes on and 5 minutes off). I'll get in around a 20-30 minute strength training session as well before work.

For two months starting January 6th, I'm going to do a 60-90 minute Computrainer ride at Dearborn Health (http://www.dearbornhealth.com/) with Zach Weston's group at 5:15pm
http://www.ironheartfitness.ca/main6.cfm?id=FF2335F5-09EF-5E02-9193E5256CBAA490
(Take note of the cool picture at the bottom of this link!!....yah, that's me!!)

Fridays:
Likely just head to NRC to do a light strength training workout, stretching and sit in the hot tub!!   An easy morning for sure!!    The reason for that is because I usually schedule my long outdoor run for Saturdays, so going hard Friday's isn't very smart.   At lunch, I'll try to get to WLU again at lunch for an hour swim with the guys again.

Saturdays:
Weather permitting (generally), I'll try to get a long run in with my running buddy from New Hamburg, Darryl Huras.   We're both doing the Around the Bay 30K in March and then heading to Boston for the marathon on April 18th.   It's definitely good to have someone to do these types of runs with during the winter when the weather....well....sucks!!   Knowing someone is expecting you to show up at a certain spot definitely helps you get your butt out the door!   Darryl is likely a slightly better runner than I am, so I don't have to worry about going to hard and dropping him.   We can run together and be equally challenged at the same time.   We have a plan to do various distance training runs up to around 35-38K pre Boston, and so far things have been going well.   Yesterday we did 25K and in a couple weeks, we'll likely be doing 28K.

That's about it for Saturday's, and when you run that far, that's all you really feel like doing.   I'll defintely do some stretching at the end of the day in which we do these long runs!

Sundays:
This is sort of my day off from triathlon training.   I do play hockey at 9am up until April or so, and I enjoy this.   It's different, and certainly works different muscles.   It's my version of "cross training" from triathlon training.   It's not very intense, so I hope my chances of getting injured are minimal, as that would really suck!!

So that is basically what I'll be up to for the next 2-3 months.   Come March, I'll likely try to start doing some longer rides 2-3 hours on the trainer maybe, if the weather outside stays nasty.    As soon as those warm spring days kick in, I'll definitely be switching over to longer bike rides on the weekends.   By then, I'll also be starting to ride to work, so more frequent bike rides will hopefully get the bike fitness up quickly.

It's hard to believe it's January, and before we know it, the winter will be gone and the spring will be here...I hope anyway!!

2010 Clearwater Ironman 70.3 World Championship........No Ordinary Triathlon!

2010-11-23T22:38:00.014-05:00

Race Details:

1.9K swim
90K Bike
21.1K Run

As noted above, this is definitely no ordinary triathlon.   Far and away, this was the biggest (in terms of number of competitors) and the overall atmosphere.

I flew down to Tampa Bay (just 30 minutes east of Clearwater) with my whole family on Wednesday, November 10th.   It was nice to get there early and see the whole setup of this race fall into place.   The excitement built each day, as more and more athletes converged on Pier 60, where all the events were taking place.

On Thursday (the race was Saturday), I attended the athlete's welcome banquet that was held at Sand Key Park.   It was a very nice banquet in which a band was playing and hundreds of tables were setup on the beach.   They brought in all the flags of all the countries represented by the athletes and we all listened to what they had to say about the race.   I sat with a triathlon group out of Waterloo called Studio Energi.   Former pro Jeff Beech is the team coach, and he was also racing in my age group.   Below is the best picture I could get on my crappy BB camera.

I obviously had no expectations to podium or even get close to it really, so my main focus was to just have a fun day and do the best I can in each discipline. Race morning came early thanks to a few very restful night sleeps in the days prior and due to the fact that the fire alarm in the hotel room started beeping lightly because the battery was low. That was at 11:30pm, and I think I only got about 3 decent hours sleep after that. I was up for good at 4am, which was half an hour earlier than I set my alarm for, but I didn't feel too tired. I was just too excited, so I got up and had a shower and had a banana wrap with peanut butter and some oatmeal. Shortly after 5am, I was on my way down to the transition zone to get body marked and my bike setup done. That was all wrapped up by 5:45 or so, and then I did a quick jog back to the hotel to grab my wetsuit and hang out with the family before going back for my 7:25 wave start.

By the time the pro's started at 6:45, the sun had barely even came up. I bet they hard a hard time seeing in the water for the first bit. Slowly but surely, the wave starts ticked away, and eventually, I found myself in the pens getting ready for mine. I was in wave 10 at 7:25. The Gulf of Mexico was a bit choppy race morning, but not too bad. An ocean swim is certainly more challenging than many of the lake swims we do here in Southern Ontario, so I don't have much experience with this. I was in the first of two waves for men 35-39, so I think there were about 100 of us that went off at 7:25am.

The horn blasted, and the race was on. I actually felt quite calm and relaxed as the swim began. I tried to stay out of the mix as much as I could and find some feet to swim behind, but with the waves and cloudy water, it was difficult to see. Only a couple of hundred meters into the race, I found myself on the inside more or less swimming from buoy to buoy. Since the faster swimmers were already way ahead, I didn't find it too congested. I focused on trying to keep everything under control and trying to make good strokes through the water. Going out to the far buoy was tough, as it was going into the waves. Once we made the first turn, it was only about a 100 meter swim to the next large buoy where we did another 90 degree turn back to shore. This was good and bad. Heading back, we were going with the waves, which was easier to swim in, but we were looking right into the sun, as it was coming up over the beach. I got back to the beach just over 33 minutes later. I was hoping to go around 32 minutes or slightly less, so I was slightly disappointed with my time, but given the conditions and the fact that I once again improved over my Muskoka time of 34 minutes, I don't want to complain much about this. Swimming is the one area where I will continue to work on this winter.

Swim 1.9K
Time 33:18
Pace 1:45/100

The run up to transition was about 100 meters through the sand from the water, where we went through a refreshing sprinkler system to get the salt and sand off of us. A quick use of one of the wetsuit strippers got my suit off fast and I grabbed my bike bag and was over to the transition tent to get my race number on. T1 took 3:17, which is a bit long and is another area where free time can be gained by trying to make a conscious effort to get in and out more quickly.

Onto the bike, and where the fun was about to begin.   Only 2K into the bike, we had to go up the biggest (and one of only two) hills on the whole course.   It was the Memorial Causeway bridge.   At the 88K mark, we had to go back over it again.   Other than that, the course was totally flat, and that meant two things....fast speeds and drafting due to the packs.   I think I was in a unique situation, as I was in one of two waves for my age group.   Unfortunately, I'm not a front of the pack swimmer, but I can certainly hold my own on the bike.   I think when I came out of the water, I was coming out with the front of the pack swimmers (and likely top athletes in my age group from the 2nd wave).   That put me in a position to likely be doing some fast riding with some fast guys.

My nutrition plan on the bike was similar to the Muskoka 70.3 race:
- Start off with a normal concentrate (260 calories) of Infinite in my aero drink bottle;
- Carry a double concentrate (520 calories) of Infinite in a bottle on my frame;
- After the aero drink is empty, put the 2x concentrate bottle in my aero drink bottle and pick up 1 water at each aid station to last the rest of the race;
- I also grabbed one gel at each aid station and nibbled on some Powerbar gel blasts to give me that little extra bit of calories.

The first 15K of the bike wasn't too bad for groups.   There seemed to be sufficient space to avoid any drafting calls.   That would soon change though.   I'd say that 25K in, it started getting ridiculous.   At this point, we were only riding in one lane of a two lane highway, so only about 10 feet wide or so.   In addition, we were passing a lot of the slower female riders from earlier waves as well.   All it takes is a few slower riders to be trying to make passes at the same time to get the packs formed.   Likely for the next 50K of the race, I was in and out of these packs.   There were times when I was stuck in the middle of a group of male riders doing 44kph only inches from a guy in front of me, a guy to the right of me, a ditch to the left of me and someone right behind me.   I could not move or go anywhere until something opened up.   Despite good intentions and honestly trying to avoid drafting as much as I could, I ended up getting TWO drafting penalties on the bike.   I can see how I got the first one, as it was at a point where only minutes earlier I was trying to make a break from the pack. I pushed hard and got out front to only find the riders taking it easy behind me, turn-around and pass me again just a minute later.   As 4 or 5 riders made the pass, I likely didn't drop back fast enough, and that was bad timing, as an official had just pulled up behind me to watch. That was penalty one.   Penalty two took place on the Bayside bridge, and this is the one I have a problem with.   This was a long causeway bridge that had only a very small incline, and it was closed to traffic.   There were 3 lanes of the highway to use, and somehow I got another one.   As the official pulled up and told me that I had another drafting penalty, I was pissed.   I asked them where, and they said "a quarter mile back".   I was trying to be very careful after the first call and to get a penalty on this part of the course seemed absurd.   We were actually fairly spread out, so I totally had no idea what they were talking about.   I didn't see any point in trying to argue with them, as that wouldn't have got me anywhere.   Unfortunately, after the second penalty, I lost some motivation.   All I could focus on was avoiding another penalty, which would result in a disqualification from the race.

By this time also, we had to head back north into a bit of a headwind.   There was pretty good separation between everyone now too, so instead of focusing on a hard effort to the finish, I started daydreaming a bit.   In the final 10K of the ride, I started to hear what sounded like a hissing sound coming from my front end.   I thought to myself "great, a flat tire".   I kept looking down to see if any of my tires were getting flat, but nothing seemed to be happening.   This went on 10 or 15 minutes, but eventually stopped, right before climbing the Memorial Causeway bridge for the 2nd time. I figure it was something like a wrapper stuck on my bike or wheel, as it seemed to just fly off.   The final 2K was really fast as we came down the bridge and flew down a nice flat stretch to T2.    At T2, I hoped off my bike and gave it to a very nice volunteer and proceeded to the "penalty box" to serve my 8 minutes in drafting penalties :(

Bike 90K
Time 2:13:05
Speed 25.25 mph (40.4 kph)
Bike Course Garmin GPS Data

The only good thing about sitting in T2 for 8 extra minutes was the stretching that I was able to do prior to running the half marathon.   Not sure if that really did anything or not, but all I know, is that I wish my T2 time was 2 minutes or less, but instead it was 10:50.....total bummer!!    When I got to the penalty box, they give you a stop watch to wear around your neck so you know when to leave.   At about 5 minutes and change, mine actually stopped accidentally, so I don't know with certainty that I got out of there in exactly 8 minutes.   By the time I noticed it, I think I was pretty close to 8 minutes and I had to argue with the officials in the box to let me go.   Eventually they did, and I was off to grab my T2 bag and head over to the change tent to get ready.   The clean transition zones are a nice feature compared to the other races I've previously done.   The volunteers are great and they take all your stuff so you don't have to worry about it.

The run course in Clearwater was a two loop 10.55K course that went up and over the Memorial causeway bridge (again) and then into a few subdivisions before coming back over the bridge and hammering through a flat 2K stretch back to transition and the turn around to do it again.

My nutrition plan on the run was simple.....use what was available on the course to avoid having to carry my fuel belt.   I really wanted to run a faster half than Muskoka, and not carrying that extra weight around your waist definitely helps.   I did carry my large salt stick dispenser to get a little extra salt on the course.

Starting the run, I felt pretty good and was moving through a lot of people.   Up and over the bridge the first time was no problem either and I think I was doing about a 4:15 pace through the first 3K that included the bridge.   There were lots of aid stations throughout the course.   Likely every 2K or so.   The thing I liked the most were the cold water sponges.   At this time of the day, it was starting to get pretty warm, and there is nothing more refreshing than squeezing out some cold water over your head or down your shirt.   It was even nice to just wipe your face off!

Once I went up and over the bridge for the second time and was heading back to transition for the turnaround, I came across something I had never seen before, but had heard of happening on Slowtwitch.   I was running beside a guy and began to smell something really really bad.   I think you know what I mean.   I looked at the guy's shorts, but there was nothing there.   Then I looked ahead, and about 50 ft in front of both of us was a female running, that obviously could not hold a #2 until a port-o-potty.    It was definitely very gross, as it was running down her legs.   Myself and the guy I was running with rather quickly passed this girl (thank goodness really) and then I looked over at him and said that is the grossest thing I have ever seen while running, and he nodded and agreed with me.   Given how fast she was running, I seriously doubt she was going for a podium spot, so how could you not stop somewhere and do that right?   Unbelievable for sure!

The splits on my second loop started off a little slower, as I was starting to get a bit tired.   I knew I was going to be pretty close to my goal time of doing a 1:30 half marathon.   The climb back over the bridge on the second loop (now third time going over this) was tiring, but I kept turning my feet over and eventually got to the top and back down again.   Just one more time weaving through the subdivisions and the final charge home.   It definitely seemed longer to get through all these streets the second time, but eventually, I came back to the bridge and knew I had just one more climb to go.   This was by far the toughest of the four bridge climbs we had to do.   I even took a few walking steps just to settle the heart rate down.   Nobody passed me while doing this, which was good.   Once I got to the top, I knew it was all down hill from here (almost literally).   I used the final decent to get the pace up, and then I tried holding this through the final 2K flat stretch to the finish line.   As it turns out, the last 5K of the race was the fastest of the whole run, as I knew the end was in sight, and just tried to run as hard as I could.   The crowds were big near the finish, and it was motivating to just push right through to the end.   Reaching the finish line felt great!

Run 21.1K
Time 1:30:35
Pace 6:54/mile (4:18/km)
Run Course Garmin GPS Data

My family was close to the transition zone on the run, so were able to snap a few pictures.

So overall, I was happy with my splits in each discipline. I officially finished in 313th position overall out of about 1,550 total finishers. In my age group, I officially finished 78th out of 198. Had I not had the 8 minutes in penalties on the bike that I had to serve in T2, I would have finished about 40th in my age group. My AG (35-39) had the most racers in the entire race.

Race stuff. I also got a tech shirt, sunglasses and a finshers headsweats hat!

Check out the cool finishing video below...

The entire experience was really really cool! Next year, the 70.3 World Championship race moves out to Lake Las Vegas in Nevada. The reason for the move is to make the race a lot more difficult, and hopefully minimize the drafting problems that plague this Clearwater site.

Now with winter almost upon us, it is time to re energize for next year. My next big events are the Boston marathon in April 2011 and Ironman Austria in July 2011. It's going to be another exciting year for sure!

Clearwater Race Report....coming soon!

2010-11-21T21:42:00.000-05:00

With trying to catch up on work, and the never ending things to do on the weekend, I can't seem to get this Clearwater race report finished. I've got it 30% done, so I hope to find some free time this week (maybe even at lunch at work) :) and get this wrapped up on on the blog.

In summary though, it was an amazing experience, despite some of the problems I had on the bike with those darn officials!

Check back soon!

Disc Wheel Graphic

2010-11-04T10:56:00.000-04:00

As I previously mentioned, I picked up a used Renn 575 disc wheel pretty cheap. Because of that, I thought I'd jazz up the rather boring all black disc with some graphics to match my bike. Here's the final product. It should be on the road heading to Clearwater early next week. Rather than trucking it around through airports, I am planning on using a bike transport service. Really, I had no option, as my whole family is going down there, so I'm pretty sure the four of us, luggage and a bike box wouldn't fit in anything other than a Suburban....or a pick-up truck!

2 weeks till Clearwater

2010-11-01T22:47:00.000-04:00

I must say that it has been a lot harder to get the rides in this fall, compared to last. Last October I think I had 12 or 13 rides to work, plus about 4 or 5 in November. With the cold temperatures and strong winds, I've elected to sit on my trainer more than ride outside. That's not such a bad thing when I look back on it though. A 90 minute session on the trainer is like a 2 hour ride outside. This past weekend, I did a Spinerval session in my garage. I think it was #14 or something. A 90 minute time trial interval session. I was dripping with sweat in the end, but it felt great. No fan, just the cooler outdoor temps to keep me from being a total soggy mess.

I've had some very nice runs leading up to my Clearwater race as well. Last weekend, I did an official half marathon run (21.1K) in heavy trainers (Saucony Triumph 6's), my Nathan Speed belt, and on a somewhat hilly and windy course in 1:28:04. As that turns out, that is the fastest half marathon time I have ever done (even in a race). I'm sure I am at a point now where I could go sub 1:25 with the right race week preparation and shoes. So my Clearwater half marathon time of 1:30 seems to be realistic. I hear it is hot there now, so it would be good if the temps cooled down a bit.

I also just picked up a disc wheel for my bike. It is a Renn 575, that was quite affordable. Because of that, I elected to get some custom graphics for it. It's getting done now and should be finished tomorrow. Here is a sneak peak of the design. When it's finished, I'll get a pic up with it on my bike.

The swimming is coming along well too. I'm happy with some of my times in workouts, so I really hope that can translate into a good time in the race. I'm going to throw it out there and say I want to do about 31-32 minutes for the 1.9K in Clearwater. This will really depend on the conditions in the race and if I can find some nice quick feet.

Only a few more "quick" workouts before I start to wind it down. We (the whole family) will be flying out of Buffalo next Wednesday. I'm excited, and can't wait to get there. It's starting to get awfully cold up here in Canada!!

Clearwater Training Update

2010-10-13T20:11:00.003-04:00

Well, it is definitely not summer anymore. I can tell this by how many layers I need to put on in the morning to bike to work. Seriously, booties, pants, multiple shirts, arm warmers, ear warmers, gloves....it takes a good 5 extra minutes nowadays just to get out the door.

A week ago, I had to travel to Guernsey in the English Channel for a week for work, so that was a full week with no biking. The good thing was that they at least had a 17 meter pool in the hotel, and lot's of hills to run on outside. I think I did a total of 4 swims (about 2K total each time) and 4 runs ranging from 8K to 14K. The 14K run was pretty cool. I ran to the top of a large hill that snaked it's way down to the coast. The elevation at the top of the hill was about 95m and at the bottom it was about 8m. I did 2 hill repeats of this, which were pretty tough. The only other hill as steep as this I have ever run up before is in Bermuda (Southampton Princess Hotel hill).

Once back from Guernsey, I continued on with my riding to work and back (59K round trip). On average, I have been doing this 3x week. In addition, I have been doing my Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning swim training in New Hamburg. For anyone swimming on their own and in need of swim workouts, definitely check out www.swimplan.com. This used to be a free site, but they have recently upgraded it, and made it better. Now they are asking you to pay $9.95 per year for pretty much unlimited swim plans. I use this all the time and love having to not come up with workout to do. I can get a new workout every day. Most of their workouts focus on shorter interval sets (50s, 100s or 200s), but they do throw in longer core workouts once an a while. I often just do some time trials at least once a month to see where I am at endurance wise.

This past weekend, I did my longest bike ride since the Muskoka 70.3 race. I rode 94K. Around 45K into a headwind where I could barely average 30kph and then with a tailwind, where I rode between 45-50kph. The next day, I did a 20.5K run with my son Holden, who biked while I ran.

I'm also trying to stick with my mid week running where I would do a tempo type of run Tuesday and an interval set Thursday. This weekend, I'm planning on doing a 25K run, which will be my last long run prior to Clearwater on November 13. I've definitely been focusing more on my running since the Muskoka race, as that is where I felt like I performed the worst. The bike is dead flat in Clearwater, so I'm not too worried about it. I really want to have a strong run off the bike, so that is what I have been focusing on. If I could only run as strong as Macca off the bike, I'd be in business!!! Wow, what a great race in Kona this past weekend. I'm pumped to get to Clearwater to be part of that World Championship atmosphere!

Lakeside Sprint Triathlon - September 18 2010

2010-09-20T21:38:00.003-04:00

Race Details:
750m swim
20K Bike (actually only 17K)
5K Run

This race wasn't terribly important to me, especially coming off the Muskoka 70.3 the weekend before, but it is the closest triathlon to my house, so I consider it my "home" race. Normally, if an event has multiple days of racing, I will always take on the longer race, but in this case, the KOS races were on Saturday, so I decided to do the sprint, rather than the Olympic on Sunday so that my oldest son Holden could race too on the same day.

It was a nice 9:30am start time, so I didn't leave my place until 8am, which is a pleasant change.   We arrived at the race site a little past 8:30, which is a little late for my liking, but better on the family, as it meant a little less standing around.   By the time I got all my stuff picked up and into transition, my age group spot was very full.   I decided to take a much better and less crowded spot closer to the bike exit.   It was a great decision.   I really have no idea why they jam all the athletes into certain bike racks when others remain almost empty.   I almost always check that out before a race.   Closest to the bike exit is by far the best spot for your bike.   You get more time to take your wetsuit off while running and less time running with your bike.   It seems like at Lakeside, they always are wanting to place my age group (most of the time, the biggest in any race), right by the swim entrance which is terrible, as you hardly have any time to get the wetsuit off by the time you come out of the water.   Anyway, my new spot was sweet, end of story!

I did a quick run warm-up, got my wetsuit on and headed over to the lake for a swim warm-up.   The water was colder than normal at Lakeside, but still very comfortable in the wetsuit.   I found the water very hard to see in though, which isn't normally the case out there.

I was in the first wave, and before I knew it, we were off.   I tried to go out pretty fast for the first couple hundred meters, but I still found myself in a bit of a pack.   There was a little contact, but nothing too much.   Unfortunately going to the first buoy, I found myself going too far to the left, and almost a bit off track.   It was a very sharp left turn at the buoy, so my line to that one was not good.   I should have stayed more right.   Going into the second part of the swim course, I tried to find some feet to follow, and did so for a bit, but it didn't take long to lose those.   A good draft wasn't going to happen in this race today for some reason.   Going around the 2nd buoy, I tried to focus on just taking a good line back to the beach.   About 75 meters from the beach or so, the water got really shallow.   It was tough to get through this, as it wasn't really deep enough to swim, and trying to run through it wasn't easy either.   I did a few dolphin dives to get closer, but eventually had to just walk/jog the rest of the way out.   A quick look at my watch while I was on my way out showed around 12:45 or so.   Not bad, but not great.   Total swim time to the mat was 13:02, good for 21st overall at a 1:45 pace.

Once in transition, I started getting my wetsuit off, and by the time I got to my bike, all I had to do was get it off my feet. Sometimes this goes well, but today it didn't. I had trouble getting it off of my right leg, and with the dizziness from the swim, I was having a lot of trouble. Eventually, I got it, but it cost me about 20 seconds in transition.

Onto the bike, I was ready to hit it with all I got. The legs were still a bit heavy from Muskoka, but not too bad. I was steadily passing people and at about the 7.5K mark, I saw the leader, Derek Quick coming back. I was shocked. There is no way he could be a full 5K ahead of me, as I thought the turn-around was going to be at 10K (for the 20K sprint bike). I was blown away, but as I looked ahead, I could see the turn around not that far up the road. I immediately knew this course was going to be really short. Sure enough, I hit the turn around point at about 8.5K. The sign said 10K, but my Garmin said 8.5....way off! At the turn around, I had moved into 4th place. About 500 meters or so after the turn, I moved into 3rd and could see 2nd not too far up the road. I tried and tried, but he kept his distance from me, and I was likely about 30 seconds back going into T2. Overall, I had the fastest bike split in the race at about 37.6 kph. I did the modified 17.5K course in 27:57. The only person to go under 28 minutes.

I had a good T2, but not good enough to make up for all the time lost in T1. Once we got out onto the road, I was likely about 150 meters behind 2nd place. I felt like I made up a bit of ground in the first 2.5K to the turn-around and honestly thought I might be able to catch the guy in 2nd place. Unfortunately, after the turn around, he decided to turn it on. He definitely had a better final 2.5K than me, as I think he increased his lead by 10 or 15 seconds in that last half, despite the fact that I felt the last few K went really well. I definitely felt like I could have kept going on a bit longer. I did the 5K (which I also think might have been a bit long) in 20:45, good for 3rd overall on the run.

I finished the race 3rd overall in a total time of 1:03:19, only 32 seconds behind 2nd place. Had I not messed up T1 and if the bike was the full 20K...you never know, I might have ended up in 2nd overall. 3rd overall is the best finish I have ever had in a triathlon, and the first time I have ever won my age group. Not a bad day I guess!

Overall Race Awards


Men and Women 35 - 39 Age Group Award

As I said earlier, the KOS races were also taking place in the afternoon. My oldest son Holden was competing in the kids 6-7 age group. This was his 3rd triathlon. He did the same race here in Lakeside last summer, and also did the TriGator race in Elmira in June of this year. I must say, he might have a future in this sport. In June, he won his age group at the Tri Gator by over a minute over 2nd place..

http://rrresults.com/results/TriGator2010-6to7.htm

And he had another good showing in this race. He had a few slip-ups in both T1 and T2, but still managed to pull out the victory once again, giving him a 2 for 2 record in 2010. Pretty good, given he is still only 6 years old too!!

http://www.chiptimeresults.com/resultsreader.php?y=2010&r=lakesideKOS6-7.htm

Pics from 2010 Muskoka 70.3

2010-09-16T21:16:00.001-04:00

Here are some shots from the 2010 Muskoka 70.3 held in Huntsville

Local News Coverage of the race

2010 Muskoka 70.3 Race Report

2010-09-13T22:43:00.002-04:00

First of all, let's get one thing straight. This race should be called the Muskoka 72.8, since the bike course is actually 94K instead of the usual 90.   As a result, you certainly get your money's worth doing this race.

So essentially, my whole summer was geared up towards doing this race.   I had several shorter tri's and a few longer distance ones, which all worked well as training for this race.

So let's get into it shall we?

The days leading up to this event were a bit nerving, as a lot of people (myself included) spent a fair bit of time watching the weather reports. The weather trend was very cool mornings and they were calling for light rain most of the day. Rain on this bike course can be treacherous, due to the tight turns and hilly course. In 2008 when I did this event, it rained most of the day, but at least it was warm. 10 or 11 degrees and rain was not going to be fun.

In previous years, I went up with my family on Friday and attended the athlete banquet which was always very good. A great way to carbo load for the race. This year, the family stayed at home (hockey try-outs and questionable weather) and I came up with another athlete I know from New Dundee, Greg Hallman (who by the way did awesome in his first ever half iron distance event - congrats Greg!!). I picked Greg up at home at 6am, and we made great time getting to Muskoka just before 10am with a couple of quick coffee and restroom stops.

We were staying at Hidden Valley, which is nice and close to Dearhurst, and it allows us to keep our vehicle with us (as opposed to the airport parking for Dearhurst guests). Upon arriving, we checked in (YES!! our room was ready at 10am!), so we put our bags into the room and then proceeded to walk our bikes to the bike check-in at Dearhurst parking lot. From there, it was onto registration, a tour of the race expo, a quick walk around the swim start and exit, and then we headed to the Power Bar Pro Panel question and answer session that they put on. Like last year, many of the top pro's were there to answer questions, including 2x Kona champ Craig Alexander and last years Kona runner up, Mirinda Carfrae (also both winners of this race last year). Here's a shot of Craig and Mirinda from my less than stellar Blackberry camera

I asked a question to either Craig or Mirinda to see if either of them ever ran any pure "marathon" running races as part of their training program. Craig answered by saying that it's "too much work". This coming from a guy who can run a 2:45 marathon in Kona and a 1:12 half in Muskoka.

After that, Greg and I headed back to Hidden Valley to chill out a bit before heading into town for dinner. East Side Mario's has always been my restaurant of choice for out of town races. I always go there when doing a tri in Huntsville and I ate there the night before my 3:01 Ottawa marathon in May, so I didn't want to break tradition now. Besides, the all you can eat salad and bread sits well with me!

5:20am Sunday morning, alarm goes off, and I am happy to have woken up after a pretty solid night's sleep. I quickly ate some oatmeal and a whole wheat wrap with peanut butter and a banana rolled up inside. After a bit of coffee, my 7 systems supplements and some packing up, we were out of HV by 6:15 and walking in the dark over to Deerhurst. Saturday was a great day weather wise, and likely everyone wished we had that weather for Sunday. As it turns out, most of the rain passed by overnight, and we were greeted race morning with overcast skies and what seemed like a comfortable 13 or 14 degrees. It didn't really feel cold at all. It was almost "ideal" racing conditions...almost!

We arrive in transition and I quickly got to work taking all of the wet bags off my bike and then getting everything set up. After an easy run, to get warmed up, I started putting on my wetsuit for the long walk to the swim start. Once there, I did a good warm-up, and was ready for this race to get started. I felt calm and comfortable, and before we knew it, the Canadian national anthem ended, and the pro's were off and running (actually swimming....you know what I mean!). I was in wave 2, which was a good thing, as that would mean little traffic to negotiate in the middle parts of the swim. 4 minutes later, and the horn went off, and it was game on!

1.9K Swim

I don't know if it was me, or what, but I thought the swim course was slightly different than the prior two years. The course is normally a perfect rectangle, but this year, it seemed like we had to take a bit of a left hand turn at the first buoy, right beside a bunch of boats. This made for a bit of congestion in the swim, likely the most I have ever experienced in this race. I got a bit knocked around, hit, pushed and slapped, but nothing I haven't experienced before. I tried to just find some open space, and after a few minutes I was pretty much OK and swimming free and clear. After the right turn at the 2nd buoy, I was more or less trying to just hold a nice steady pace and try to find some feet to draft off of as much as I could. I did a bit of drafting here and there, but likely swam most of the race on my own. Nothing else was too memorable about this part, and 34 minutes later, I exited the water. Ideally, I was hoping to go 33 minutes in the swim, but 34 was definitely alright, and a 4 minute improvement over last year. After the swim exit, I took advantage of the wetsuit strippers which is definitely a good idea, and also decided to slip on a pair of runners for the 300m UPHILL run to the transition zone. Once in T1, I quickly got my helmet and clear sunglasses on and was off on the bike. It was warm enough that gloves and arm warmers or an extra shirt was not required (for me at least).

94K Bike

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/48794243

With the 1.9K swim and 300m uphill run to transition, my heart rate was high right off the bat. The first 20K of the bike course is definitely not easy. A lot of steep rolling hills to keep that heart rate pumping. At this stage, I was passing a lot of people from my wave, as I was only 28th in my AG on the swim. This was motivating, and kept me pushing hard. Once we got on the main roads of Hwy 35, it was time to push the pace. The roads were freshly paved, overcast, no wind and cool. Perfect biking weather. I was making good time here and the average speed kept going up.

My nutrition plan on the bike was as follows:

- Start off with a normal concentrate (260 calories) of Infinite in my aero drink bottle;

- Carry a double concentrate (520 calories) of Infinite in a bottle on my frame;

- After the aero drink is empty, put the 2x concentrate bottle in my aero drink bottle and pick up 1 water at each aid station to last the rest of the race;

- I also grabbed one gel at each aid station to give me that little extra bit of calories;

This plan worked well and I had no issues with it at all.

The middle 35 or 40K of the bike course went by really fast. I found myself going back and forth with two other athletes, which kept things interesting. After the 2nd aid station down in Baysville, things started to get tougher. Firstly, it started to rain. Not too heavy, but enough to get the roads wet and slippery in the most difficult and technical part of the course. At this point, I found myself all alone. A few of the guys I was riding with got ahead of me and joined up with another small pack. For 20 or 25K, I struggled to catch back up with them, as I really wanted to be with a group, rather than all by myself. I'd say with 15K to go, I got passed by Chris Van Kooten who started in a wave (or two or three) behind me. For some reason after he passed me, it helped pull me along (no drafting of course) and we caught up to the pack of guys I was trying to catch for the last half hour. Chris carried on, and left us all, but I was now back with the group of other riders, which really helped. To my surprise, one of the riders in this pack was Jeff Beech, a former pro triathlete from Waterloo, where I am from (more or less anyway). That was super motivating, as he is in my AG. If you would have said I would be going into T2 with Jeff Beech at the beginning of the race, I would have said you were crazy. That being said, we all rode together for the final 5K of the ride and as we approached T2, I had a nice smooth dismount, and I actually beat him over the dismount line, and was likely in about 3rd place in my AG at this point, making up 25 spots over the 94K bike.

Into T2 though however, that would be the last I would see of Jeff. He is an awesome runner, and with his quick transition, he was gone. I took some extra time to put my Garmin watch on to track my pace, socks on my feet to avoid any blisters and then grab my Nathan Speed belt, for extra nutrition for the run. I think this added 15 or 20 seconds over Jeff's time, so by the time I got out to the road, he was already 100m ahead and gaining ground quickly!

21.1K Run

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/48794174

So although I didn't really know it at this point, I think I was in 4th place in my AG starting the run, as Jeff Beech took over 3rd in T2 and eventually would end up in 2nd. Right off the bat at the 1K marker, we had to climb a pretty decent hill on the run. I could totally feel my quads starting to tighten up, which made me nervous. I don't think it was nutrition, but purely the effort put out on the bike. I quickly took another salt pill, and hoped all would get better once we hit some of the "flatter" sections on Hwy 60. Once there, things seemed to get better and I was ticking along at a nice pace. I got passed by only a few runners, and I past a few, so things were staying pretty even. Starting at about the 8K mark, things got tough on the run. We had a few good climbs to get to 9K and this really took a lot out of me. On the bigger climb, I did a few short walking breaks of only a few seconds, but it did seem to help. I never really lost any ground on the athlete that was in front of me who just kept running. The turn-around point was at about 10.5K and after that, it was supposed to be a lot easier, as it was mostly downhill from there. As it turns out, I progressively felt worse as the run went on. The downhills were pounding the legs, and every type of incline was making me more and more fatigued. I figured after seeing some of the athletes coming back from the turn-around, I had a decent chance of getting on the podium if I can just keep the legs moving, so I was definitely motivated.

I was keeping the nutrition up by taking in a gel every 5K or so. In addition, I was taking in salt every 20-25 minutes. I never really had much more cramping like I did in the first K, just a lot of fatigue. The last 6K were quite tough, and I just had to keep telling myself to keep moving, as you've been doing so well up to this point. I got passed by another athlete at 17K, but that would be it for the rest of the race. Once we got back to the top of the hill on Canal road, it was a nice downhill to the 20K marker. The last K of the race has a pretty tough climb back to Dearhurst, but this is where the crowds were. Half-way up the hill, I just wanted to take a few quick walking steps to feel better, but the crowd wouldn't have it. They yelled for me to dig deep and fire up those quads as there was a runner about 30 meters behind me. This definitely got me going. Funny enough though, as I passed, I heard them yelling to that guy to dig in and go after me. They just wanted to see a battle, but I wasn't about to give them one. Since I had no idea if the guy behind me was in AG or not, I just had to give it all I had for the final 600 meters. So going as deep as I could, I rounded the transition zone and sprinted (all relative at this point) to the finish line to finish the run and the race with a new half iron PB of 4:56:26.

Shortly after finishing, it started to rain, and I immediately felt cold, so I grabbed my finishing shirt, hat, medal and about 5 cups of my favorite chocolate Powerbar Protein drink and headed inside for a much deserved massage.

After the wonderful massage and stretching, I grabbed some food and checked the first wave of results. YES!!!, I finished 4th in my AG which got me on the podium and a guaranteed spot for Clearwater, which was my main goal. Here are the final results for the day

Although I was one of the finalists in the 7 Systems improve more contest, I would have had to do 4:40 in this race to improve upon my previous years time of 5:01.   I knew all along that was not really an option, so my real goal was to podium and take a spot for the Foster Grant 70.3 World Championship in Clearwater, Florida in November.   Mission Accomplished!!   Sweet!

After wandering around and talking to some friends and watching some other athletes finish, I finally ran into Greg, who had just finished up some food himself.   We both got cleaned up and showered, just as they were starting to give away the Clearwater spots for those that automatically qualified (like ME!).   So I filled out the paperwork and got them the $325 USD (yah, steep I know!).   After that, they did the awards and we then took off.   It was almost 5pm by this time, and we had about a 4 hour drive to get home.

Special thanks goes out to my family of course.   Deanna who does an awesome job of looking after the kids when I'm out training or racing.   There is absolutely no way I'd be able to do what I do without her great support!

Thanks to all the guys that I swam with over the winter at WLU.   Kraemer, Keast, Hamilton et all.   You guys definitely made me a better swimmer by pushing me harder than I'd ever gone before.   Almost all of my 5 minute PB improvement was in the swim, and those 5 months at Laurier are a big part of that. I look forward to another good winter with you guys, as I get ready for Ironman Austria next July.

Thanks to Zach and the team at Ironheart Fitness for the hard rides this past winter on the Computrainers.   That set me up well for a great season of training and racing on the bike.   I was only 38 seconds off of having the #1 bike split in my AG!

http://www.ironheartfitness.ca/Home.html

Finally, thanks to Martin, Jasper and the crew at 7 Systems for hooking me up with their awesome 7 Systems product. Since using 7 systems, I haven't missed a podium spot yet in any race, and I've had some real good training (and recovery) days. I've stayed healthy and strong ever since I started taking 7 Systems.

So although Muskoka is done, I'm not.   I race this Saturday in the Lakeside Sprint where my oldest son Holden is also doing the 6-7 KOS race.    He's got a good shot at taking home that title, as he did a race in June and won by over a minute!

Till next time.

Train on...

State of TT bikes

2010-09-01T16:35:00.000-04:00

Can you imagine what people would have thought if they saw a bike like this back in the 1980's? Probably the same thing we think of when we see bikes from the 1980's.....WTF??

Very cool bike!!

August 2010 - 7 Systems Endurance Supplements Update

2010-08-31T17:49:00.001-04:00

Only two more weeks to the 2010 Muskoka 70.3, my goal race for the 7 Systems contest I am in.   I think I am on track and haven't had any downtime in my training....thanks to using 7 Systems Endurance supplements :)

My only race in August was the Toronto Island Sprint Triathlon, which you can read about in my blog.   I'd say it was a success, despite having a poor swim in my opinion.

In the 3 other weekends available for training this month, I did the following:

August 8th - Biked 114K to a family cottage in Bayfield and followed that up with a 10K run.   The ride was almost entirely into a headwind or crosswind, so that was tough.   In addition, it was super humid and I got rained upon twice. The 10K run was not fast!

August 22nd - Biked an 83K loop around New Hamburg and followed that up with two loops of 8K around town for a total of 16K worth of running.   Again, VERY humid day.   I took all the hydration I could on the ride (72oz of Infinite), and consumed another 48 oz running as I filled up both my Nathan Speed Belt 2 bottles after the first loop.   When it was all said and done, I lost 6 lbs all while consuming 120 oz of fluid.   Glad I wasn't doing an Ironman, as I'm sure I would have bonked at some point!   I just find it hard to drink much more than I did!

August 28th/29th - I had planned on another long ride/run on Sunday, but after getting a quick training email from Jasper Blake (a bit of a benefit from being in this contest), I decided to mix it up this weekend.   So on the Saturday, I thought I'd see how quick I could just run 15K.   So, in the middle of the day in hot and humid weather again, I did a 15K run in 1:01:45. This was a pretty hilly run in windy conditions, so I was pleased with the effort.   Garmin data below on this one.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/46664511

On the Sunday, I decided to do the long(ish) ride but only follow that up with a short 5K run.   The ride was 72K and the run 5K, which I did at a decent enough pace of 4:10/km.....did I mention how humid it was again!!

In addition to the weekend stuff, I've still be getting to the New Hamburg pool 3x week, biking to work (58K round trip) 3x week and doing my Tuesday tempo run (~6K - 9K), and Thursday Intervals (usually 5 x 800m w 200m recovery).   If it works out, I'll hit the gym for some weights/stretching/hot tub once or twice too!

This routine is similar to last year's effort where I did 5:01 at the 2009 Muskoka 70.3, but this year, I've definitely stepped the swimming up a bit more and have done more mid week running.   I actually have a spreadsheet that has tracked every run I've done since 2004.   I'd share it with you, but it's huge!   Here are some highlights of it though.

Even from 2009 to 2010, I've made some good improvements. Due to more speed work, my average run speed has dropped 5 seconds per K. This includes all the long runs training for the Around the Bay 30K and Ottawa Marathon this year. In addition, I am on pace for about 150 runs in 2010, which is 20 more than last year. Each year I am seeing improvements in training and racing (both running and triathlon) so this in encouraging. At 37, I have to wonder how much more improvements are left.

I hope the final two weeks prior to Muskoka go well and that I can have a good race once again. Beating Andrina's performance of a 9% improvement in her goal race for the 7 Systems contest is going to be next to impossible, but hey, I'll do my best, and I hope to have fun doing it!

Toronto Island Triathlon - August 15 2010

2010-08-16T22:17:00.000-04:00

Race Details:
750m swim
30K Bike
7.5K Run

The day started off very early, as I decided to drive down to Toronto from New Hamburg, rather than pay $150 for a hotel room.   So after the alarm went off at 4:45am, I quickly grabbed a bite to eat, took my 7Systems supplements and hopped in the truck for the trip down the 401 to Toronto.   At 6am on a Sunday morning, the traffic was light, and I made it down to the ferry terminal by 6:45...plenty of time to catch the 7am ferry over to Centre Island.

Once over on the island, it was a good 3/4 km walk/ride over to the transition zone.   By this time, I had to go to the bathroom pretty bad, so I quickly put my bike and bag in transition and took my place in line for the port-o-potties.    From there, it was over to get my chip, body marking and tee-shirt (note to self - you are not a medium, so get a large shirt next time!   Deanna will be using this race shirt, not me).   After getting all my stuff, it was time to get organized in transition and get on the bike for a quick ride.   I rode the first 2-3K of the bike course to get a feel for what the roads would be like, as this is not your typical bike course.   It was a 3 loop 10K course on closed, but relatively narrow roads with ALOT of other riders and pedestrians.   Once back from the bike, I did a quick run.   I normally run a bit longer, but this morning is was ridiculously humid out, so just moving around was causing me to sweat!   Back from the run, it was pretty much time to head down to the lake to listen to the race briefing and get a bit of a warm-up swim in.    Back to that humidity....As most triathletes will know, getting a wetsuit on can be difficult at times.   Throw in a sweaty body and 95% humidity, it makes it almost impossible (at least it was to me).   I got my legs in, but couldn't get much else on, so I headed down to the lake to get the rest of it on in the water.   I must say, this was the hardest experience I have ever had getting into a wetsuit.   Eventually it went on, and I did a bit of warming up until our wave started.

Lake Ontario was pretty choppy race morning, which isn't something I'm used to. At 8:24am, our wave went off, and things started off ok (for a while). I quickly found myself getting unusually tired, due to the waves. I'd go to take a stroke and there would be no water, or try to breathe, and get a wave right in my face. It also made sighting the buoys a lot harder. I found myself having to stop, look around and regroup a few times, something I haven't really had to do this year yet. By the time I got to shore, my watch had said about 12:45. So despite what I felt was a "horrible" swim, I was really only about 20 seconds longer than some of my more recent 750m time trials in the pool, where I was averaging about 1:40-1:43/100. In this race, I just couldn't find anyone to draft off of, which makes a big difference. So despite not liking to see my average time of 1:55/100 for the swim, it really wasn't too bad. The long run to transition is what makes the average time not what I'm used to seeing.   Despite this, I still need to make improvements in this discipline.   Overall, 35th out of 424 in the swim.

After the 300m or so run back to transition, it was onto the bike. As I mentioned, this is a 3 loop 10K course. The first lap went well, and I likely had about a 38kph average going, and I was flying past everyone. Onto the 2nd lap, there were more riders out on the course. The road for the most part had about 3 meter lanes (on each side), but there were sections that were narrower. My average speed just kept going up each lap, as it was motivating to be passing so many people, and passing them so quickly. I'd say that the average speed of most riders was around 30kph or less, and I was easily doing 40kph in the straight-aways. Despite the congested course, I never really had any 'incidents' on the bike (except for missing one large pylon by a few inches). The bike course was pretty sheltered from any wind, so that also helped get the speeds up. On the far end of the course, the turn-around is like a cul-de-sac, so you could keep the speed up while turning around. The turn-around by transition was a complete 180 turn, so it forced everyone to slow right down. Take that away, and the speeds would have been even faster!! By the time it was done, I think the bike course was slightly short (say 29.5K instead of 30K), as my garmin had me at about 39.5kph, but the race results showed me in 4th overall with an average speed of 40.4kph. Anyway you look at it, it was a good ride!

After getting off the bike, I was completely soaked with sweat. I don't think I have ever been that sweaty after a bike ride in my life. Luckily, the sun still hadn't come out, but it was crazy humid. It was like I just walked out of the lake! A relatively quick transition and it was out onto the run course. This was a two loop 3.75K course. It had a little bit of everything, including running on grass, pavement and sand. I was feeling pretty good, despite the humidity, and was averaging a little over 4 minute K's. I can't really think of anything too memorable about the run course, other than the fact that I didn't like completing the first lap, and having to do the whole thing over again. I missed a few kilometer markers for checking my laps, but I do think I held a pretty consistent pace throughout, and when the finish line finally arrived, I was happy to see it.

Checking the results afterwards, I was surprised to see how fast so many other people were at this race...and a lot faster. I was disappointed to see my average for the run at 4:13/km. I knew I ran faster than that and confirmed it using the gmaps pedometer, since I wasn't using my garmin for this race. I think the run course was definitely long at about 7.8K, rather than 7.5K, which would still keep me at a little over 4 minute kms. This link is somebody else's Garmin data for the same run course, and it shows 7.8K.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/44661719

In the end, I finished 14th overall in the run, 8th overall in the race out of 424, and 3rd in my AG as 1st and 2nd overall in the race were also in my AG :(

Patryk Biegalski, in my AG photo above, was the overall race winner in a time of 1:29:33 (2:25 faster than me), so I ran some numbers compared to him. He put 1:36 into me on the swim and only 49 seconds from T1 to the end of the race. So clearly, if I could have stayed close to him in the water, it would have been a pretty interesting finish. I certainly think if I had him in my sights on the run, I might have been able to push a little bit harder. Always something to work on I guess!

July 2010 Race Reports

2010-07-31T13:53:00.000-04:00

A few months ago I was selected as a finalist in a contest put on by 7 Systems.   The contest is to find out which athlete can "Do More".   For more information on what it is all about, check out...

http://www.7systems.ca/?page_id=1746

My goal race is the 2010 Muskoka 70.3 in September.   This will be the third time doing this race for me, as I've done it every year since the inaugural race in September 2008.   Last year I did well and finished in 5:01, so I'm hoping to better that time this year and actually finish under 4:50.

Throughout July, I've done a couple of triathlons and a number of training sessions that I hope will get me closer to reaching my goal.

Belwood Triathlon - July 18, 2010

This race took place at the Belwood Conservation area. It was a 1K swim, 30K bike and 7K run.   I decided to start in the elite age group wave (wave 1) as I thought I had a good chance of getting on the podium in my age group (M35-39). This was a good decision, as it positioned me with the other top contenders in my AG. The race started and after a bit of jostling, I got into a rhythm and just started to control my breathing and find some good lines. About half way through, I got on the heels of another athlete that was going at a good pace. This was likely the first time in ANY race that I successfully 'drafted' anyone in a race. It definitely seemed to help, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out after I exited the water that it was someone in my AG. We exited the swim together and ran up to transition and got on our bikes with almost identical times.    Once out on the bike, it was a bit of back and forth as we sped through the first 10K of the bike course. It was mostly flat for the first 10K and with a slight tail/cross wind, our averages were likely above 40kph. In the second half of the bike, we hit some hills and headwinds which slowed the pace. I think by the time I got back to T2, my average on the bike was 38kph. My garmin had the bike course a bit longer than 30K, but nothing major. So after an identical swim and very similar bike time, the two of us came into T2 together. We were the first two bikes back in transition, so I thought the run was actually going to decide who was going to get first place in our AG. My T2 was slightly quicker, so I was the first one out on the run course. As we approached the first turn-around, I was actually thinking that there is a chance I could win my AG, which has never happened before. This dream was quickly smashed, as I saw another athlete that I knew was in my AG, coming towards me after the first turn-around.    As it turns out, he had to put his bike in the overflow rack, as he arrived late to the race. I knew there wasn't much chance of catching him, so I just wanted to hang on to 2nd now.    After I did the first turn, I noticed I had about a 20 second lead or so over the guy in 3rd. I just kept running strong and finished well and held onto my 2nd place AG finish.    Overall in the race, I finished 15th out of 399 athletes, so I was pleased.

Muskoka Long Course Triathlon - July 25, 2010

Huntsville, Ontario is the perfect site for this long standing race. It is a 2K swim, 55K bike and 13K run. The run course was completely changed this year. Traditionally, it is a 15K run that takes runners on an out and back course through and then west of Huntsville. The new run course was a lot more "spectator friendly", but not "athlete friendly". I'll get to that in a moment. Unlike last weekend, I decided to just start in my normal age group wave (2nd one), rather than in the elite age group. My reasoning for this is because this race is usually more competitive, and I have never really even came close to placing in my AG in the previous two times I have done it.

So at 8:05, we were off. There didn't seem to be too many people in our wave, and I found the swim start very calm. No grabbing, kicking, etc. going on. There was sufficient room to just "swim" rather than "survive". I really wanted to have a better "longer" swim at this race, so I was trying find a mix between swimming hard and swimming comfortably. About half way through, I found myself totally swimming alone. There weren't many blue caps (wave 2) around, and I was starting to catch up to some of the slower wave 1 swimmers. There was plenty of space, but I couldn't seem to find anyone to draft off of, so I just kept going. I was feeling good at this point and was optimistic I would have a new swim PB at this race. The final 750m or so of the swim goes down a river (slightly against a current I think), and there are a few turns. I felt like I took good lines, and came out of the water in about 35 minutes. By the time I got to the T1 mat, I was just under 36 minutes, which is about 4 minutes faster than the previous two races I did here. So all in all, a decent swim, but ideally, I would have liked to have been a minute or two faster. Next year maybe!

Since the run course is a bit longer, and I wanted to be sure of my pacing, I decided to put on my Garmin Forerunner for the ride and run. This likely added 10 seconds to T1, but in the end, that didn't matter. Onto the bike, things were feeling good. When out on bike rides in training, I never, and mean never get my HR as high as I do when I start a ride after a swim. I often wonder why I can usually never bike as fast in training as I do in a race, and I think the swim before is one of the reasons why. My HR was in the 150's and 160's as I started the ride, and usually on my training rides or biking to work, I rarely have an avg. HR above 130. With the swim beforehand, and the race adrenaline kicking in, I am likely able to push harder on the bike than I do in training. I've learned that the high HR is nothing to get alarmed at, as it eventually goes down. This can be seen in my garmin data below:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/42469350

Funny enough, the same athlete that I was back and forth with in Belwood was also in this race, and we found ourselves once again, biking close to each other in this race. I like it when there are a few people around at your same level that you can use to feed off of and push the pace. There was actually three of us that were together for about 30K of the bike. With about 15K left or so, I managed to pull away from the other two and got back to T2 feeling tired, but ok. This was good, as I was completely out of fluid and saltstick capsules.

Onto the run, and as I mentioned, the course was 2K shorter than previous years, but definitely harder. It was a 2 loop course that had 4 turn-arounds, so you always got to see where you stood in regards to your competition. Here's my garmin data for this portion of the race:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/42469553

As I said earlier, it was certainly more spectator friendly, but there were also lot's of hills. The most challenging one was on the 4th out and back section, where we had to go behind the arena on a new road built for the G8 summit that took place earlier in the summer. You know it's a hard course when I can pass Sean Bechtal. He was completing his 2nd and final lap (due to his awesome swim and bike) while I was on my first. I was quite surprised to actually go past him on the 4th out and back section. Based on the number of bikes that were in transition on my rack when I came back into T2, I thought I definitely had a spot on the podium if I kept up the pace. It was tough, but in the end, that finish line was very nice to see. As I sprinted up to it, my 6 year old son joined in, and was right behind me!

In the end, I got 4th in my AG (out of 44) and 27th overall in the race out of 350 or so. This is the best I've ever done at this race, but I also think the numbers were down due to the timing (prime vacation time??). There are usually over 600 athletes in this race, and back when it was the chase, it was close to 1,000. The first time I did it, Craig Alexander won it.

So overall, I was pleased, and given my family and I were now off for a week's vacation at the Delawana Inn, rather than spending the next 4 hours driving home, I was in good spirits!

Introduction and first update

2010-07-31T09:15:00.000-04:00

So this is my first blog posting....ever! I think it makes sense to do a quick introduction of who I am. I'm a father of two very active little boys, Holden (6) and Tate (2) and live in New Hamburg, Ontario. I've been married to my awesome and supporting wife Deanna for almost 13 years now.

I did my first triathlon back in 2006 in Sherkston Shores. It was a sprint race which was part of the Subaru series in Ontario. In 2007, I stepped up and decided to get the season pass for the Subaru series and did all of the races except the Peterborough half. For the past few years, I've usually done about 7 or 8 races per year mixing it up between the Subaru series and the Multisport Canada series. I've slowly progressed each year, doing a little better as the years go by. When it's not "triathlon season" I do try to stay active with some road and trail running. A current list of all my races where Sportstats was the official timer can be seen in the link below.

http://www.sportstats.ca/find-an-athlete-find-a-race-search.php?lang=eng&first=luke&last=ehgoetz&city=&month=&year=&race=

I've done a number of races (both triathlon and running) where Chiptime was the official timer. This includes all the Multisport races and also a number of road races as part of the Run Waterloo running series. In the fall of 2009, I also did the 25K trail race, Run for the Toad, where I had a good race and finished 18th or so out of 800 plus runners.

For the past two seasons, I've done the Muskoka 70.3 up in Huntsville, Ontario. In 2009, I actually finished 5th in my AG out of 185 athletes.

The rest of my blogs will attempt to document my training and racing adventures. I will try to include as many race reports and pictures as I can. I hope you enjoy following along...