Ingonish Tri - 2013

Well it had to happen I guess, I couldn't stay away from the swim forever. As much as I love doing duathlons, it is kind of fun to occasionally do a triathlon as well. So I packed up the dogs with my wife and off to Ingonish we went.

Now this year I wasn't really well trained up on swimming. I had started to make some real progress early in the winter, but then my real focus switched to running again and my swimming went into status mode. Still I managed to get a few open water swims in the weeks prior to the race to make sure I was ready.

Race day saw the water temp quite nice in the lake at Ingonish beach. Likely 18 or 19 C. Perfect for a wetsuit swim. It was surprisingly windy though, for the morning, which lead to a really choppy surface.

I knew my swim would be decent but slow and I really decided to take my time getting in and then building up to my race tempo, rather then what I did the previous year where I went out fast and then over cooked myself.

I quickly found my grove and had what was for me, a comfortable and good swim. It certainly didn't show up in my overall time, though when looking at the overall stats for everyone, the swims were slightly slower than last year. So either the chop made a difference, or the course was slightly longer. Either way I came out of the water in 24th overall with a time of 16:22. Yup not fast but hey, I had fun.

Off to T1 with a long 500m run on crusher dust. Luckily one's feet are slightly numb so it doesn't feel so bad.

A quick change out of my wetsuit and onto the bike I went. Now the ride is listed officially as 20km, it is 23km. I started to pass people fairly quickly until about 6 km in when I came upon Mark Campbell stranded on the side of the road. He yelled for an allen key and I couldn't let him stay stranded any longer so I stopped. I knew I wasn't going to win and I might as well help a friend. Sadly my allen keys were not the right ones for him. So quickly back onto the bike I went, losing maybe 20 seconds. Well worth it for my ability to sleep well at night.

The ride is rollers until you hit a huge downhill where I hit 63km/hr and ran out of gears. Then a quick turn at the bottom and onto a climb. By this point I had passed my way from 24th to 8th overall and rolled into T2 having set the 5th fastest bike split of the day (31.4km/hr officially, 35 km/hr on my computer).

As I set out on the run, my hip started to hurt again (I am so glad to have a rest period coming up to get this injury rested up), but I just let my feet find their rhythm and do what they trained to do.

I quickly found 7th place and passed him bringing myself up to 7th overall (though truthfully I had no idea of my placing at this point). Also my Garmin decided to not work, thanks Garmin. So it was all gut feeling now. So I pushed as much as I thought I needed to to stay ahead of 8th place.

I ended up running by the leaders as they were headed back from the turn around point, but I was close to 1/2 a kilometer behind and my hip and legs were not feeling it this day. A quick splash of water to drink and I was headed to the finish line.

I picked up a bit of steam in the last 400 meters and had a good strong finish.

In the end I managed a 6th fastest run in 21 minutes, which included T2 and was probably my fastest run ever at Ingonish. I had hoped for more, but today wasn't that kind of day. I wish the Garmin worked so I could tell my stand alone run but oh well.

Not my best sprint triathlon ever, but the results were decent with a 7th place overall and 1st in my Age group for an overall time of 1:21:18.

And as I said, now is the time for resting, though that doesn't mean not training. Just a hold on races for the next while to get back to full health.