Shubie Dooby Triathlon Sept 2016

Well the final triathlon of the season has come and gone. My third standard distance of the year and I had some high hopes for this one. My swimming had come along, well swimmingly, and the pieces were all in place.

The morning of the race was drizzly and humid, not really a great start, but nothing drastic enough to make changes in my prep.  Sign in, bike racking and then pre race swim all went well.

Race briefing warned us of a few race specifics and soon we were lined up and ready to take off. The water was warm, but it was wetsuit legal and the chop was minimal on the lake.

I went straight into the water and started swimming fairly well. I was not with the fastest swimmers but wasn't too far behind so that felt about right. And that is where "about right" stopped happening in the swim. Sigh.

About 250m in or so I swallowed a big mouthful of water and had to regain my breathing, which wasn't happening. I think the water swallowing coupled with what may have been too fast of a start for me lead to some hyper ventilation so I had to do the breast stroke for a bit to regain my breath. Fair enough. I finally got start back and took off. But my rhythm just didn't seem to come back and my stroke was wrong which lead to me swerving a lot. I just could seem to regain my tracking without sighting every couple of strokes.  I got out and rounded the buoy on the beach to start lap two and again, it started fine but went downhill quickly.

This swim course used 4 buoys instead of the normal 3. I finally got to the first buoy but was fighting for position with someone. During this period I obviously got turned slightly and started sighting off the wrong buoy, which sadly I made it to. Thus I had to turn around and swim back (that is after the kayaker ran into me) and do essentially an extra 300m give or take. Sigh again. The fun thing was continually passing the same people over and over again. I did giggle about that.

Eventually I found the "out" and crossed the timing mat at 31:39 for 46th overall. And while that is totally disappointing, I realize now that my pace was still actually faster than the pace I swam Sprint distance triathlon s at last year, where I didn't go in circles. So at least i know something progressed this year.

As I was running up to transition, the next fun thing was that my wetsuit zipper was jammed stuck. Luckily I found a little help, but it took an extra minute or so to actually just get out of my suit. As a person that prizes quick transition times, that wasn't nice. Eventually I got to the bike, and headed out for the ride.

So compared to the swim the bike went really well. No issues getting on and into my shoes, the roads were in decent condition and the puddles from the rain were sparse. I was amazed that as we turned away from the lake and a little more inland that the fog became a bit of a problem. The humidity meant that foggy glasses were a bit of an issue as well the humidity meant that as the ride progressed, it became much hotter on the body as you couldn't sweat properly.

The bike course was two loops of 20km and by the end of loop one I had worked my way past many other riders. Unfortunately we were now getting intermingled with the Sprint distance triathletes, so I had no idea where I was. And then on lap two I had to deal with a drafter. Ultimately I don't think it cost me any time, but it was annoying. The course was very hilly but I think I handled it well. I was happy to see my cadence was up a little, though I hope to work on it more over the winter as I think my lower cadence is holding me back. I finished the bike with an average speed of 30.5 km/hr for the 12th fastest bike split of the day. Not super fast, but the overall speeds were down due to the twisty hilly nature of the course. There were many 90 and 180 turns.

Coming off the bike I was finally feeling pretty good. I had no idea if my goal of a top 10 could be achieved now, as I had no idea where I was. But I went through transition quickly and onto the even hillier run course.  

I quickly started to pass people but trying to glance at their numbers to see if they were standard or sprint distance was a failure. the swim had washed much of the numbering off of everyone. So I just put my head down (well it stayed up) and picked a pace I knew I coudl work with.

As I glance down at my watch at what was likely about 1 km in, I realized it had switched to run mode but was paused or stopped. Great. So by feel it was going to be.

Passing more people became the norm and then I got to a point where I coudl start to count the people coming back. But alas I lost count, ha ha. Still I knew by the turn around that I was close to the top ten if I could pass a few more people.

After the turn around I passed about 4 more runners before again getting mixed into the sprint distance runners and losing track of things.  So I just kept running as fast as I could muster.

With about 1 km to go my right knee buckled a bit. It didn't hurt, so I kept going. Then it did it again. Great I thought. But it wasn't hurting so I carried on. I did have to slow a tiny bit on the down hill approach to the finish as the extra strain on my knee was a bit worrying and I knew I had enough of a lead.

I crossed the line in 2:30. Not my fastest race of the year, but due to the horrible swim I felt that all things considered it was decent. I had the second fastest run at 40:20, which while I was disappointed to not have broken 40 minutes again wasn't too bad. All I had to run on was feel. I had also worked myself into 10th place overall, so yay!

For everything that went wrong on this race many things went well. But most of all I didn't quite or even stop to mope. I just sucked it up and carried on.  So yeah, just deal with it as best you can and finish the race, then worry about the crying when it is over. But always remember to find at least 1 good for every bad when going over your post race results.

A few running races are to come followed by the Riverport Duathlon. So time to rest up the knee and get back to it.