2012 Ingonish Sprint Triathlon

First sprint race of the year for me. I didn't do the others that were offered as they conflicted with Duathlons and also were pool swims. I would rather not do pool swims.

So an open water swim in Ingonish. Last year I did this race and the water was a bit cold to get into and I really needed that warm up time offered. This year the water was really quite warm, so I used the warm up time simply to get a little more comfortable in the water in general.

I am not the greatest swimmer, or even a moderate swimmer. I am a weak swimmer, but you all know that. Still I managed to do this race in just shy of 15 minutes last year so I had hoped that I was slightly stronger than during that race and could pull off closer to 14 minutes.

 

So into the water we went. Last year I was caught up in swimmers that were slower than myself, so I thought I would wade out with the stronger swimmers then fall into my proper pace (that's me in the gold coloured cap).

Well the start of the swim went well. I was tucked behind another swimmer. I received a few bumps but nothing too hard or worrisome.

But as I rounded that first buoy I realized I had gone too fast. Well if this were the bike or run, letting up means relaxing a bit but this is hard for me to do in the water. I let up the pace a bit to rest and was promptly paced by a number of swimmers. Still, I just had to finish this thing to get to the bike. So off I went.

 

Just because you have a bad leg of a triathlon doesn't mean you give up for the rest. So I picked up the pace to finish the swim hard then tore out of the water and across the timing mat.  I was 42nd at this point out of 53 people with a swim time of 16:45. Ugh. Now I will say that this year the swim was a bit longer than last year, but I don't know if it was long or correct. Regardless it was the swim everyone else did. But man did it hurt.

So off to T1 I went. For Ingonish that means a 500 meter run on a gravel path. Many people stop and put on shoes before the run. I don't. That means I do get to pass a couple of people at this point. Then a quick change out of my wetsuit and into my cycling gear and off I went.

This is a great ride, rolling hills, 23 kms and this day, cool air. I had stuffed some arm warmers into my tri suit front in case it happened to be too cold on the ride, but never needed them.

I quickly tucked and took off. Here is where I make up most of the time I lost on the swim. I know that I can't make up the 6 minutes or more on the fastest swimmers who are probably darn fast cyclist as well. But I pushed anyway.

In the end I made up a few spots and posted the 8th fastest bike split of the day. This included the run from the water as well (T1). It took me 45:57 to cover the 23 kms of this hilly course. So my 30 km/hr average was good enough to pass 27 people. Phew.

 

I am now getting more comfortable with the flying dismount. though I will admit to having a close call getting my foot out of one of my shoes and almost took a spill. But I survived and dismounted. Soon I will be more comfortable getting up to the line before dismounting. Wow, from this picture it looks like I am 500 meters away. Oh well.

 

I zoomed into T2 and luckily only saw a handful of bikes. That made me happy.

 

A quick change into my shoes and I was off. This was my second race in the New Balance 890v2. But this was my first race in them sockless. I had socks in the TZ but opted to go without to save those few valuable seconds. It turned out to be fine as these shoes are very smooth inside.

I didn't even spare the seconds to don my Garmin 305, but I did take it with me (I had turned it on before the race started). I am sure I can run without it, as I did for years. But I wanted that extra little bit of hurry up from the numbers on the screen.

I quickly caught a runner in front of me. Then I caught a hill. Ouch. It wasn't a big hill, but still, it hurt. My speed dropped from 3:50 to 4:15. Not good. So I kicked it up a notch and took off again.

The run course is nice. A 5km loop, so no laps and it is uphill out and downhill back.

I soon saw another runner in the distance and fought hard to catch him. By the turn around I was there and past. At this point I saw no one else ahead of me but kept my pace as high as I dared to salvage a good time from this event.

But then with 1 km to go I found one more runner. He was doing well enough but I could see the gap closing. I didn't care about saving anything at this point, so I picked  up the pace and passed him at the corner with less than 500 meters to go. I pushed harder and when the finish line was in sight I pushed once again.

 

I crossed the line at a nice 2:37 km/min pace for a grand total run time of 19:52. A sub 20 min 5 km to end a sprint is rather nice. My official time includes T2 and is 20:33, which was the 5th fastest run of the day. And that makes me happy as I have more speed int he run and made a few bobbles in T2.

So it seems I need to work on that swim again. I see part of my mistake as deciding recently to work more on form rather than endurance. And I just don't have the base in me yet to ignore endurance. So to the pool and lake I go before my next event, which will likely be the Bridgetown Tri this August.

Oh and I beat the rain. Whew. For those in the Olympic Distance event I feel for you as the sky opened up.

And thanks to the Sportwheels gang for getting that new chain all nicely setup on my bike. I love Shimano chains for riding, but I hate installing those blasted things.

Building a Better Ian - The Next Phase, Shoulders

Since I was a teen my left shoulder has hurt. Not all the time, but usually it hurts. Mild most days, darn right sore other days and sometimes I can't turn my head. It runs the gambit of achy, numb, tingly, and even itchy. But I just deal with it and move on.

Well after all the success I have and seeing my Chiropractor and having ART done to fix my ITBS issues  I thought, why the heck am I not asking about this. Perhaps it is time to get rid of this pain. Truth be told I finally came to this realization this past weekend while doing a solo ride around the Peggys Cove loop. 85kms or so and by 50kms in my shoulder was numb. Sure I changed positions, shuffled a bit, did a little stretch and things went back to being okay,  but I knew that I just had to stop "dealing" with the issue and get it looked at.

When I was a teen I saw my doctor. He said, pinched nerve and gave me some exercises to do. They didn't do much, I was a teen, and I gave up. Easy. But I am older now and darn it, I don't want to be even older and in more pain.

Well into the Chiropractor I went. We chatted about the history of the injury. This was obviously a chronic thing, so it wasn't going to be solved over night. But after a little assessment we came up with the beginnings of a plan of attack.

It turns out I have very little range of motion in my shoulders themselves. Instead my pecs have been controlling things for a long time. I basically brute force my shoulders to do what I want them to. Great, I have strong pecs, hooray! I also have very low shoulders, which is odd for many people, but maybe not so much for cyclists.

See as cyclists, we lean forward a lot. And we stretch out our arms to do so. So our trapezius can elongate. This, in my case, also lead to my scalpular muscles rotating. It all seems to just add together into one big problem.

Where did this all begin? I don't know, but of course things like cycling and swimming can make things worse. So it has been slowly getting worse over time.

Right now we are working on a huge bundle of scar tissue and muscle adhesion that has formed over time in my teres muscles (I think it is those muscles). They are kind of under and beside the scalpula, in and around the armpit area. And I am working on stretching out my pecs to get my arms and shoulders to go backwards a bit. One session and I regained quite a few degrees of motion. Hopefully a few more sessions and some exercises at home will lead to me becoming pain free and will help in my active lifestyle.

In swimming, for instance, I have the choice of swimming with stubby arms and swimming slow, or using my major muscles to force my arms into a nice elongated form. The second option means I tend to throw the rest of my body out of position which leads to dropped hips and tons of drag. This can be easily seen when I wear a wetsuit for open water. Doing so can gain me almost 4 minutes over a 750m swim, as my hips are forced to float high. We will see if freeing my shoulders will lead to an decrease in my sprint distance swim time.

Any way, that seems like enough info for now. Any of you medical-ish type people reading this should be aware that my knowledge of the human muscular structure and use of proper names for different muscles groups is completely due to the internet. I am sure I got a lot of that stuff wrong. Sorry about that.

I'll update my "condition" as my treatment continues and we will journey together to see how this may affect my life as a Triathlete / Duathlete.

2011 Greenwood Duathlon - Race 6

So it was up early. Greenwood is a decent 1:45 or so away from my place (depending on traffic and speed) and the race started at 10 with a race briefing at 9:45am. The car was packed the night before to allow myself a leisurely morning of food and coffee. It is also best to just wear your race clothes, well as much as possible, to save any time you can upon arrival. This includes a pre race vintage 7 Eleven hat.

The sites on the way to the race are always fun. Hey look Llamas!

Then after what seems like a long time behind the wheel, Greenwood! (Oh I know the race officials are up even earlier than me, and maybe it is too dark for them to see the fun llamas on the way in. But thanks to them for doing it).

Anyway, that is the end of my pictures for this event, so bear with my rambling while I describe the rest of the day.

9am arrival and the weather is holding. The weatherman had said maybe showers, but so far so good. Overcast, check. Windless, check. Cool, check. All of this seemed great. Not too hot, not too sunny, no winds (at Greenwood?). But then after setting up my bike and stopping for a few chats, it started. Drop, drip, splat. The light sprinkling of rain came down. Not too bad, annoying but okay I said. Then thunder, lightening and the skies opened up. Massive downpour. The temporarily suspended racing and pulled people out of the pool (now I didn't see them actually pull anyone physically pout, but these are triathletes, so I imagine some had to be).  How odd is it to hear, " Shoes and helmets are floating away in Transition." Oh yeah, there was that much rain. Easily ankle deep in 15 minutes. But the rain let up, we got things going and we were all wet.

Thankfully they held the start for a bit while I finished getting my bike shoes and helmet and water bottle set back up in the TZ. Then it was line up, race brief (2 laps, 3 laps, 1 lap) and the horn blasted. Alan Miner told me to chase down the leader right before the start. I think he was just trying to tire me out. Little did he know that I just take off regardless. The leader (I was later told) was pretty unstoppable by anyone on the duathlon and he raced a few ITU events. Oh well, whatever. I still held with him for the first km or so, then found my proper pace and kept running. Eventually after about 3kms Alan passed me, but I stuck with him for the rest of the run a few steps back. He took a wrong turn heading into Transition so officially I beat him in the first run, though just by a second. Another sub 20 minute 5K for me. Big thanks on that go to Shane M. for holding those winter Tri Camps this year. Also I am sure my half marathon training helped a lot. I ended with a time of 19:56.

Then on to the bike. My helmet was all messed up from the rain. It was soaked and the straps were tangled. After try number 2 I got it on, put on my shoes and headed to the mount line. Then off I was for the flattest time trial you will get around here (if it weren't for that first hill at Shearwater it would be a tie). Head down, legs pumping, redline it to the end of 20km. It was great with no wind until the final lap when a bit started to pick up. I kept Alan in my sights the whole way, but he is pretty strong on the bike and I couldn't get any closer to him. It was also good to see no drafting on course. That is great on such a small course. I came into T2 with a time of 32:20 for a avg speed of 37.1km/hr. Like I said flat and windless.

I dropped off the bike, helmet and changed shoes. I was about to grab for my running hat but it was in a puddle 2 inches deep. So I decided against that. Sunglasses would have to do. Though the sun was coming out strong and I am sure it would have helped (I had switched to yellow lenses with the horrible rain and overcast conditions).   

Off I went. I could just see Alan in the distance. My legs felt okay but much slower now. I wasn't cramping like in past year or having ITBS like last year, so I couldn't complain. I just pushed through the tired and went for it. After all the second run was only going to be 2.5km. I kept pace with Alan, but his lead was too much for me. I came across a guy running in the Sprint Triathlon and paced him back to the finish. He looked miserable and needed a boost. So I chatted with him as we picked up his pace a bit. We rounded the corner for the finish and he apologized for trying to out sprint me, though I beat him to the mat. Nice try ( I had told him I was in a different race). A sprint finish is always fun. I raced the last 2.5km (including T2) in a time of 11:25 to take 3rd place overall and first in Age Group. Same as last year so I was pretty happy. I had hoped to break 1 hour, but it was not to be and a time of 1:03:40 is still nice. Still two great runs and a strong ride made me really happy for the last Duathlon until Riverport in October.

Next up? As far as multisport and TNS go, that will be Ingonish in 2 weeks time. My first Sprint distance triathlon and first swimming competition in open water. Should be fun and scary.  

2011 Cyclesmith Duathlon

So the day had come. The big Cyclesmith Duathlon. Sure I had done 2 other Dus this year, but they were short and fast (and fun) events. This was a much longer event (and fun as well - aren't they all?). This one always pushes me to my max to see what I can accomplish. A 5K run that starts out going stright up a huge hill, followed by a hill, then a bike ride of 34K that is full of hills (rollers yes, but some are quite steep), and then an off road 6K run to finish it off (no hills!!). Oh and I like hills, but that is a lot of hills.

 

Well the event (being in Nova Scotia and being held in Lawrencetown) is always weather unpredictable. Rain, fog, wind are all expected. And with the Spring we have been having lately, very expected. But it was sunny. And turns out quite hot as well (the reddish hue to my skin attests to the lovely high UV we experienced). Glad I thought to put a little sunscreen on first. And glad that my wife insists we have SPF 60 or some such silly level thing (didn't Robocop offer SPF 1000).

The field was large. It usually is for Cyclesmith's Du, but I hear there was 100 people entered in the race (There was also a Youth Du and as always the Team Competition). And of those entered, there was some serious fast people. My goal was to try and better last years time and effort. As these fields get bigger and better, a better placing isn't always possible, but I really hoped for a top 20 finish and top half of my Age Group.

In the above photo, taken right after the start horn, you can see a line of really fast guys and me. Well I managed to stay with them for about the first half km up the big first hill. Then I found my rhythm and stuck to that  It meant a few more people passed me, but not too many. After the hilly section heading away from the beach, we head back on a pretty flat trail system to T1. I had my Timex stopwatch going but I guess I forgot to hit the lap feature. Luckily the nice chips on our ankles recorded everything.

As I said I wanted to go faster than last year. And I did. Oddly running a PB 5K time of 19:40 with a pace of 3:56. My old PB 5K time was set on a flat stand alone event in Bedford 2 years ago at 19:56. Needless to say, I was happy with that. It was the 18th fastest time for that leg out of 85 people in the event.

Into T1, off with the running shoes and hat, on with the cycling shoes and helmet (always important), and away I went.

 

The ride was moderately wind free which was nice. But it always seems so extra long. Where is that 17K turn around point? Oh where is it?  I was passed by this point by a few riders and then on the way back by 1 or 2 more. But I managed to pass a few as well, so I was basically staying put in the standings. By the time I returned to the TZ I was still 18th place. I had a time (which included  T1) of 1:02 and a pace of 32.6km/hr. I think my bike computer shows a pace on the bike closer to 2km/hr faster, but it didn't care about me changing my shoes. I was hoping to be a little faster on the bike portion this year, but that first run probably sapped a little juice from my legs and my lower back started to hurt a little. Also I had to let up a bit and make sure I fell out of the draft zone of the guys who were a bit faster than me. I wasn't chancing penalties at this point.

T2 was upon me. A quick shoe change, head gear swap, swig of magic juice and I was off. My legs were spent, but to my amazement, not cramping. Yea! I was passed by one runner who stayed about 7 seconds ahead of me, just out of reach. then one more runner who blazed by me. Turns out he ended up with the fastest second run of the day. No matching that for me.

 

But I managed to hold off all other runners. Usually by this point someone speedy comes blazing by while I am halfway into the second run. This makes me sad. But this day I kept a decent pace. I even managed to track down one runner (she was part of a team, whom I beat on the first run, and was passed by on the bike portion). I ended up with a 6K run time of 28:29 including T2 for a 4:45 pace. A couple of years back I would have been happy with that pace in a stand alone event.

Final time for me was 1:50:32. I was rather close to the 2 runners ahead of me, but had no oompf in the tank to get an extra kick. I bettered last years time by 3 minutes (last years second run was a bit more difficult with a small hill but not 3 minutes more difficult), was 6th out of 20 in my Age Group (1 away from a prize), and still managed a top 20 finish in a really tough field.

Another great event and what turned out to be a rare sunny beautiful day in Lawrencetown.

Next up is Greenwood. But first a rest is in order. Perhaps my new taper system called the Hammock (if the rain lets up).

Oh and to all the animal lovers out there. I managed to avoid a slithering snake that zipped into my path on the bike. Phew. To the snake haters out there, don't read that part.

The 2010 Sporting Year in Review - Part 2 - Cycling

Okay, looking back on my cycling goals show that I pretty much accomplished what I wanted to do on the bike. I had no real competitions in mind this year, as far as just cycling goes, so it was pretty easy. I got loads of distance in and had some fun as well.

My major goal was to do a century ride this year. I did a proper 100 mile ride this past August in the Valley. The Middleton Century ride is a great event and I suggest anyone who is contemplating such a long ride to go try this one. The only issue is heat. August and the Valley make for a warm day. But with rest stops each 25kms it wasn't too hard to get through. This year was better than last year which itself was really nice. You get a route map and the corners are all well marked with spray paint.

I also managed to get a metric century in thanks to the Heartland Tour. A ride from the Halifax Commons to Peggy's Cove and back for me was 110km or so. Very nice. Yeah, I tried to to push the pace. Yeah it was fun for most of the ride. But the end was killer and I just collapsed. Still a nice day.

I also wanted to get group rides in. I actually got fewer of these than I had hoped. But things come up, people don't get out or get out at times you can't work with. But this is more of a constant goal in life and therefore I will always be looking forward to rides with friends. And now that my wife has found cycling to be enjoyable I see some great trail rides with people as a real possibility.

My injury didn't prevent my cycling very much this year, which is a good thing. Perhaps my cycling didn't help my injury? I don't know but what is passed is past.

Next season? Same old goals. Long endurance rides, group rides, family rides, a century or two. All good fun. Yeah, sure I train hard for my multisport events, but that is a different kettle of fish (and it is hard to get a fish in a kettle).

Ian's Switch in Summertime Activities

Okay, so for the past few years I have been all about racing my bike in the local road racing series through Bicycles Nova Scotia. Due to many factors this year I have decided to take on a new challenge. That being Duathlons. So for those that don't know that is a run - bike - run race. Normally hosted by the same people that do triathlons, but without the swimming (which I am horrible at). Anyway, I did one of these last year and fell in love with the sport and the organization that hosted the race ( I think there was an older post about that in the archives).

So that is my plan, along with maybe some running races as well (I did enter the 10K Bluenose Race this May in Halifax). I will keep you updated on results and my impressions of the sport as I go along. Here's hoping for a fun summer of run - bike - run for me.

Final Bike Race - Tour de Wentworth

So the final race came and went yesterday. It was a stage race in Wentworth, Nova Scotia. The day started with a 15 km time trial. It began with a nice tail wind and ended with a horrible headwind. My bike isn't really setup for time trials. I have no bars or aero pieces, I have no skinsuit or fancy helmet. So I was just trying to minimize the damage. I think I did respectable though was behind most of the other riders in my catagory.

Then came the road race. 79 km's. It got hotter and the wind stayed, if not picked up. I was doing fine through the first lap, then part way through the second lap an attack came. I tried to follow but my legs cramped up. So I ended up loosing the leaders. I got my legs back, started to ride hard to keep the time gap close and managed to finish the race. I guess the heat, wind and tired legs from the morning got to many riders as I somehow managed a third place finish and third place overall. Needless to say, with all the pain I went through I will take the result.

Many thanks to Elizabeth and Newt for being my support and handing me fresh water during the race. It was needed.