Tri, Tri Again

Note: This post is chronologically out of order because there was a pic and video I wanted to add.  My apologies.

I love triathlon.  For many, many reasons, which I plan on expanding on in a future blog.  And I love racing.  I train all year so that I will be faster.  If I didn't race, I don't think it would be long before I fell off the bandwagon, so to speak.  My plan this year was to do six races - three sprint distance and three Olympic, something I had done once before I had J and really wanted to do again.  My grand finale was to be Riding Mountain Triathlon (RMT) on August 14th.

Now, some days, everything comes together perfectly.  The training has been ideal.  No sickness.  Plenty of sleep.  Perfect weather.  Today, or more correctly, yesterday (at the time of writing - now a couple of weeks ago...) was not one of those days.  The training had been pretty good until my competitive nature took over on Thursday during group trianing and I pushed a bit too hard.  Health-wise, alright, though I may be fighting a mild cold.  I did not sleep particularly well the night before.  And the weather?  The temp was 13 degrees (Celsius, of course), it was raining, and it was windy.

RMT is notorious for bad weather.  I have done the race four times.  The first time, it was cold, wet and rainy.  The wind blew the buoys off and the course had to be remarked along the beach, and without proper time to do so, they had measured it long.  The second year was hot.  Very, very hot.  Last year, it was cold, wet and rainy.  This year, well, cold, wet and rainy.

And expensive.  At least by Manitoba standards.  It may not make my racing list next year.

But I had a plan.  One of my friends, when I asked him what my best and worst qualities were, responded with, "You don't know when to quit."  He's right.  I didn't have to race today.  I only registered yesterday.  I knew what I was getting myself into.  But I had a plan.  This was supposed to be my "A" race, at least to the extent that I have one.  So I did it.

I have to admit that I did not start the race with a very good attitude.  There were already things about the race that had rubbed me the wrong way.  And now the weather was worse than anticipated.  And I did not feel like racing.

At 90 seconds to race start, I had not warmed up at all.  I hadn't even gotten water into my wetsuit, something I had learned the hard way was essential.  I quickly got enough it, put my goggles and swim cap on, found my starting spot, and had about 2 seconds to go time.

The number of athletes at RMT went up again this year.  Significantly.  I think the final count was something like 460.  That meant the start was bigger than anticipated.  And the swim bottlenecks as everyone tries to swim through the moored boats.  I swam on top of people.  People swam on top of me.  Nothing I couldn't handle.  But then, the shelter of the boats was gone, and the waves hit us head on. This is what the lake looked like:

You may notice that the boat on the far right is significantly off vertical.  For the record, it's not supposed to be that way.  At least not under normal weather circumstances.

Here's a look in motion. I was doing some commentary, but the wind noise won out. (And I don't think the sound of even that transferred.)  Near the beginning of the video, if you watch the boats, you can briefly see the extent that they were rocking. Yes, we swam in that.

There was no bi-lateral breathing today.  Not unless you wanted to swallow a waveful of water.  Forget drafting.  While this is usually my biggest concern in the swim, I couldn't think about it at all.  I was more concerned with not getting sick in the water.  Besides, I didn't know if the person in front of me was going straight, or if the waves had knocked them off.  And even if they were, the waves would knock me off.  Sighting wasn't any easier.  I would look up for the buoy, but all I would be able to see was the wave in front of me.  I had to sight every two strokes in hopes of spotting a buoy once in every 3-4 attempts.

I was so done after 750m.  I was wondering if they would let me switch to the sprint at that point, but figured I had better keep going.

After 1500m, I was thrilled to be on dry land.  Other than getting my right hand stuck in my wetsuit, T1 went as well as could be expected.  The bike, however, wasn't much better than the swim.  Although I had checked my bike before racking it, as soon as I got on, I could tell that something was rubbing.  That something was my back brake.  Now, there are many things I can fix on the fly.  This is not one of them.  So, off I got and adjusted the brake, losing seconds I was not in the mood to lose.

Normally the bike is my favourite part.  I don't know what my problem was.  I really don't remember.  Maybe I just woke up grumpy.  But I was NOT enjoying the bike at all.  Finally at 15km in I told myself I had paid $85 for this race so I may as well just suck it up and enjoy it.  It was better after that, but shortly after the turn-around I had to pull over yet again because my back brakes were rubbing.  Again.  And for the rest of the bike all I could do was wonder if I needed to fix the brakes again.

Another thing you need to understand is that I am not a runner.  At least not a good one.  I generally spend most of the run just waiting for it to end.  While I was on the bike today, I was dreading having to run yet.  Today though, I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Really, truly.  It was my favourite leg of the race, something I have never, ever said before and really don't expect to say again.  After 1km, I realized that if I kept the same pace I could pull off a sub-55 minute run.  That made me really excited.

I had two things motivating me. 1) I wanted to hold Kate off until the 5km mark.  I saw her at the turn-around, which was just before the 5k mark, and managed to pick up the pace just enough to meet that goal.  2) I imagined that Kim was in front of me.  She had, I'm assuming jokingly, suggested that I do that on my Facebook status.  But when I was feeling like taking it easy, that visualization did help.  :)

I did pull off a sub-55 min run.  And, though the results say my time was 3:00:01, it was off by 5 seconds and I know that I came in under 3 hours, because my watch said so.

Overall, I have to say that I was satisfied.