This swim was awful. The time wasn't that bad, but the swim itself, awful. The water was REALLY murky, so you couldn't see anything. Not the bottom, not the person 12 inches in front of you. It made for a REALLY rough start, since noone had any awareness of where anyone else was.

I started in the first wave, along with the elite men and women, which was kinda cool.

I just could not get into a good rhythm for this swim. I couldn't see anyone's feet to try and draft. On the way to the second buoy, I don't know what happened, but I was swimming my own swim, totally the wrong way. I angled back, but I probably added a good 100m getting back on track. ARGH!

The next waves caught up to me very quickly, and I was really jostled. A number of times I went for a breath and caught a mouthful of water. I didn't panic, but it helped to throw me even further off.

I really felt constricted by the wetsuit. I felt like it was keeping me from keeping any semblance of good form. I really think I may have had a better swim (even though my time may have been slower) without it.

Anyhoo, I finally get to the end of the swim. You can't see the bottom, so you have no idea how deep the water is. I kept looking up to see what people ahead of me were doing. When I saw that people were standing, I went to stand on my jello legs. except, I stepped into some sort of sink-hole, so as I put weight on my right foot, it sunk into the mud, which threw me off balance. My legs were jello as it was, so I had a really hard time standing up, and getting out of the water. As I ran to the TZ, I felt like I wanted to be done the race. I was not looking forward to getting on the bike. I was whipped.

VERDICT? BEAT SIL BY 3:29

Be a better swimmer? Stay on course. Start further back in the wave so I don't get trampled by my own wave. Do more wetsuit swimming to get better used to it.

This transition was FAST. It was only 14 seconds slower than Clark Lake, and I didn't wear a wetsuit at Clark Lake.

I ran into T1, and pulled off my wetsuit (almost falling over in the process). Put my helmet on (dropped my sunglasses), put sunglasses on, put bike shoes on (all the while chatting with the girl next to me about how brutal the swim was), unracked my bike (had trouble getting the seat under the rack) and ran to the bike-out.

"Do you have your number" the volunteer yells. AAAAAHHHHHH! Run back to the rack, drop the bike, grab the number, put it on, pick up the bike, (remind the girl next to me (who is still putting on her socks) to remember her number) and run to the bike-out.

Not forget my number at a race that makes you wear it on the bike? I could easily have saved 20 seconds in this T by not forgetting the number.

Okay, I'm sure someone said this was a flat bike. I forgot that "flat" is a relative term. OH MY GOSH, were there hills. The entire course was hills. I think the only flats were at the top of hills, before you went up another hill.

As I started the bike, I reached for my vanilla PowerGel. GONE! This would be a problem.

For the most part, I was happy with this bike. I pushed more than in previous races, and I had a decent pace going. But the hills just wore my down. I did not pass a single person on this bike. About 20k in, I shifted and dropped my @*&($#(*$ chain. It only took 10-15 seconds to fix it, but what a bugger. That chain is history!

I got up to a max of 52.?km/hour (that's 32+ mph for you metric'ly challenged). Unfortunately, I also went up a couple hills at below 10 km/hour. Ouch.

I also think the lack of calories that morning really started to hurt me on the second half of the bike. All I had was water, so I had no nutrition available to me. I should have had gatorade, or something, on the bike at least.

SIL's time included T1 & T2, so I'll add them to my time.
VERDICT? BEAT SIL BY 26:41

I will say that I can totally understand why this course took her as long as it did. These hills were crazy!

There is just no substitute for riding hills. I also need to learn to climb out of the saddle. Mostly, I just need to ride more. I'm riding 50 miles / week right now, and I need to double that before I'll see significant improvement in my bike times.

I also need to get a batter handle on nutrition (and actually buy some #*$&( gels)

Run in with bike, and rack it. Bike shoes off, socks on, runners on, helmet off, run with hat. (No sign of girl next to me--she passed me 2 minutes into the bike ;) )

I had hoped to suck back the strawberry-banana gel at this point, but I had completely forgotten about it by the time I got into T2.

Im very happy with this transition. I think the only way I could have been faster is to learn to take my shoes off while I'm on the bike.

This run was hard. My legs were so done after that bike ride. I jogged/shuffled for about 2 minutes, and I just couldn't keep going. I told myself I would walk for 2 minutes, to get my legs under me, and then start running, which is what I did.

They had aid stations at the 1km, 2km and 3km, and it was an out-and-back so you passed 6 aid stations. The 2km mark had gatorade, so I sucked back a full glass of the disgusting warm blue stuff. I think it's a good thing I did. My race may have been worse.

I ran 10min run / 2 min walk intervals--walking the aid stations so I could get as much gatorade into me as possible.

As I rounded the turn, and started heading back, a 20-something girl caught up to me, and I tried to pace her as long as I could--like a minute. Oh well. I do think that the second half of my run was a little better.

I was really panting by the 5km mark, though. Twice, I was sure I was about to do a Wendi ;) From just before 5km to about 6km, I ran 100 seconds, walked 100 seconds, ran 100 seconds etc. When I reached the 6km mark, I resumed running. Just before that, I was passed by a 30-34 girl, but I just had nothing to give to keep up with her, she cruised past me.

As I came within about 200m of the finish, I could hear someone coming up behind me with a nice kick. Just as they almost got beside me, I said "Ok, let's do it" and I kicked it in, and managed to keep in front of him. (Never mind that he was 65+ and had started the race 15 minutes after me!) After the race he came up to me and said something to the effect of "good for you. I thought I had you, but you had more left than I did. Good job"

This is the one event where SIL kicks my behind.
VERDICT? SIL BEAT ME BY 7:15

Considering how my running is going lately, I'm not sure I could have done much--beyond having more calories in me. I ran this run 50s/mile faster than Clark Lake, and the bike was 13km longer here, so I'm satisfied.

Got my chip taken off, drank some of the water bottle they handed me, and found D & the boys. I was spent. I actually cried on his shoulder, mostly because the race just took that much out of me. (I'm such a girl ;) )

Went and grabbed a Pepsi & some other food at the food tent. Collected my stuff, etc. Watched the kids do a 1km run. Waited around for the raffle--won a black adidas hat (not a running hat, but a good post-event hat). Also bought a bento box at the race vendor to help with the nutrition thing.

VERDICT: BEAT SIL BY 23:04 YEAH ME!


I'm still new to this athleticism thing, so I've got a long way to go. Mostly I would say a) my nutrition mess-up, and b) need to continue building a base, and training in all three sports.


Very well run race. It was neat to start in the same wave as a number of Canadian National team members. Everything seemed well organized, the announcer was great as well. If it fit into my schedule, I would definitely consider doing this one again.