On Saturday I traveled to Kingston as the final stage of a six day road trip with my moral support, Mike Yetisir. We arrived at the race site around noon to check out the course which consisted on an indoor swim, and two lap bike course and one lap run course. The bike was windy with a few medium sized hills and run the run consisted almost exclusively of false flats. I rode one lap of the bike course with Mike following me in the car. I felt so safe because he forced cars to give me the whole lane when the passed me. It also helped that there was a speed trap half way along the course!
I woke up on race morning at 7:30 having had a wonderful sleep in the Queens student ghetto. We arrived on site around 8:30 and checked the place out. Having had really bad nerves last week at the UW Tri Club Aquathon, I was sure to keep my arousal levels low. Music helped tremendously and my heart rate didn't spike until just before the race start.
Due to my less than ideal swim last week, I got put in the second heat, so the fastest competitors headed onto the course 30 minutes before me. I do most of my training all my my lonesome though, so I wasn't stressing too hard about that.
I took the swim a little easier than I normally would. I swam as efficiently as possible and was fairly fresh onto the bike. My 750m swim split was between 12 and 12 1/2 minutes (by what my watch says). I was second out of the water, but ended up being first out of transition. Not realizing I'd made that pass, I spend the first couple of kilometers looking for the guy I thought I was chasing.
In a word, the bike was just fun. On the way out, I was riding around 45 km/h with the wind at my back on my bike that I picked up last weekend. The way back was more like 33 or so though. Pacing was tough because I was all alone on the course, so I rode pretty hard, but in afterthought, it might have been a good idea to go a bit faster. About half way through, my heart rate monitor stopped working and displayed a HR in the 220's. I hopped off the bike with a split that was around a minute slower than the leaders (33 min or so).
Speaking of biking, I just got a brand spankin' new bike (specialized transition with token 8 cm deep wheels).
Thats right. Shiny. Red and white paint. Carbon fibre. A true racing machine. Photos to come I'm sure.
Thanks to Damien and Gearheads for the always fantastic service. My set-up was rock solid and everything was working perfectly.
The run went way better than I expected. I averaged 3:49 min/km. The first kilometer or so I had a pretty bad stitch in my side, but after that I ran fairly strongly and my biomechanics held up. I ended up running around 50 m too far because the cone for the first turn around was on the sidewalk and I was on the road running the best line.
I finished in 4th with a final time of around 1:07 which is a new PB, but it was an indoor swim, so I'm not sure if it really counts. After the race there were plenty more heats to watch and plenty of banana chocolate chip pancakes to be had.
Thanks to Matt and all the volunteers for making the race happen. Also to Chris Morton for inviting me to come out and registering me. Hopefully I'll see more of the UW Tri Club in the future.
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