"You can't win 'em all... So when you lose, make sure you have some excuses."
- me
Race specifics:
This "triathlon" was a two-day affair, with a 750m TT swim on day one, and a 3k-20k-5k, time-gapped duathlon the next. The swim was in a pool, the duathlon was on the cold, wet, windswept roads (and bushes) of Wolf Island, right next to Kingston. This was to be the University Multisport Series' championship event.
Me specifics:
This event was to take place during the weekend of my first week of Base 3 training. This meant I would be hitting about 10 hours for the week including some fairly strenuous training leading up to it. I certainly would not be at my top form, but I should have been fairly fit and ready to go.
The race:
The ride down was uneventful. I managed to get a ride with some tri club teammates, had a burrito or something for lunch, and simply relaxed. I was feeling very confident in my abilities as training had been going splendidly, I felt a bit tired but on the whole ready to go, and was excited to test out my swim speed.
My group arrived earlier than most. We checked into the hotel, hung around a coffee shop, then headed to the pool. The pool, I was told, was fairly new and I could tell. Iunno. It was nice. We were there very early, but I wanted a chance to shake out my legs and get my arms moving. I had completed a fairly long swim workout the day before including a main set of 400m - 2x200m - 4x100m, long course, coming in close to what I was expecting for short course race-pace. I got about 2k of warm up, including some fast 50s, and was amazed how smooth and fast I felt. I could tell it was going to be a good evening.
Official warm ups started a while later, but I was already pretty much good to go. I did a couple more 50s mostly to keep warm.
One lesson for next time - during the warm up, if you plan on using a pace clock for racing, work on sighting the pace clock. During the race I lost it and was swimming "blind". A second lesson - KEEP COUNT OF LAPS!!! After 200m I had lost track. I don't know how my race would have been affected knowing the accurate distance to go, but for the last 250m or so I kept thinking, "probably only 2 more laps to go..."
Regardless, I cruised into a massive new PB, 10:5-something, or, 1:27/100m. My previous PB at this distance was something like 1:35/100m. Huge success. This set me up to start first in the duathlon the next day (by 15 seconds).
I spent the rest of the evening watching the other divisions, eating a pizzaburger, and figuring out how I would get to Wolf Island. Nothing special to report except pizza burgers are things! It's a burger wrapped in, essentially, a pizza pocket. Yes I had that the night before a race. Who are you, my mom? I don't have to answer to you.
Oh, I also had to share a bed.
Oh, apparently he was sick with something.
So I started waking up at about 2:00 am, then almost every 30 minutes thereafter. My dreams in between involved me and the people I know becoming infected with red crablike alien monsters which would then control the host's body. Every time I'd wake up, my throat would be more sore, and my skin a little more sensitive. By 5:00 am I gave up on sleep and layed awake until it was time to pack my stuff. My throat was filled with mucous and I could barely breath. I had a meagre breakfast as I couldn't really stomach to eat too much and decided I would just shut up with all this "I feel sick" business and get the day over with.
The temperature had dropped about 5-10 degrees (C) from the day before, the wind had increased by about 25km/hr, and it was very overcast. As I should have guessed, the wind would only get worse on the island, and of course, surrounding yourself with water will only make it colder. So I decided I would just shut up with all this "the weather is disgusting" business and get the day over with.
I went through the motions of setting up transition and warming up. I tried to do a couple minutes at ftp on the bike as warm up but had quite a bit of trouble. My legs were fried and I could hardly breath being so filled with mucous. So I cut the warm up short and decided to try and just stay warm.
The girls went first, and there were reports trickling in of people making mistakes on the course and running the 5k instead of the 3k at the beginning. I took a quick look at the map and it seemed clear enough. Just kidding. It made no sense at all. I asked the race director for some insight... "It's really not that bad, start here, take a left then a right, but not that right, that right is for the bike, then left but make sure not to turn onto the street, but weave through this backyard..." Ok, it wasn't exactly like that, but in my state, and well, it might as well have been that bad. I'm not kidding about running through backyards, the race started by cutting through a field behind a community centre, and exiting in a residential area... I gave up trying to learn the route and assumed I would figure it out on the go.
I lined up on the start line, cleared my mind of how bad this would probably turn out, and told myself if I could hold an honest pace for this first 3km, I could catch my breath on the bike. The 3k felt hard, and I forgot to look at my watch due to my suffering. I got on the bike proceeded to get knocked around by the wind more than I ever had. Sadly I only managed to hold about 250W and come in around 39:00 for 20km... which is very very far from what I would consider a riding to my potential. I was extremely unhappy with that. Later in the day the race directors decided to make the bike optional. I don't know how that works in the context of a race, but it was a good thought to cut that hellish suicide run out of the race.
I got to the 5k still leading... although it was an absolute death march. At times I was running above 4:00/km. I finished in first by about 1-2 minutes. The worst was over. Now all I had to do was be disgraced.
Apparently I had made a mistake on the 3k run at the beginning. I was running up the proper road and saw a pilon with arrows pointing into a path through a bush. Obviously this was a sign to go into the bush... However, the true route required me to pass this pilon, turn around a little further up the road and then go through the bush. So for my mistake I was (and rightly so, don't get me wrong) penalized 5:00. This slotted me comfortably in 2nd, about a minute and a half down. So be it. Just because I didn't know I cheated doesn't mean I didn't run less than everyone else. It just sucks. Lesson 3 - preview the route.
I'm sure there were some more lessons to be learned in there. Something about trying your best, you can't win 'em all, get back on the horse, whatever. I was pretty bummed for a while, and being sick certainly didn't help, but never once did I get discouraged. The hardest thing was accepting I needed some time off to get better before I could put more time in to get better. That's a good sign.
Anyway, my effort garnered a new pair of compression socks which I gladly wore all the way home. It also earned me a sinus infection which essentially halted all training during the next week. This forced me to start Base 3 all over again on April 15th. I then had to work on re-organizing my schedule leading up to my A races. Speaking of which, I have some A races planned! Actually, there is a plethora of news! But I will make a separate post for all this good stuff. In the mean time, I am writing this mid-week of my last big week of new Base 3, my biggest week of training ever... and I think it is going very well! I've hit 10 hours, 12 hours and am on my way to 14 hours this week... But I'll get to that shortly. Look forward to another race report, a review of Base 2, and my summer plans.
Adam "hard race? race hard" Fortais
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