Today was the New Balance Victoria half ironman and for this edition, a special concept….THE CHASE!!!men vs womens!!! To womens where going first, then the master men 15 minutes later, than the men 10 minutes later and finaly the relay 5 minutes later!! The first person or team to the finish get a 500$ bonus!!!
Before the start of the race, I sure try to intimidate the girls walking around transition with my pink bike, showing them my big ring!!! and the nice flowers painted on my frame! Talking with the national training center coach before the start as the girls were on there way, I was a bit overcomfident telling him to not worrie for me that chasing womens was natural for me and that it should be ok…… the motivation was there to pick up as many of them as I could as fast as I could ……
The swim started pretty quick and I miss on the feet of the first swimmer that broke the old swim course record and was out in 23:30…. I was out in a more pedestrian and not so good 25ish…. (not going to happen again coach!!! I promise)
As I got on my pink beast, I know I didn’t gain as much as I wanted on the girls and had a lot of work to do on the bike…… rode as hard as I could and got a lot of comments from people on the course liking the bike. I was also very lucky to be riding a new modified Louis Garneau Rocket 2 with a longer tail, it sit right on my back the all way!!! Felt really fast! I was getting very impatient as I was already half way into the bike and still hadn’t pick up any of the lovely ladies up ahead…. But finaly, it started with one…and after that…another one right away and THEN!!! Like the old saying…. When it pour… It rains!!! The all started to come back to me and I was surrender by womens! Got off the bike and was second men overall(first men was a master with a 10 minutes head start) . As I put on my running shoes, I heard the announcer telling me that I was now 9m40sec down on the leader…… ok, the plan was, to take off really hard for the first 5km, lift the pace on the next 5km and sprint the last 10km home!!! Coming on the second loop of the run, I was still a bit over 6 minutes behind and was trying as hard as I could to catch up to the top 5 leaders…… finaly, I started catching them and decided to use one of my favorite pick up line as I passed them… ON YOUR LEFT!!! IT work at every single time! At the 15km mark, I was now in 2nd place running hard trying to catch a beautifull 6’ gazelle that was bouncing effortlessly at a nice 6:15 miles pace……
Well, as I got to the finish line, it was obvious that it was too late and I had fail…. I was 41 secondes too late, the race director standing at the finish line with 10 nice 50$ bills roled together with a cheap elastic was handing the prescious bonus to Heather as I was left with a bottle of yellow gadorade and no phone number or email addresses?
The moral of the story is that it dosnt matter how many womens I catch, it s the one that I cant get that I really want to chase………and if your really try too hard to chase a girl, they can feel it coming miles ahead of time and will run away from you……so, better not try to hard and let it happen when the time is right!
OF course, i need to thanks some great supporter like Dave at Planet X that is putting me on that fast pink TT machine and also Fleck and 19 wetsuit for the support this season… it s fun to have people behind you backing you up!
i was going to mention paulo as obviously, since working with him… i NAILED my last 7 races with PB at each distance, made money$$$ and my run times have been going down like crazy. But…thinking about it… paulo dosnt know know much about womens…even less how to chase them or catch them…he sure asnt been helpfull for this race and i dont own him anything for this one…,i wont thank him. Paulo, you are so whatever…
