Today was the third day capping off a great weekend of racing up at the Kelowna Apple Triathlon. Friday was a 1500m OW swim and Aquathlon, Saturday they had a 5k OW swim, Jr Elite and KOS racing, and Sunday was AG Sprint, Olympic and an ITU race. I also discovered on Saturday at the pre-race meeting that it was the National Championship for Sprint & Olympic distances, so there were a lot of fast people, fully decked out.
I kind of fell off the wagon after a great race in Victoria with two different injuries and a serious lack of motivation. I had planned to do the Sprint a long time ago, and showed up just hoping that I’d be able to swim and run without aggravating anything. I pretty much expected to suck. Andy & Phil were up racing the Oly, and Linda was up to do the Oly as well. Joe raced the 1500 OW swim (getting 10th!) and did the Sprint with me.
This was probably the most organized tri I’ve ever attended. From package pickup to bodymarking and chip collection, the race start, the race course marking and the HORDES of volunteers out on course, it was definitely a top notch event. They had 8 divers and well over 20 paddlecraft plus 2-4 powerboats patrolling the 750m swim course, the bike course was completely closed to traffic with every intersection barricaded and manned, and I’ve never seen a run course marked this well - I swear ever 5 feet there was a cone, and usually on both sides of the path. HUGE props to the race organizers and volunteers who made this event probably the the safest and definitely the best marked course I’ve ever seen.
It was pretty warm out today (hot yesterday) and the water temp was warm enough to make it a non-wetsuit swim. SCORE! I love non wetsuit swims. Partially because I just prefer swimming without, but also because not having a wetsuit really fucks with people’s heads. I love that. 
Not having a tonne of time (due to just screwing around in transition prior to the race start), I did a very short warmup and knew that I was in trouble when my shoulder started to hurt pretty much from the get go. It wasn’t bad, and felt fine as long as I took it easy - but it hurt when I tried to pick up the pace. Ah whatever - it’s a 750m swim so this will be the difference between a 12min swim and a 14min swim. I lined up on the beach with everyone and ran in for one of the rougher OW swims I’ve ever been through. The course was exceptionally well marked, but there were a lot of clowns who kept swimming into me as they cut from one vector to another. Though it’s a bit rich coming from me: swim straight, dammit!
Out of the water in I have no idea what time but if sure felt slow, I began the long run to transition. Seriously - it was far. On the bike fairly quickly, and I was off. Happy to not have to navigate through a field of weaving jackasses unable to clip in, it was an uneventful T1 exit and I found myself at the base of the one climb well before my HR had settled. Oh well. Into the bailout gear and spinning. Once at the top it’s a pretty fast course - almost completely downhill or flat with only a few small rises, and enough turns to keep me interested (though a few people made it a little more *interesting *than I’d have liked). 2nd lap felt a bit better, though I’d have liked to have had my tri bike. Because I’m in Penticton for 2 weeks, I didn’t want to have my tri bike as my only ride - so I brought the road bike. Standard drop bars, training wheels, and a regular helmet. No aero tricks whatesoever. Not that race wheels and an aero lid would have made a huge difference, but my tri bike (and its aero position) would have been helpful.
Off the bike in I don’t know how fast but it didn’t feel smokin’ by any stretch of the imagination. A faster T2 (though still kind of slow, really) and I was out onto the run course. I wore my Asics Gel Magic Racers because they felt really fast when I demo’ed them. Today they did not feel fast at all. I’m going to write Asics and complain. Seriously. That’s some false advertising man… That was the longest 5k I think I’ve ever done. When I finally passed the 1km marker I was sure that it was the 1mi marker. I was not happy when I saw the 2km, then the 3km markers. Picked it up a bit over the last 2k, and more at 1km to go. Dropped a bunch of guys that I had been running with/passed by, Kicked HARD and picked up one last guy just before the chute. Dunno what the run time was but it felt dog-ass slow.
No time on the overhead clock so I had no idea what my overall time it was - but I was pretty sure I didn’t hit my “good day” mark of 1:10. I was happy enough that a) it was over, and b) I didn’t have anything left at the end.
Final splits & stats:
43/219 OA
31/106 Men
750m Swim: 0:13:45
T1: 0:1:37
20km Bike: 0:37:03
T2: 0:0:57
5km Run: 0:24:45
Total: 1:18:06
Slower than I had wanted across the board, but given my “training” over the past 8 weeks I guess it ain’t so bad…
I get a shot at another sprint in 2 weeks, so hopefully I can put together a respectable outing then. 
