As I noted in my post re Zoot Ultra TT3.0 review, the journey for this triathlon began the day before the triathlon when I picked up my race number and grabbed my new shoes.
When I took the shoes for the first run the night before the race, with a sore achiles already from the brick the day before, I ended up with a blister the size of a loonie on my left heel, which I thought might be rough on race day.
My wife woke me up at 7:00 (oh wait, that was our son), for the race as we had to leave by 7:45ish. I had a couple slices of bread (I think) for breakfast and filled up my aero bottle with some water (didn’t think I’d need more fule than that) and we headed out.
When we arrived, I realized I’d forgotten my goggles - to which my wife replied “Honey…” as she’s too used to me forgetting things, luckily I had the backups kicking in my bag to use (which I realized while setting up transition).
In doing the analysis and breakdown of the race, I am going to compare the current year to the prior year as I’ve previously noted that this year I want to smash the times that I did last year in every single event / distance / etc. as I am in slightly better shape and this was the first test.
Swim
2009 - 15:55
2010 - 14:55
Var - 1:00
1 minute, that’s all I cut off on the swim? I guess since it’s only 740 metres in a pool I can’t expect to dramatically kill my prior year time. Besides, swimming is the one sport that’s actually technique versus I’m in better shape and should be quicker, etc.
Overall, I felt very good in the water - I regret saying that I would take beween 15 and 16 minutes as a lot of my time in the pool was trying to get around slower swimmers in my group and at times having to pretty much stop to avoid collissions.
Next year I will put myself down for between 13 and 14 minutes and push hard to get out in that time, which I believe I can achieve.
Bike
2009 - 44:09
2010 - 35:42
Var - 08:27
This was the big difference and it felt great at an average speed of 33.6 km / hour on my soloist with clip on aero-bars, no aero helmet…
As well, the time includes my transition, which was about 30 seconds longer than it needed to be as I had to pull apart the bandage in my sock and put it on the giant aforementioned blister (that sucked).
The bike felt absolutely great. It is a 4 lap course (each lap approx. 5 km) and 1/2 the lap is pretty much up hill with the second 1/2 downhill. It was crazy to see how many people rounded the corner at the top and then coasted while catching their wind on the way down. As I came around the top corner I would get out of the seat, hammer to top speed and then push as hard as possible down the hill, even passing as many people on the way down as the way up, which was a lot of people. Managed to not get passed by anyone on the bike, well okay - that one guy but only for the 5 seconds it took to pass him back and never see him again.
I am so looking forward to doing this course again next year when I have my aero wheels, aero gear, new integrated aerobars with R2C shifters (mostly purchased today - have I said how excited I am?)…
Run
2009 - 27:51
2010 - 20:00
Var - 07:51
The run felt okay, the achilles was killing me still (didn’t feel so great on the uphills on the bike either) and I don’t think I can take credit for a 20:00 run. In my opinion, they cut this run course short (or at least for me and the few people around me) as we came out of the woods after loop 2 and a guy pointed us left down back into the forest and it was pretty much the finish line…I remember hearing the announcer say “and there’s Clint Murphy from Coquitlam checking his watch, hope he’s happy with his time” the reason I was staring at it was I felt like I needed to say, wait, I need to run further, I think that was short…
The thing is, when I look at my age group (I was 8 / 19), my times are consistent with everyone else, which seems odd. By that, I mean that generally, in the three disciplines, the discipline that I do best, relative to my competition, is in the running. In this event (of the 19 of us in my AG), I was 8 / 5 / 7 in placing respectively on the swim / bike / run, which to me indicates that if I was short on the course, so likely were the other individuals…I could be wrong.
Overall
2009 - 1:27:53
2010 - 1:10:32
Var - 0:17:21
As a finale, I finished 8 / 19 in my age group and 56 / 273 overall as compared to 18 / 19 and 244 / 345 last year in AG / Overall respectively!
The goal next year is top 3 - 5 in my AG and top 25-30 overall, we’ll see how that goes 
Clint