well, i finally did the legendary muskoka!
last year an old friend convinced me to do this race, and as it turns out our wives are best friends. we decided to make a couples getaway weekend out of this, and it was awesome. we all got our kids looked after and rented a nice little place on the lake, and had a great time hanging out and catching up.
swim:
it was a time-trial start, 3-abreast at 5-second intervals. i don’t mind, but it did get a little bottlenecked at one or two points. i opened the first 500m hot and then settled into a steady pace; probably a bit too slow as i think i just got lulled into my “grinding along” pace rather than my race pace. one two bad kicks, but came out in 33-flat.
possibly the worst thing about the swim was the exit: out of the water and straight up a steep 2-storey slope to a long pavement run to transition. already gassed right away!
bike:
i was looking forward to the bike partly because i love to bike, and partly because this was to be my first race on my new tri bike, a felt IA 105. it’s the first real tri bike i’ve had in years. the plan was to hold a normalized 240w, and eat about 100g of carbs per hour. it’s definitely a constantly rolling course - basically never flat - so there wasn’t much of a rhythm to be had. i did the exact opposite of the ST advice (oops) and opened hard for about 15/20k before settling in. honestly, it was kind of nice to get away and ride solo. i’ve got a tonne of respect for the folks in the middle of the pack but just enjoyed surging a little to get clear. there were a few people riding a little dirty in the early stages but not too bad - i found i left people behind on climbs.
i rode a positive split by about 2 minutes; on the second half i guess i felt slightly tired but also just a bit less aggressive. on the second half of the bike i got passed by one really dodgy pack in particular - a group of maybe 5/6 middle-aged dudes on nice bikes just blatantly cheating. kind of a shame. i felt like i saw a fair few marshals, but they were mainly wagging fingers.
i got zinged by the dreaded gatorade bottle problem: the hand-ups on the bike were just the regular ol’ gas-station bottles of gatorade rather than bike bottles, and they’re too small for a standard cage. i ditched my BTA bottle and then had to sort of half-hold in its replacement with one hand for the remainder. eventually i lost it AND my frame bottle on rough roads.
hit T2 in 2:26ish.
run:
right away it was obvious that it was going to be really sweaty on the run. so many people had convinced me that the run course was brutal that i was sort of running scared - the wisdom seems to be that the first mile needs to be run really easy, and the the first 12ish km of the run should be easy. in the end i ran all the hills and the aid stations; no worries holding my stride.
the hope was that i’d try to average 4:20ish pace, and hope for a negative split. as it was i just couldn’t quite seem to get in gear. i had lots of diesel power but no higher end; i could probably have run another 10k but not much quicker. crossed in around 1:39, compared to a 1:33 flat in switzerland a few previous (on a flatter, cooler course).
in the end i was 5th in my age group, and took a slot to 2025 world’s in spain. my friend qualified too, so we get one more big couple’s trip out of this!
some thoughts:
-this is the second m-dot race i’ve done in a month, and also the second in my whole life. i’ve been racing tri since i was a kid but somehow never did an m-dot branded event. i’ll do world’s next year and then i’m probably done with m-dot for a while. they put on a good show, but at a very high premium, and there are a lot of adventures i want to have at independent/different format races.
-this course was open to traffic, which in a few places on the bike felt quite sketchy.
-at one point a marshal came up to a rider near me and said, “hey, this is your second warning!” i wish they’d hand out penalties instead of multiple warnings - this was up at the pointy end of the field and everyone riding around me knew better than to need multiple reminders.
-losing my nutrition on the bike might have cost me a tiny bit. i think also having had a vasectomy a few weeks before the race also cost me a bit - overall fitness was OK but i felt the lack of sharpness after having had my feet up before a short build/taper. overall, i might have been able to find a few minutes but i think i pretty much played all the cards i had on race day.
-a very similar performance saw me finish 27th in my age group at 70.3 switzerland, and 5th in my age group in muskoka.