It all started with an easy 3 hour drive that turned into an ungodly 5:30 hour drive due to brutal traffic and getting lost. It took me two hours just to get off the island of Montreal. Thanks to this, I arrived at the transition area at 8:45pm and missed the carbo-load dinner. Too bad, I was looking forward to that. I setup camp then pulled a Cameron Brown and picked up some McDonalds, had a beer in my tent to help me sleep and settled down for the night. At around midnight I awoke to find that I had forgotten to put the cover on my tent and was getting rained on, put that sucker on took a pee and the back to sleep. Total sleep time: 06:30:XX
The morning
Was up early in the AM, had two cans of Ensure and a bagel. Met up with Peter_Tye, and also saw Shermy, Chris_G, and a few others. Took care of the porta-potty/body mark/ time chip routine and set up at Transition. Loved how we were racked by AG and had a chance to check out the other 20-24 Men I’d be trying to nail during the day. I figured if I knew any mind games I’d play them then but I don’t so I just made small talk and headed down to the swim start with Shermy.
Swim
The water was warm and I felt comfortable in the water from the start. I’m a useless floating chew toy in the water. Despite what I believe was some good work over the last 6 months in the pool, I still have basically two paces “swimming” and “not swimming”. On the way to Tupper Lake I was listening to some Competitor Radio pod casts and one of the guests was a kid who was paralyzed in one arm and swam 1:25 at IMMOO, holy crap. I swim the same pace as a guy who uses ONE ARM… tabernaque. Total Swim time: 00:42:19, only a minute and change faster then my first HIM last September…
T1 and Bike
For me, this is where the real racing starts. Got into T1 most of the bikes in my AG gone, no problem, I’m used to that. Got going and took it easy for the first 10-15 minutes. Even at this easy pace I was reeling in quite a few people. Saw a girl who had crashed into the back of a parked car, orange Gatorade was everywhere. Hope she was ok but she looked slow to get up. Stomach was feeling fine and managed to take in my first bottle of Infinit quite quickly with no issues. I also, for the first time ever, began using the 15 second passing rule to my advantage. As I’d come up to a slower cyclist I’d get into the draft and use it to slingshot past. This helped me quite a bit, especially on the sections with strong head winds. On the way out, I passed a few people in my AG and would always look relaxed, breath through my nose and drop the hammer as I went by. During the out I felt very strong and spent quite a bit of time between 38-41km/h At the turn around I was feeling great but I had paced myself anticipating that the second half of the ride would be slightly easier then the first. Even if there was a net elevation drop on the back, I was working much harder facing an annoying headwind (ah HA! That’s why I was going so fast on the out!). With about 30km to go I was getting cranky and ‘working’ more. Still managed to keep moving up with the exception of those team triathletes who would come out of nowhere and blast by. Total bike time: 02:34:19
T2 and Run
I had no idea where I was placed when I got to T2 but I thought (wrongly) I had a chance of going top 3. As I was racking the bike I made eye contact with a guy in my AG (lets call him Redguy) just heading out of T2, when he saw me he surged hard out of transition. I was after him but he put about 800 meters on me pretty quick. I thought if I could keep a tractor-beam on him, it was only a matter of time before I passed, I didn’t want the “out of sight out of mind” factor to set in to I worked hard. Still, my legs weren’t feeling fast and I had the sensation that I was shuffling rather then running. MurphysLaw passed me about 2km into the run and it was really great to see a familiar face. I figured I had biked well if I had gotten out there before a Kona stud. After about 20 minutes my legs woke up and suddenly I was really running, I turned the corner and bingo, there was Redguy! I was definitely making up time on him. He was about 50 meters ahead of me when he stopped to walk an aid station. I actually said “YES” with a clinched fist out loud when I saw this. I made the pass and forgot about him… a mistake…
Though very clearly marked, run course was disorienting. All I knew was I was heading towards an out and back but I never really knew when I had got there. All of a sudden I saw what seemed like hundreds of people in front of me. I was thinking how the hell are all these people kicking my ass! Some of them don’t even look that strong! As it happens I had already done the turn around somewhere and was facing the tons of MOP/BOP athletes who were still running ‘out’.
My battle with Redguy
I loved the sections in the woods. I felt so fast there and I was sad when I made my way back to the road. When I did, I looked back and REDGUY was like 100 meters back. I was so shocked I did a double take. About 2-3 minutes later I heard the footsteps of someone who was obviously flying up behind me. I knew it was Redguy and adjusted my pace so I could match him as he came up along side.
We ran at an unsustainable pace for about 3km and it took a lot out of me. Finally we started to slow down but I wanted to try and screw with him. I started adding controlled bursts of speed, would open up a gap, and then rest a let him catch me. I didn’t really know what the hell I was doing but I knew I didn’t want to just run next to him and wait to get dropped. Eventually we hit an aid station and he walked it to fuel up, I skipped it completely and surged and managed to open up a gap, a small one, but a gap. By now I was getting really tired and was running with a strange gate to alleviate some pain due to some nasty blisters on my feet. With one mile left Redguy closed the gap and REALLY picked it up. I stayed with him and waited for it to pass but it just didn’t. That’s when I realized he was planning to finish off the race at this pace. I tried to hold on but in the end I was not my day. It’s funny because as soon as he got like 1 foot ahead of me my entire pace just slammed down to the ground. I ended up really suffering the last km and couldn’t find the strength to break 4 hours. Still, this was by far the most exciting racing experience of my life. I was totally into the grit and really felt like I was racing not just ‘doing a race’. Next year I’m going to kick Redguy’s ass because he will not have a 6 minute lead on me out of the water. Total run time: 01:40:55
See you next year Redguy.
Total race time 5:00:35 for 6th in the 20-24 AG.
Other highlights
Eating BBQ post race with Sters
Very well organized race
Nice samples in race kit
Perfect racing weather
