The trip north and across the border is beginning to seem like a pretty familiar one. We drove up to South-Western British Columbia for the 3rd time since May for triathlon. This time, we were headed towards the great city of Vancouver, for the Vancouver Half Iron, on the auspicious day of July 4th. July 1 would have been even better! This race would be my second time competing at the half-iron distance, with the first being just two weeks earlier at the Victoria race. It is fair to say that 2 weeks between races doesn’t really allow for much intensity training, however, I was certainly ready to go again by that point.
Race Morning
Race morning came extra early, at 4:15AM. The race start was 6:30AM, so I didn’t actually have a ton of time to play with, but wasn’t going to up any earlier than that. I had cooked steel-cut oats + raisins the night before, so gave the concoction a wee zap in the microwave, and started consuming my early-morning meal. I’ve never eaten quite that early, so eating was a little slow going. Fortunately, the Tour de France had just started, so I watched the 1st stage of the tour as I had my breakfast. This was the stage where a dog ran out on the course, and caused a nasty crash from some fine cyclists. I was certainly hoping to fare better on the bike course a few hours later.
I carefully left the hotel room to avoid waking up my sleeping family. I went downstairs, grabbed some tea and ordered a taxi for the short ride to Locarno beach. The taxi pulled into the beach around 5:15AM, leaving me lots of time for pre-race prep. I really like how friendly tri-folks are. I don’t know of any other sport, at least that I’ve competed in, where it is so typical for competing athletes to share tips, chat casually about the sport and wish each other good luck. All while being body-marked together or standing in the portapotty line.
Swim
The swim took place in the Burrard Inlet, at Locarno Beach. I’ve never raced in salt water, so this swim promised to deliver something new. I was hoping to swim the 1900m in 32 or 33mins, which would line up with my performance (33min) at Victoria. I did swim the course the day before, so I knew that I would have to deal with small swells, and had noticed the presence of the current.
The course was a 2-lapper. The swim felt strong, although I never got into a super-great zone. I think that the current and the swells were the main reason for that. On the way out each time, I felt the swells pushing against my head. On the way in each time, I felt the swells pushing against my feet. In terms of the current, I would say that it mostly just confused me. If I have any more ocean-swims, I’ll need to do some more prep with current to be able to accommodate it better.
The swim ended up being a lot slower than my expectations. Chalk that up to the salt water and the sharks that never showed up to eat me.
Swim (1900m): 35:05 – 88th
Bike
The bike was a 4-lapper, around various sides of the University of British Columbia. Wow; UBC sure is a beautiful University. Sure beats Waterloo.
I am developing a bit of a love/hate relationship with the bike. I had some back-pain issues, again. Fortunately, it showed up later than at Victoria and wasn’t quite as severe. The back pain was uniform across my lower back, as opposed to centered on my right-side SI joint. As strange as it sounds, I found that situation a lot easier to take and to make semi-comfortable. And even stranger, the thing that bugged me most was that I had numbness in my left hand that took ¾ of the bike to go away. That’s a new one.
Anyway, the bike course was hilly enough and had a fair bit of false-flat. I quite enjoy doing laps, so the 4-lapper bike-route was my cup-of-tea. Each lap, I tend to find that you learn a little more about the course and can apply it next time around.
This is going to sound super-naïve, but this race finally delivered home the message of what winter and spring training is all about. This being my first full season of Tri, it has become strongly apparent to me of how serious mileage (which I don’t actually have) under your belt can be a major advantage on the bike. I did 3 bike races this spring, and plan to expand on that next season too.
This is the first time that I placed better on the swim than the bike, and my swim wasn’t too hot. Ouch.
Bike (91km): 2:52:08 – 96th
Run
Finally … to the run.
I had no specific time goal for this leg, other than to run reasonably fast. My main strategy was to run my own race this time. In the past, I’ve gotten caught up with someone else’s pace and then crashed. Not this time.
At about the 4km mark, a guy blew by me. I saw “relay” on his leg, so was quite happy to let him pass by. A couple kms later, we hit an aid station, and I did a few second stroll through as a gulped my water. For some reason, my legs got heavy at that point. A 20-something woman passed by me. I felt the recharge come on and was able to pass her back. She stayed behind me for about 300m. She then flew by me. I stayed at my pace. Soon after, I rounded a corner and saw her and a number of others more slowly running up an incline about to hit a hill. I flew up the incline and hill and never saw any of them again.
After that, I just kept at the faster pace. I was able to hold it w/o any sense of drain, so why not. I would say that I’m still developing the confidence to run at a faster pace. So, at this point, it appears that the game is more mental than physical. That being said, on the 2nd lap, I was starting to feel some not overly pleasant knee-pounding. It was not painful per-se, but it wasn’t giving me a warm-fuzzy feeling either.
About 2km before the final turnaround point of the final lap, I saw my male relay friend from earlier in the run. I was determined to catch him. I told myself that I had to catch him before the turnaround so that I could just focus on the final 3-4km run into the finish w/o any concern for catching anyone. With 500m to go before the turnaround, I caught him. He clearly remembered me. I sped around the turnaround and then last 3-4kms just played themselves out, with an ever-increasing pace.
Run (20km): 1:29.04 – 35th
Overall
Final: 5:01.15– 57th – 12/32 AG – 46/169 Gender -- 228 finishers
I missed the sub-5 hour mark by just over a min. I knew that I wasn’t going to make it at about 20mins before that. At that point, I wasn’t going to make up over a min on the run, since I was kinda cooking at that point. In any case, I was pleased with the race, such that the sub-5 hour thing wasn’t even a concern. In fact, relative to my last race (3km shorter bike), I was aiming for sub 5:10, with an outside sandbag of 5:15. Given that, I was pretty happy with the result.
Closing
The Vancouver venue is a really nice one for a Tri. Running just off the beach and looking into the inlet is pretty incredible. It is the best venue that I’ve experiences so far. Most folks that I’ve talked to have done Victoria, but not Vancouver. Must be the 4th of July thing. I hear that it is an important holiday around here. We did run into another local Microsoftie at the event there, however, she’s Canadian too, so there you go.
We hadn’t been into Vancouver-proper in a while. Wow. Vancouver is a wonderful city. It is so good that someone should award the city the Olympics or something. Right.
We continue to love Kitsilano, although had fun in Stanley Park as well. There is this massive pool in the Park, where just one part of it is a set of 4 or 5 50m lanes. Wow! I can assure you that my body was more than happy moving around like a lobster in the shallow-end of the pool, playing with our 2 kids, as Annie hung out in the swim lanes.
We watched the fireworks as we drove south towards Bellevue. It was fun to watch each cities’ spectacle as me sped down I5. At some point, I could no longer manage to stay awake. Somehow, Marysville turned into Everett, and Everett into Bellevue. My eyes just didn’t want to stay open any longer.
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