Woodstock Sprint Triathlon 2016 Post-race Report

The weather forecast the night before the Woodstock triathlon was wild. Not only was it insanely hot, there were thunderstorms all day. Luckily, the thunderstorms held off and it actually turned out to be a nice day... for the spectators. Humid and windy is not exactly great racing conditions, but compared to thunderstorms cancelling the race, I welcomed it with open arms.

This was the first race of the season. After a longgg fall/winter/spring of really solid training, I was ready and excited to finally get the race season underway. This was the first year that I spent the entire 'off' season training with no racing (aka no cross country or indoor track season); just training all the way from October 2015 until, well, now (aside from the Around the Bay 5k in March). The combination of a long winter of training, not having to worry about my thesis this summer (I'm finally a real person with a real job) and because I'm feeling really fit, I have decided to do a lot of racing this summer. Because I enjoy racing local, I'm able to fit in a lot more races because travel time is relatively minor and inexpensive. I am therefore excited that I am back again as an Ambassador for Multisport Canada and the Recharge with Milk Triathlon Series, I will be competing in many of their races this year.

This was the first race that I decided to implement caffeine (a known, legal performance enhancer) into my pre race routine. I stopped at a Tims on the way to the race site and got my medium coffee, which contains 205mg of caffeine. I know from testing this out during workouts (once), that if I finish my coffee 1 hour and 15 mins before the race start, I won't have to go to the bathroom during the race, but the benefits of the caffeine will not have worn off.

My swim has historically not been my strong suit, and this season is no different. The goal therefore for the swim today was to stay relaxed, maintain good form and not kick too much, so I could have a strong showing on the bike and run. The goal was to swim 12:00, which is a reasonable pace for the training I have been doing and one in which I would hopefully not drop too far back in the race. However, I got to the transition zone in about 13:30. This was disappointing but I wasn't going to let it ruin me because I knew I had the potential to post some fast times on the bike and run.

Despite the tough winds on the bike course, I thought my bike went really well. I felt strong and was able to catch and pass about 15 people, which put me into the top 10 heading into the run, my strongest leg of the race.

As soon as I started the run I knew it was not going to be as fast as I was hoping. Maybe it was the tough winds on the bike or the humidity that had developed, but the run was tough. Luckily, I think everyone else in the race felt the same way. I was able to run down a couple more people and finished the race in 7th.

Overall it was a very solid first race of the season. I would like to thank the LPC hurdle project for their ongoing support, as well as Multisport Canada for having me back as an ambassador this year.

Luckily, along with chocolate milk, they had pepsi post race instead of coke.

Next up is the club champs at Guelph Lake next weekend and then Multisport Canada Welland Long Course Triathlon the following weekend.

Winter Recap, Looking Ahead

          The racing season for many of us begins in about 8 weeks at the Multisport Canada Recharge with Milk Woodstock Sprint Triathlon, which is the (un)official rust-breaker for Ontario racing. Throughout the winter we try desperately to find ways to analyze and assess how our training is going: TTs, FTP tests and other assorted acronyms, but the first real test is always that first race. In this blog I'll go over some of my winter results and what some of my goals are for the upcoming season.

          I finished school at Queen's in October (random month to finish, I know) and have subsequently moved back to Guelph. This has allowed me to do a sizable portion of training over the winter with my LPC and Hurdle Project teammates. Aside from the training, I am currently working full-time at Gryph's restaurant on campus (until it closes April 22nd), actively (some may say desperately) looking for a job for the summer and beyond, and doing a sizeable amount of volunteering in the community. Needless to say, I am pretty busy. Despite this, the training is going very well and I have been able to remain remarkably consistent, which is one of my personal goals for the season.

          On February 2nd I swam an 800m TT (time trial). Very much like your stereotypical triathlete, I was more nervous about diving off of the blocks than I was for the TT itself. Turns out I was worried for nothing, it wasn't as bad as I thought (aka they let me avoid the dive and just push off the wall - with only minimal ridicule from my Hurdle Project 'teammates'). My goal was to swim 12 flat, however I ended up going 12:29.5, which was a bit of a disappointing performance.  Later, on February 21st, I swam a much more laid back 800m TT. I came through 400 in 6:00, right on pace, but finished in 12:15. So I am still a little off of my goal for the winter, but like I say, the real test will be the actual races when we get out into the open water.

          March 3rd was the Around the Bay 5k road race that myself and a few other LPCers competed in. There was a snowstorm the night before the race but the morning of, the roads were clear and weather posed no issue. If anything, I seem to perform better in the cold than the heat, so a temperature of about -10 on race day meant it was time to break out the short shorts. The race went well. Around the Bay 5k is 2.5k out and 2.5k back. There was a chilly wind on the way out so I tucked in with a pack and put in a bit of surge at 2k knowing I was very close to goal pace and that this is typically the time in a race where you fall off of pace (as I could feel happening with this pack). The way back was slightly downhill and the wind was at our backs so I put all of my focus on my pace and pushed it to the cool indoor finish line that Around the Bay puts together. My goal for about a year now has been to go sub 16 (something that a few years ago I thought I would never be capable of doing), and I went 15:57.

          The following weekend was the final LPC FTP (functional threshold power) test of the winter. More appropriately named the '20 minutes of unrelenting agony test', it is essentially a 20 minute all-out effort indoors trying to achieve as high of an average power as possible. This 20 minute value is later multiplied by .95 to estimate the power you would be able to hold over an hour of all-out effort, but I will focus on my 20 minute power in this post.  A bit of a history on my FTP tests. In 2015 I did a test in December and again in April, where I improved from 305Watts to 351W. When I did the test this January, the average power I was able to hold over the 20 minutes was 327W, much higher than that time last year. This past weekend I averaged 341W. So a little disappointing from what I thought may have been possible. I weighed in at 75kg before the test, so my relative 20 minute FTP was 4.55W/kg, which is actually similar to last year's because my weight is down a bit this year. But this is the problem with these winter tests is that you can over think and over analyze your results, when really, as I have been saying, the real test is really that first race. I am feeling very strong on the bike and am confident that despite the FTP test results I am stronger than last year, so will not let it deter me.

            This post has been longer than I was expecting, so if you made it this far congratulations, you have too much time on your hands. But I'm glad that you did because I have one more thing to mention, and it is by far the most important. I am thrilled to be a part of the Multisport Canada Recharge with Milk Ambassador team again this year. Their contribution to young/student athletes is invaluable and I hope it doesn't go unnoticed, it certainly doesn't by me. And of course I will be representing LPC and the Hurdle Project again this year and would not be where I am without them.

Look for me at the following races this summer:

Woodstock Sprint Tri

Guelph Lake Olympic Tri (Club Champs)

Welland Long Course Tri

Toronto Triathlon Festival Olympic Tri (Club Team Challenge)

K-Town Long Course Tri

Wasaga Beach Olympic Tri

and once again... the Barrelman Half Iron Distance Tri

             You may have noticed that all of these races are local. Aside from them all being very fun and well organized, there will be more than enough competition at each of them. Look for me at the finish line and feel free to ask me about my race and talk to me about yours.

Niagara Falls Barrelman Triathlon Post-race Report

My first half-iron distance triathlon

       This one had all the ingredients for an interesting experience. After Wasaga Beach, although I was signed up and looking forward to Barrelman, I had contemplated ending my season there because the race didn't go well and I had no idea why, I had felt burnt out and on top of that I was getting REALLY busy with trying to finish my Master's degree. So Mark and I decided that for the next 3 weeks leading up to Barrelman I would take some time off to focus on my thesis and just do what training I could and give Barrelman a go anyway. Over those weeks I had essentially become a narp. Although, a lack of training leading up to a big race is both an excuse for performing poorly and a reason for performing well. I think in this case I really needed the rest and it benefited me quite a bit to take the time off. Although I wasn't as sharp as I would have been with a proper taper I was very well rested and I think it paid off... for the most part.

Emma and I setting up transition before the race

     The set-up of this race is unique in that there are 2 transition zones (you swim in Welland and essentially bike to Niagara Falls and run around the falls). I was worried that this would make things confusing but the system put in place by Multisport Canada to get gear from one transition zone to the other was easy to follow and worked well.

      I am a big advocate of proper nutrition and smart pacing in longer distance races, I think they make all the difference. If you don't pay homage to the pacing or fueling gods in a half-iron distance race you are invoking their wrath and they are pleased to deliver. That's why I engineered a state of the art, long-course fueling enhancement system onto my bike as seen on the left; I taped a ziplock bag to the front of the frame and put jujubes in it. And although it may have made my bike look like the village idiot of the pro rack, it did the trick.

     I was able to get into the open water twice in the 3 weeks after Wasaga Beach leading up to Barrelman and this gave me the opportunity to work on what went wrong during the swim at Wasaga. Spitting in my googles worked like a charm to fix my vision problem and I was able to practice light kicking. The primary goal for the swim at Barrelman was therefore to swim with a very light kick and of course, be able to see out of my goggles. Both of these things went very well during the race and I left the water after the 2k swim feeling great, swimming in 33:33 which is similar to what I swam at the K-town tri earlier in the season.

You get a little glimpse of the Welland canal behind me that we swam in which was really cool.

     My goal for the bike was a fairly ambitious 36kph average over the 89km course. I knew this was possible because the course was flat, however there was a net headwind heading to Niagara Falls which may make this quite difficult. This is where training in Kingston pays off because the wind didn't feel that bad and I ended up averaging 37kph over the course and felt great doing it. I started hurting at about km 60 and almost bonked at about km 80, but considering it was my first half-iron race I think I paced it very well. This was probably my most successful bike ride from any race I've done to date. Here is a video from midway through the course.

    However this is where things got a little rough. As soon as I dismounted my bike and started running it to transition I started to feel some pain in my right knee, similar to my injury from earlier in the season. Not a big deal though, sometimes my knee hurts a little after a hard bike ride and goes away quickly once I start running, and I knew I was in a good spot in the race so could afford a couple slow kms to ease into it a bit. But it just ended up feeling worse and worse. I had to walk-jog most of the run. I had serious thoughts about dropping out at about km 4 but dropping out of races isn't something I've ever done and wasn't something I planned on starting today so I hobbled around the falls twice with lots of walking breaks and finished the race almost an hour slower than I had hoped for.

     I've been getting a lot of 'sorry to hear that' or 'you must be so disappointed's but I actually think my experience with this race was a positive one. Being my first half-iron distance race it was essentially a 'see how it goes' kind of race and I am happy with how I performed on the swim and the bike, and the problems on the run are something Mark and I have all winter to figure out. Overall I am very happy with where I am right now and am looking forward to still improving a lot and having an even stronger season next year.

    Thanks to Multisport Canada for putting me on the 2015 ambassador team, it has helped in more ways than I can explain. And to LPC for having me as a Hurdle Project athlete. It's been a great season. Next up is Multisport Canada's Recharge with Milk Woodstock Triathlon 2016.

Wasaga Beach Olympic Triathlon Post-race Report

A difficult day of racing

      The Multisport Canada Recharge with Milk Wasaga Beach Olympic Triathlon was one of my premiere races this season because it was both the Triathlon Ontario Club Championships and my final MSC series race of the season (and therefore last chance to get some series points). Since this one didn't start until 10:30am on Saturday I left Kingston at 8pm the night before and made my way up to Collingwood to spend the night with Emma and her parents at her grandmothers house (who is also the newest team LPC supporter).

      I got to the race nice and early to scope out the course and get a good swim warm up in. We (LPC) had a solid line up of strong athletes in this one so my plan was to try and get a good draft off of one of them in the swim. I lost them right away, this was just the beginning of what ended up being a really bad day. I hadn't really noticed until now that my goggles consistently fog up really badly, to the point where I can't see 3 feet in front of me. I spend a lot of time in races just trying to figure out where I am in the water and this has to change because it is difficult to focus on good form and going strong when you are constantly worried that you are going off course. This one started to feel less like a race and more like I was just trying to get to the shore in the right spot. Something else I've noticed is that I kick way too much when I race. I am a light kicker in the pool and when training in the open water, but when I race my legs are thrashing all over the place, possibly partially to keep my head above the water when I try to sight. I really noticed it this time because my calfs and hamstrings started cramping up near the end of the swim, to the point where I had to just kind of lie there and wait a couple seconds for it to go away. The run up to transition was interesting (and I think a lot of people felt like this because of the waves during the swim) but I was pretty certain I was going to throw up all over my bike, but luckily I didn't.

       I was ready and excited for a strong, partially tapered bike ride after the training for the bike has gone extremely well this season. It didn't happen. My legs just didn't have it. It felt like I was pushing REALLY hard but just couldn't go fast, like my legs couldn't produce the power despite the effort I was putting in. Anyone who has experienced this will know that it is an extremely frustrating and demoralizing feeling, the kind of which I'm not sure I've ever experienced before as an athlete. The only way I can think to describe it is like something was holding me back, like an invisible rope attached to the back of my bike. There are a few potential reasons I think may have caused this: 1) I am iron deficient again, which I really hope not because I've been vigilant about eating foods with lots of iron and my body doesn't handle the supplements well, 2) I am burnt out after a long XC, track and tri season (in addition to the stress of trying to finish my masters taking a mental toll), or 3) that my over-kicking in the swim tired my legs out (I hope its this one because its easy to blame all of life's problems on the swim). My calf cramped up as the bike progressed as well to the point where I had to slow down a couple times to stretch it out.

       I always have hope that I can still have a strong run and still have a good race. And I knew that I had some really strong teammates to try and chase down which provides me with good motivation to really go for it. One of them being Ryan Power who I saw walking around in transition when I racked my bike, I am still unsure what happened to him that caused him to drop out of the race before the run (an incident with a car I think?). In the first few steps of the run my right calf cramped up badly and I had to stop and stretch it. When I started running again I got a big stomach cramp and hobbled my way to the first km marker in 4:30. At this point I pretty much knew my day was done. I did my best to hold pace and wait for my cramp to go away and try to nail down a decent finishing position still to get some series points. In the end it just wasn't my day, but it happens. Hopefully others can read this and relate and maybe learn something from my experiences.

      Another one of my LPC teammates (and coach) Mark Linseman missed a turn in the run and ended up going an extra km or two, so needless to say it was a bit of a rough day for some of us LPCers.

     Now enough complaining, there were many of us who had a great day. Jackson Laundry won the race with a really impressive 33:30 10k off the bike, Nick Kolodzie held me off for 4th overall and there was an epic sprint finish between Emma Plater and Lauren Heinken for 3rd and 4th on the women's side. Plus many more in the olympic and lots of success in the sprint the next day. I had a good time at Boston Pizza after the race hanging out with the Plater family and some of my LPC teammates and hope to see a lot more of them when I move to Guelph this year.

      Next up for me is figuring out what went wrong and gearing up for Barrelman. I am tired, demoralized and extremely busy trying to get my thesis done so I am taking a week completely off and hoping to get back into the swing of things next week. The race was well organized and Multisport Canada even got the weather to cooperate for us. I am thankful for all of the support from LPC and their Hurdle Project initiative as well as Multisport Canada and their ambassador team program.

Toronto Island Sprint Triathlon 2015 Post-race Report

Big City Race

       The Multisport Canada Recharge with Milk Toronto Island sprint triathlon started with a 4am wake-up in Guelph to get to Toronto and catch the ferry to the island. But this is the life of a student triathlete. I find getting up really early for a race doesn't negatively impact my performance as long as I sleep well in the days leading up to it. Luckily I was able to spend the night in Guelph on Saturday or else I would have had to get up and make the trip from Kingston Sunday morning. It was pretty cool driving through Toronto at 5 in the morning with virtually no traffic, it felt kind of like a scene from The Walking Dead. But then of course after the race you get off of the ferry and there are people everywhere and you don't go more than a few seconds without someone honking their horn and realize you are indeed in a very lively Toronto.

      Despite coach Mark's advice to catch an early ferry Emma and I missed it and caught the 7am departure, with a race start of 8am. It was a bit of scramble to get to the start on time, but at least the run from the outhouse to the beach was a bit of a warm-up.

      The swim felt pretty short compared to the long course race in Kingston a few weeks earlier. However a quick skim of the race results from this race indicates that the swim is an obvious weakness of mine and will be a major focus in my off-season over the winter.

       The bike felt good and ended up being my strongest leg of the race. It was a 2 loop course with lots of turn-arounds, but it was nice and flat making it possible to put out some high speeds. It got a little hectic on the second loop with the other waves entering the course but it was worth it to be able to see who's in front of you throughout the race. With 4 turn-around points I was able to get an idea of who I was gaining on and who was pulling away.

       The run at this race is very fun because it is a 4 loop course, so you are almost always in check with where everyone is in the race. Like the bike, you see everyone multiple times throughout the run (pretty much every few minutes) so you get a good idea of the ground you have to make up on those in front of you and who is coming up behind you. My run was 17:03, which was a little slower than I was hoping for but I don't think I could have ran it any harder than I did. I crossed the line in 5th and ended up getting bumped to 6th by my LPC teammate Lee Rantala who was in a later wave. We've had a lot of close back and forth races in the past couple of years and I am looking forward to a rematch this weekend at Wasaga Beach, where we will be competitors as well as teammates going for the Provincial Club Champs title. Despite not getting the finishing position I was hoping for, in the end I felt that I had a good race. It was also nice being able to race my former Queen's XC teammate Adam Doxtator again, and even though he beat me I'm glad his season is going well.

Me gasping for air like a fish out of water

     I found that this was a really well run event as always by Multisport Canada and it wouldn't be the same without the Recharge with Milk crew out there either. Next up is the Multisport Canada Recharge with Milk Wasaga Beach Olympic Triathlon, which as I mentioned before is home of the Triathlon Ontario Club Championships. Team LPC has a large group coming out and we are looking to repeat as club champs. Most of them I have not seen for a few months so I am looking forward to a bit of a reunion. In addition to the club champs I am looking to pick up some crucial series points this weekend, so as nice as it will be to see everyone, once the race starts it will be all business.

Kingston Long-Course Triathlon 2015 Post-race Report

The Hometown Race

      I had been looking forward to the Multisport Canada Recharge with Milk k-town tri all season and it did not disappoint. The weather was great, the volunteers were awesome and the support from friends and family at the race was amazing. I can safely say I have never before been chased by pac-man to start the run while his (her in this case) ghosts ran beside me shouting encouragement. I'm pretty sure this did actually happen and I wasn't just hallucinating after 2k of swimming and 56.2k of biking.

Oh wait, there it is... do you see it too?

     This was my longest race to date, and the first one where I had to undergo some serious carb-loading. I went from trying to pack higher carb lunches to shamelessly eating muffins and poptarts to reach my goal for carbohydrate intake. In the end it was noticeably more food not all that difficult to do, and I made sure to not eat to the point where I was stuffed or bloated.

       Because I live just north of Kingston I had no trouble getting to the course early and getting in a solid warm-up. The swim felt strong and the wavy lake Ontario waters didn't bother me at all because I am used to Kingston's antics by now having trained in these waters and on these roads quite frequently. Despite that, my swim ended being comparatively very slow to the leaders, which is a weakness I am going to have to work on this off-season.

      I was a bit frazzled (do people still use that word? Frazzled?) in T1. I ran to the wrong side of the bike rack, snuck under the rack and put my helmet on backwards. After sufficiently embarrassing myself spending over a minute in T1 I thankfully decided to stop doing stupid things and head out on the bike. The first bit of the bike felt terrible. My legs were tight, energy-less and it felt like I couldn't produce any power. At that moment I remembered something I read on what I think was Cody Beals' blog (this is why reading blogs is a good thing!) It was that you don't have to feel good to race well. So I decided to test that and see what happens and just go for it. It ended in one of my best bike splits ever. I averaged a faster speed over the long course than I did at the short course last year.

       The goal for the run was proper pacing. This can make a major difference at this distance. It ended up being one of my best paced and well executed runs in recent memory. My first km was exactly on pace, I adjusted the pace going up and down the hills and finished 10s/km faster than my goal.

       I was extremely happy with my performance crossing the line in 4th knowing how many strong racers there were this year. Unfortunately 2 of the guys ahead of me missed a small portion of the bike course and ended up getting DQ'd. Although this bumped me up to 2nd, I would have rather gotten 4th in a more competitive race than 2nd in one where 2 of the strongest guys made a mistake and were DQ'd. But rules are rules.

     Multisport Canada put on a fantastic event. It was well run and the volunteers were great. I am marking this event in my race calendar for many years to come.

Gravenhurst Olympic Triathlon 2015 Post-race Report

My first (full) Olympic distance triathlon

       Gravenhurst 2015 was both my first full Olympic distance triathlon (technically the Garrison Triathlon two weekends ago was but the swim there was shortened due to the weather) and was my first race as a Multisport Canada Ambassador Team member.

       It poured rain in Gravenhurst the night before but luckily the day of the race was nice. The Gravenhurst triathlon is unique in that they drive you out into the middle of the lake in a big boat, push you out and tell you to swim to shore. That's how I remember it anyway. My swim felt strong and steady the whole way through. I had some trouble sighting, I think I did some zigzagging and may have added a bit of extra mileage. That stems from a lack of swimming experience I think and I will continue to work on it. I find it can be tough to know where you are in the water and swimming straight just comes with practice.

        The bike went well. The course was different from previous years due to road construction but Multisport Canada did a great job mapping out a new course for this year and making sure it was well marked and safe with traffic. It consisted of mostly small rolling hills, there wasn't much wind (not compared to the constant never-ending monsoon that is Kingston Ontario anyway) and the temperature was ideal which made for a fast course. I was delighted to average almost 40kph. My bike has come very far since last year and I am learning to translate what I can do in practice and on the trainer to race situations. I believe there is quite a large learning curve with longer distance racing and being able to translate your fitness into race performance is a skill in itself.

       The run was on a challenging hilly course. I wasn't happy with my run while I was doing it because it was much slower than I was anticipating, but learning after the race that everyone felt the same way helped and considering that, I was happy with it. During the Garrison Triathlon I got a stomach cramp about midway through the run. So for Gravenhurst I made sure to drink my full bottle of Gatorade throughout the bike, sacrificed a couple seconds in T2 to take a couple swigs from a separate Gatorade bottle I placed in transition, and used most of the aid stations on the run for water or sport drink. This worked well as I did not cramp at all on the hilly 10k run. I finished 2nd overall behind fellow Multisport Canada Recharge with Milk Ambassador team member Andrew Bolton who blew me out of the water (pun intended) in the swim and pulled away further on the bike. I look forward to trying to close the gap on him in the upcoming Recharge with Milk Triathlon Series races.

       Overall it was a very successful day. The Olympic distance was very manageable, I was finally able to make my mark in the Multisport Canada series points standings, and most importantly I completed the entire race with no knee pain whatsoever. The event was very well organized, there was a tonne of support from spectators, and the area is beautiful. I really like the Canadian cottage-country atmosphere.

     As always I am grateful to be on the Multisport Canada Recharge with Milk Ambassador Team and the LPC Hurdle Project Team, both of which are key to my development. I have a bunch of Multisport Canada Recharge with Milk races coming up this summer culminating in the Niagara Falls Barrelman Triathlon. Next up is the K-town Long Course Triathlon in my backyard, Kingston.