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.

Multisport Canada Training Article

Gluteus Medius - an endurance athlete's best friend

       My inspiration for writing this post is that I am currently dealing with an injury that has overstayed its welcome and worst of all could have easily been prevented. It is running related and is (of course) knee pain. I don't know the exact diagnosis, runner's knee, patellofemoral syndrome, iliotibial band syndrome? It doesn't really matter because the culprit for all of these, and many, many... many other running related injuries seems to relate back to the same thing: a weak or underused glut med. I'm not trying to oversimplify the diagnosis or treatment of these injuries, just reporting on my experience and the experience of other runners/triathletes who have encountered similar struggles. I would still recommend seeing a physiotherapist, I am currently getting fantastic treatment at K-town Physio in Kingston and would not be as far along in my recovery as I am if not for them. But that's not the point of this post, I believe that common injuries like this can be prevented by working in the right exercises to your gym routine.

        First I want to convince you that the glut med is the most important muscle for you as a triathlete, duathlete or runner (I suppose the anal sphincter is quite important as well, but I am going to focus on running specific muscles). I'm not going to pretend to be a biomechanics expert (or even competent really) but the primary function of the glut med with respect to running is hip stabilization. When you take a step, your glut med activates (unless you are me), and this prevents the femur from turning in, thus maintaining alignment of the leg and most importantly facilitating smooth movement of the patella within its joint. If the glut med is weak and/or does not activate when you take a step during a run, your knee bends inwards (known as knee valgus), and depending on the severity the patella rubs up against surfaces it's not supposed to within the knee joint. This can cause inflammation and pain, and I am told is very sensitive and difficult to heal once aggravated (and I am beginning to believe it). Other muscles in your body attempt to correct for your glut med not activating, and in doing so become over worked, tight and just augment the problem (TFL & IT band anyone?). This next point is important, once your body gets used to running this way, it is difficult to change the neural patterning. You are trying to re-teach it to activate the glut med while you run, after it has become ingrained in your brain for however many years to run the way you currently do. This style of running then continues and unbeknownst to you, you are putting yourself at risk. Everything is going great, you are running proud that you have been injury free for years, laughing at your friends water running in the pool (oh ya, me again), and eventually something sets it off. It could be new shoes, running on a different surface, increased mileage, running off the bike, anything really. And instead of being proactive with this problem, you are forced to rehab an injury. I would like to add that a weak glut med does not only increase risk of knee injuries, but improper alignment stemming from the hip can cause all kinds of problems. This all sounds like a headache, but not to worry, there are exercises to strengthen the glut med and teach it to activate while you run.

        Glut med exercises aren't difficult to do, but can be difficult to do correctly. Probably the most difficult thing is to actually get it firing/contracting. The best way to learn is to get someone who knows what they're doing show you (like a physio). Although this isn't always practical based on your budget/coverage, time constraints, physio availability. What I found helped me was to look for images of the glut med so you can see where it is, where it attaches, and the movement it facilitates. This will help you to visualize moving it when attempting to activate it during exercise. What really helps me is placing my hand over the area that should be contracting and feeling for a contraction when I do the exercise. This is a controlled movement with emphasis placed on getting the muscle to activate. It may take some time and focus at first to get it to activate, but once you've got it, it becomes much easier. This won't happen in a single session, it'll take weeks.

        An interesting theory I have recently come across (I'm not sure how valid it is, but interesting nevertheless) is that people who sit a lot during the day (like grad students) are most susceptible to having this problem. Like I mentioned earlier, the glut med is a stabilizer muscle, it's active when you are standing or walking. Therefore, if you spend large portions of the day on your feet the strength and muscle memory of the glut is maintained and you are better able to activate it while you run. On the flip side, if you spend most of the day sitting at the computer watching trailers for Jurassic World and playing Clash of Clans the glut gets weak and feeble. A 'use it or lose it' type of situation. That's why I have designed a standing workplace at my desk in the lab.

Now I can play Clash of Clans and activate my gluts all at the same time - productivity.

I know the ergonomists in the department will be cringing at my neck posture... but anything for my gluts.

        In conclusion, try to use your gluts frequently during the day and work some targeted exercises into your gym routine to ensure your body remembers how to use them. Hopefully this will drastically decrease your risk of getting runner's knee and other related, very preventable injuries. I'm willing to bet that if every runner and triathlete regularly, properly worked on firing and strengthening their glut med, physiotherapy clinics would see a lot less of us.

First race recap

Race recap #1

As I compete in the Multisport Canada Recharge with Milk triathlon series this season I will be providing post race reports on all of the races I do within the series. As I mentioned before my season schedule is on the LPC hurdle project page.

In the meantime I've been busy racing XC and track throughout the fall and winter and wanted to use this post to pick a race to recap from this past season. No doubt it's been a very successful year, probably my strongest ever with undeniably some of my best all-time performances. Despite all of that it was clear to me which event to choose. Some say it's not a real race. Some say it's the only real race. Boasting a field more competitive than some of the open T&F meets, I am of course referring to the coveted¹ annual Highway 2 McDonald's Challenge (or H2MC as the regulars call it). Complete with video and all.

The rules are simple: begin at the JDUC at Queen's (naively known to most of campus as the University Center, but correctly known to us as the official H2MC start/finish line). Proceed to run through downtown Kingston using any route you see fit to the McDonalds on the base (a trek slightly under 4k), eat a double big mac meal, and run back. On the line is pride, respect and dignity, all of which are lost pretty quickly into this one. For your viewing pleasure I included the leg of everyone indulging in their McDonalds, and removed the sections in which some of those people, umm, resurfaced that McDonalds. The footage is taken via a GoPro from a headmount attached to one of the competitors:

me

I'm not a very talented video editor, but it gets the point across.

Official results are still being complied by the H2MC task force. In the meantime check out the video here.

1 I'm not kidding when I say this is coveted. It is taken quite seriously.

Introduction and background

There comes a time in every athlete's life when they decide to start a blog. I've come to learn it's as inevitable as shaving your legs or peeing in your wetsuit (other kinds of athletes do these things too right?). I was skeptical at first, about the blog I mean, but I now see it as a great opportunity to share stories, experiences, lessons and expertise with like-minded individuals. My first post will be a short one but it will set the scene for who I am and where I'm coming from.

The following is a disclosure of my life in a few bullet points:

- I was born in the (unofficial) baseball diamond capital of Ontario, a small village just outside of Kingston known as Inverary. It is said that there are enough baseball diamonds within the village to field its entire population. Although this fact is irrelevant, and for that matter completely made up, the point is it's small. Small enough that I have a single running route, and naturally know which houses own dogs the entire way.

- I attended LaSalle high school in the east end of Kingston, which is where I saw my first bit of athletic success with a trip to OFSAA XC in grade 10.

That's me on the right with bowl hair cut, which was cool back then (it wasn't)

- The next stage of my life took place just a short trip down the 401 to the city of Guelph (or Kingston 2 as I call it), where I attended the University of Guelph. This is where I met my soon to be coach Mark Linseman and teamLPC owner James Loaring in 2012. I have been a member of LPC ever since and am fortunate enough to be on the Hurdle Project team for elite and up-and-coming triathletes.

- I have since returned to Kingston to complete my Master's in Clinical Exercise Physiology at Queen's University. I do my running with the varsity team which has helped more than I could have imagined. Most recently, I am one of the lucky few to be named to the Multisport Canada Recharge with Milk Ambassador Team. As a result, this summer I will be competing in various Recharge with Milk Triathlon Series races for the coveted series prizes. My upcoming races can be found on my LPC Hurdle Project page (linked above).

Simply enough, my goals for this blog are to present what I have learned through my time as a triathlete with the hope of providing helpful and relevant advice to fellow endurance athletes of all levels. I will do my best to make the posts informative, entertaining and most importantly relatable.