Back At It

I feel like every post begins with me saying I am going to try to blog more often, but I am a busy guy so blogging sometimes falls on the back burner.


Since my last update not much has changed. Still training away and putting in hours at MultiSport Zone so I can pay for all my racing and equipment. Training has been going really well with one minor hiccup last week when my ankle/Achilles flared up after running on some gravel roads. Luckily Jenn Entwistle fixed me up and gave me the go ahead to race this past weekend at MultiSport Canada Huronia Olympic distance triathlon.


With nasty weather rolling in overnight we were in for an interesting race. Luckily I arrived early on Friday and was able to drive the course. I knew there would be some slick corners, and I would have to be a bit cautious. 


With fear of thunderstorms rolling in the swim was shortened to two loops and when this was done the course went from 1500m to about 1400m. I wanted a proper 1500m so I made sure to swim all over the place. Really I just could not sight to save my life which is weird because usually I am pretty decent at swimming straight. I came out in 19:51 which is the slowest pace I have swam this year. However, I did not know the course was short until after so when I heard 19:50 I was like damn I am flying lets get rolling on the bike.


Coach Cliff wanted some power data from this race so he lent me his powertap disc with the instructions of staying around 220w. Racing with power is so much easier than RPE especially on a hilly course like this one. I was a bit below the goal of 220w as my average was 210w with a normalized power of 215w for a time of 1:05:23 for 40.6k. The first 5k of the course were pretty much uphill and struggled to get into a rhythm here. After that though I managed to lock in and push away. Managed to stay upright through the slick corners even though my rear wheel did start to slide out on one corner. Unfortunately not everyone was so lucky and there was quite a bit of road rash and stories after the race.


Coming into the run I was in a similar position being down approximately 3 minutes on the leaders. I did not panic just made sure to get out at a strong pace. I thought the run was tougher than the bike with some short steep rollers where you would go down, cross a slick wooden bridge, and then back up. If you have ever run a course like this you know how hard it can be to get in a rhythm and unlike the bike there is no power meter for running. At about 3k I passed fellow MultiSport Zone athlete Derek Quick, and he told me the others were just up the road. This was one of the more competitive run fields I have seen at an Ontario race with 8 of the top 10 running under 40 minutes. Unfortunately my 34:38 was only good enough to lose a sprint finish for 2nd.


Next up is my first ITU Continental Cup in Magog, Quebec in a week and a half. I am looking forward to racing some of the best young triathletes in Canada as this is the Canadian U23 National Championships.


I am off to the track to crush some intervals. I am going to try and post a couple more updates before Magog.