Calgary 70.3

Looks like I'm leading a pack...

Sunday August 1, 2010

My mom flung open the bedroom door and says “I slept in and we have to leave right now in order for you to catch the shuttle for the lake!”

I sprung up with only 3 1/2 hours of sleep, grabbed my things and jumped in the car. We pulled up to the shuttles, got body marked and jumped on. It had rained all night here also and it looked to be another cold raining day for us athletes. I caught about 15 minutes of sleep on the ride to the lake. I was welcomed at my transition spot by the TSN crew (TSN is the Canadian ESPN affiliate and they are highlighting my project during the race telecast). So they gathered some early footage for the day. The mosquitos were giant lake side and seemed to be in attack mode. The only form of protection from these giants I could think of was my wetsuit, so on it went. Instead of the swim waves being broken up into every age group they lumped a bunch of age groups together and created fewer larger waves. I thought this was a great idea! The larger wave sizes didn’t seem too big and it prevented athletes from waiting over an hour to start their race. Good call Canada!

Wet Riding.

This swim was very pretty. A clockwise loop around the boats and under the bridge. The water was calm and colder than most of my races this year. I think I enjoy the cooler temps over being hot in the water. When I started the swim I could feel the effort in my shoulders from the previous days efforts, both the swim and sitting in the aero position. I also seemed to have a harder time swimming in a straight line. I settled in and today was gonna be whatever it was gonna be. I ended up having a good swim with a time of 33:56.

So glad that ride is over.... long day in the saddle.

Another switch from the water to wet bike gear. The weather had cleared a bit and we didn’t have rain while biking but the temperature was cooler and the roads were wet and slippery. I took extra caution on the roads as a few riders had gone down already. A crash now would not be worth the extra few seconds a would gain from being aggressive. The legs were heavy and not firing. I felt tired and slow. Last year in this same course I posted a time of 2:28 and this year rolled in at 2:51 - 23 minutes slower than last year and 31 minutes slower than yesterday. That extra time in the saddle sure is noticeable. The TSN crew caught up with me several times and I had a good time biking hard when the camera was rolling. It was great to finally make it to T2 and see my cheering family. This is rare for me to have a dedicated fan club at a race. They were all cheering as I transitioned and I remember saying that this was way harder than yesterday!

"What the hell am I doing?"

I knew that it was going to be a long day on the run course with how heavy my legs were on the bike. I thought there would be no way to get this run under two hours and much walking was going to take place. To my surprise my legs felt better off the bike then they did on it. Still not a blistering time but I mustered up a 1:49:11 half marathon time and felt really good about it. It was fun again to see the TSN guys on the motorbikes filming. I seemed to go faster with them around. I may need to hire my own film crew one day so I go faster all the time:) The entire course was beautiful and really well run. I would rank this race top 3 for the year!

My conclusion in regards to the double 70.3 weekend. Difficult. I would have to say that this was harder than doing a full Ironman.... gasp. I may take flack for this but here are just a few reasons why.

1- The Travel time in between races.

2- The prep time times two (getting the bike set up and all nutrition and gear in order)

3- Logistics

4- Lactic acid to set in between events

Did I win... In my own way yes! 

5- And more.......

Being filmed is a good time!

I am sure this could be argued both ways but either way this was a tough weekend. I hope to stay off my feet and recover this week as I get to race in Boulder next weekend.... off to enjoy a yummy burger with my family.