Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence Triathlon – Race Report

As mentioned in an earlier post, this past Sunday I raced the Olympic distance event at the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence Triathlon (my first ever Olympic distance event – yes, it really was my first Oly).

I wasn’t alone this weekend (not that I ever really am though), as this was truly a family affair! Kirsten joined me in the Olympic, Tyler raced the Sprint Tri and my Dad conquered the Duathlon, while Shane and my Mom cheered us all on.

In all honesty, I barely thought about the race until it hit me on Saturday afternoon - at which point I started to get really nervous and really anxious about it (which, considering I had no real expectations for this race and had planned to treat it more as a hard training day, I thought the amount and level of nerves I was experiencing was a bit odd, but what can you do eh?).

So, let’s see. Like any good triathlon, let’s start with the swim shall we?

My swim was not great. About 5-10 strokes in, my Road ID (which I wear as a medic alert bracelet) got knocked off my wrist. Luckily I saw it flying through the air (and land with a sploosh right in front of me) and was able to grab it and shove it down the front of my wetsuit before it sank to the bottom of dirty old Elk Lake. Unfortunately, the whole event kind of flustered me a bit, as I hadn’t come off my anticoagulants for this race, so I thought it was important that I didn’t go out on the bike without some sort of medic alert on my body. And so, I worried the whole swim that I was going to lose it as I stripped my wetsuit off in T1. Anyway, the few seconds of breast stroking it took to catch it and shove it in my wetsuit, plus my senseless worry, sort of knocked my rhythm out of whack a bit and I just never really felt like I found a good pace or comfortable rhythm after that. Realistically, it wasn’t a terrible swim; I just know I am capable of better.







T1 was a bit slow, mainly because I needed to fish my medic alert out of the chest of my wetsuit (it was still there – yay!) and put it back on my wrist. Other than that though, I managed a relaxed speed and was on my way fairly quickly with a decent ‘flying mount’.

The bike was definitely better than the swim (which doesn’t happen that often for me). After the Victoria Sprint at the end of June, where it felt like my legs were full of cement and hurt like hell, I had kind of decided before this race that my goal for the bike was going to be to focus on my cadence and not try to kill it or muscle up the hills, but just to spin them in hopes of feeling good for the run... and I think I accomplished that.

Admittedly, there were a few moments at the start of the bike where I was asking myself why I didn’t do the sprint and where my quads and hips were hurting pretty good, but once I got into it, I actually enjoyed it. I’ve ridden West Saanich Road enough that it is familiar, but not so much this season that I’m tired of it, so while I knew where I was going and could anticipate some of the ups and downs, it didn’t feel too predictable (if that makes any sort of rambling sense).

Another positive from the bike was my nutrition. I feel like I've been slacking on race nutrition this year, so I was glad I pulled it all together.









T2 was decent. My dismount was pretty good and I felt like I was at the rack pretty quick. I had a weird moment when I first got off the bike where I was quite dizzy and felt really nauseous, but it didn’t last too too long. I put socks on for the run (which I haven’t done in any other race this year) so that definitely slowed me down a little, but otherwise, again, I felt relaxed and quick(ish).

The run was, well, the run. My left calf was up to its usual tricks and was cramping/hurting pretty badly for the first couple km’s, but I guess I knew it was going to go away eventually so I just tried to push through it. I actually felt like I was running really slowly (like painfully slow), but I was kind of at the point mentally where I didn’t really care what my finish time was, I just wanted to finish the race and feel good (both physically and mentally)… so I just kind of plugged along.

I passed a few people and got passed by some as well and surprisingly, I just kind of enjoyed myself – on the run (weird, I know). That said, every time I heard footsteps behind me I expected to see Kirsten go whipping past (which luckily, never happened). When I finally got to the point of about 3 or 4k left I think I picked it up a little and at the end (while it was by no means fast) I was pleasantly surprised that my run time was what it was, as I thought it was going to be much much slower.

So, overall, I’d say it was a good day. I had fun, got a PB (even though that was inevitable considering this was my first Oly), got a surprise 3rd place finish in my age group, and felt really good after the race physically – to the point where I think I probably should have tried to push myself a little harder, haha.

It was also great to see my Dad cross the finish line of his first Duathlon (with a 2nd place AG finish to boot!) - even though I think he's a little crazy for choosing to Run-Bike-Run. Two run legs in one race? No thank you ;)










Most photos courtesy of: Chris Mcdonald at http://www.cjmedia.smugmug.com. One or two courtesy of Mom :)

Miscellaneous Mumbo-Jumbo

Well, it’s that time again ~ time for a random assortment of my thoughts and happenings from the past couple weeks.

As I sit here thinking about what I’ve been up to and what to write about, these are the words and ideas that popped into my brain: Training, Orlando, TessiNERDian 5km, Sri, First Oly, Poop-y Water, Sooke, Le Tour Withdrawl, and finally, long weekend!

Random, non?

So, where to begin… Well, how ‘bout Orlando?

Shane and I spent last week in sunny Florida, getting our Disney on. Well, it wasn’t exactly a vacation, as I was in Orlando for a conference with work. The Tessitura Learning & Community Conference to be exact. Tessitura is the ticketing/development software we use at work and it is used by hundreds of other arts organizations through North America, Australia and the UK. So, imagine a group of Arts nerds mixed with a group of IT nerds, and well, you have the Tessitura Conference. Shane has accurately nicknamed the attendees of this conference – TessiNERDians. He would be correct. Sadly, I suppose I am one of these nerds eh?

Anyway, I digress… The conference is pretty full on with training and info sessions, but this year the organizers scheduled in a fair bit of downtime as well, so Shane and I took advantage of this and spent many an hour at the Disney theme parks.

We road tested cars, soared above California, and travelled the world at Epcot; won the golden Fast Pass at the Magic Kingdom which allowed us to easily launch into space (mountain) before splashing back down to earth. We rock n’ roller coastered our way to terrifying towers and saw stunt spectaculars at Hollywood Studios before venturing into the African Safari and climbing Mount Everest at Animal Kingdom! Phew, that was a lot of stuff to pack into 8 days! It was hot, it was crowded and it was EXPENSIVE, but it was also a lot of fun. I’m definitely a sucker for Disney (and lego bull dogs).



As for training while in Orlando, well, not a lot happened. I did get in a few (HOT) runs and even participated in a 5km fun run/walk that the conference puts on, but really not much else (other than a heck of a lot of walking) took place. I think the downtime may have been needed though and I’m hoping it helped recharge me as I head into the later part of the tri season.

Now, back to the 5km fun run/walk. Last year I was the 4th female overall (just missing out on the prizes) so I vowed to make it to the (virtual) podium this year… and I did! I was the 1st female overall (and top 5 or 6 overall, overall). While the competition really wasn’t that challenging (and the race was only 4.5km according to my Garmin), I had a good run in very very HOT and HUMID weather. I was on pace for a PB and, in all honesty, I wasn’t even pushing as hard as I could have. So yeah, it was my first win, and well, I’ll take it! Oh, and I guess that means I’m the fastest female TessiNERDian, haha.

Back in Victoria and back to reality, I’ve settled back into my regular training routine over the last couple days.

This weekend I will be racing the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence Triathlon. This will be my first time participating in this event, and will be my first Olympic distance triathlon ever! It kind of shocks me sometimes that I’ve never raced this distance. That said, the CRD has posted a health advisory notice regarding Hamsterly Beach at Elk Lake and the lake may get closed due to high levels of fecal coliform (yuck). So, I guess I could potentially be racing in my first Duathlon this weekend. Either way, I guess it will be something new. Regardless of what the race turns out to be (tri or du), I’ve been approaching this event more as a hard training day and don’t have much expectation. In the end, I’m just hoping to get out there, have fun and feel good at the end of it.

I’ll admit, the following weekend in Sooke is when I really hope to pull things together and have a kick ass race!


Other random notes… I’m totally going through le Tour withdrawl. So, a picture of Johnny Hoogerland’s cut up white butt is in order I think. Getting slammed into a barbed wire fence by a French media car really upped this guy's prominence on the internet eh?



And finally, just yesterday I realized that this coming weekend is BC Day and a long weekend! What a great surprise.

HAPPY BC DAY EVERYONE!

J’adore le Tour de France!

I will admit that a large majority of my bike workouts have been on the trainer lately. This is not because of the bad weather, but more so, because I find the best way to start the day, is to pop the bike on the trainer, turn on le Tour and spin away.

I can’t get enough of the Tour really; it has that similar all-encompassing appeal that I feel when the Olympics are on. How can anyone possibly want to watch anything else?

Anyway, other than spending too much time on the trainer and not enough time on the road (although, I did have a great 2hr ride last weekend), training has been going pretty well. The aerobic block has been a nice change from the mass quantities of speed work and I am actually starting to feel slightly refreshed.

I feel like I should be blogging more, but really, I don't feel like I have anything super important, witty or interesting to say.

So, in closing... GO RYDER! GO THOR! GO GARMIN-CERVELO!

Simulation Race

July 3rd I had originally planned to race the Vancouver Sprint, but after having been sick again (the stupid cold that I had fought a few weeks earlier had reared its ugly head once again), I realized it might be good to stay home for the long weekend to relax and try and get better once and for all. A bonus to this was that I figured I might actually get some chores done (nope), and even save some money (nope, I bought new bike shoes – although I did refrain from buying the $50 Lululemon tank top so that's something right?).

So, instead of racing in Vancouver, Kirsten, Tyler (a.k.a. T-Rex) and I did a sort of mock triathlon – a “simulation race” if you will.

We started our day at Thetis (with the swim, naturally). The plan was to get in a bit of a warm up, then swim one loop of the small island. For timing, the first person out was to start the stopwatch when their wetsuit was fully removed, and then stop/lap it when the next person was fully out of their suit, etc. etc. so that we knew our intervals for the start of the bike/run portion.

After our warm up (if you can call a few arm swings and a very short swim a warm up) was complete, we lined up, three wide, chest deep in the waters of Thetis lake. On a count of 3-2-1-GO we were off!

I knew I should be able to beat Kirsten and T-Rex in the water, but I also knew that I needed to build up a good chunk of time if I wanted any chance of holding them off on the bike and run (especially the run) so I tried to find a good pace and rhythm right from the start. It seemed to work and I was pretty comfortable through the majority of the swim. I was fully peeled out of my wetsuit in a time of 17:48.

Kirsten emerged next, followed shortly after by Tyler.

What can you say about T1? Well, longest T1 ever! If this was an Ironman, you would have been disqualified for staying in the tent too long, haha. All jokes aside, it was actually planned out to be a bit of a break between swim and bike, as we headed out to CY Hampson Park in Sidney for a 2 loop bike TT and an out and back 5km run along Lochside Drive.

Since I was first out of the water I got a head start for the next leg of the ‘race’. The bike leg started with a quick transition and then it was time to hammer! The 2 loop course Kelly had laid out was relatively flat and for the most part felt fairly fast (aside from the fact that it felt like we had a headwind no matter which way we were riding – somebody please tell me, how does that happen?).

The course was just shy of 20k (I think about 17.5-18km) and seemed to be over before I knew it (it was definitely a confidence boosting ride). Because of the layout, I was able to catch glimpses of the other two at various points on the route, although it was hard to tell if they were gaining on me or not, so that kept me pushing as hard as I possibly could. Thankfully, I made it to the end of the bike without being passed. *Mini, self-congratulatory fist-pumping ensued

In a perfect world we would have been able to go straight from bike to run like in a real race, but since we needed to lock up our bikes, we had to do the whole finishing time/stopwatch interval thing like we did with the swim. So, needless to say, T2 was also long and not uber-realistic (although, it was not “change of venue” long).

So, now, it all came down to the run. I again got a bit of a head start due to how we finished the previous legs, but I knew both Kirsten and Tyler were (well, are) much stronger runners than me. If they passed me on this leg, that was it, they would have won the ‘race’. Even though it was just for fun, my competitive nature still took over and I was shaking in my sneakers as I began to run.

It was hot and the course felt like it had a few more (long gradual) hills than expected. I tried to run as fast as I could and just hold my pace for as long as possible. At one point a guy riding by on a funny little bike told me I was running 16km/h. I don’t know why, but I found this interaction quite funny. I made the turn around and knew there was only 2.5k to go. I saw Kirsten, and then Tyler and while I had a good distance on them, I also knew they were both totally capable of reeling me back in. The final 500m to 1km of the run felt like it took forever! I will admit to going from being afraid to look over my shoulder to see where they were, to having quick peeks, to finally within about 25m of the finish line, having a good look and realizing I had made it!

I was gutted, but wow, what a fun day. I think it was just what I needed – working at race effort, without the same pressure as a race.



From here, my training is going to focus on more aerobic level work for the next couple weeks, as I was starting to feel a bit of a burn out from all the speed work (and obviously, from all my sickness lately, my immune system is a little stressed). After chatting with Kelly, I think it will be a nice change of pace and should be good for me both physically and mentally.

At this point, I’m planning to close out July with the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence Olympic Distance Triathlon. I’m more interested in doing this event for the length and will probably treat it more as a hard training day than a full out race. The following week, I plan to race in Sooke (sprint) before getting back into the final push before Kelowna at the end of August.

Fingers crossed it all goes according to plan :)

Victoria Sprint - Race Report

My initial reaction when I crossed the finish line on Sunday was to be happy; I had beaten my time from last year at this race by about a minute. I improved my swim, T1, T2 and run times over last years, which is always a good thing and definitely something to be proud of.

However (here comes the 'but'), if I’m completely honest, I was a little disappointed in the race as a whole (damn my high expectations, haha).

So, from the beginning….

My swim was good. The first turn buoy was exceptionally close, and so to put it mildly, it was freakin’ rough and chaotic up to that first turn. Can you say washing machine? In an attempt to escape the crowds a bit, I went slightly wide out of that first turn and found some open water.

Aside from the horrible smell of gasoline that seemed to be hovering on the lake surface as I crossed the back stretch of the swim triangle (did anyone else notice that?), the next bit of the swim went really really well. I found a great rhythm and really just felt strong and relaxed through the whole thing. I came out of the water in a good position and was looking forward to a good hard bike and a solid run.

T1 was also a high point. I cut a few seconds off of last year’s time (good enough to be the 2nd fastest T1 in the women’s field) and I had a great bike mount (if I do say so myself). I was on the road pounding the pedals in no time.

Unfortunately, the bike leg was my main source of disappointment on this race. I don’t know why, but I just felt BAD. Every part of my legs burned and ached with every rotation of the pedals and I just never felt like I found any sort of flow at all. I jockeyed back and forth with a couple women throughout the loop, but for the most part, it seemed like people were passing me as if I was standing still. Top that off with the fact that I felt like I was pretty much hyperventilating the whole time (ugh) and the feeling that I was working WAY too hard for how fast (or slow) I was actually moving, and well, it wasn’t my finest moment. Having never really experienced a bike leg like that before, it’s a bit hard to explain.

Needless to say, I was happy to arrive at T2. My dismount was smooth and I was in and out of transition in 43 seconds (26 seconds faster than last year – yay!). I think I managed to approach the transitions calmly, but with enough speed, that I was in and out without too much thought. (Sometimes I think transitions are actually my strongest part of a short race, haha).

As I was heading out of T2 and onto the run course, I was pretty confident that I was going to have a good run.

My legs were still definitely hurting a bit (my damn calves were screaming!), but I actually felt like I was pushing through it and it seemed like I was moving at an okay pace. I didn’t get passed by anyone (that is until the last 1k when two girls overtook me - they were flying!) and seemed to be holding my position on the run. While I was in the moment and the race was happening (and even right after), I actually didn’t feel like I had a bad run. It wasn’t my best effort ever, but it was okay.

Unfortunately, when I looked at my time after the fact, I was really surprised that, while it was faster than last year at this race, it was slower than just two weeks ago at Shawnigan, and admittedly, I was really disappointed that it took me almost 26 minutes!

I suppose, the source of disappointment with my run came from the fact that I don't feel like I should be running that slow. Much like the bike, I just felt like I was working too hard for how fast I was actually moving.

Negativity aside, it was still a really fun day (there is something really addicting and thrilling about the fast short races) and there were lots of positives. I was really happy with my swim and transitions! There are more races to come this season and, as always, I’ve left some room for improvement.

I guess my perfect race is still out there, just waiting to be had :)

Photo by: Split-Seconds Photography

Also, big love to Kirsten who smashed her pervious Half Iron PB by nearly 20 minutes! That is pretty amazing if you ask me.

It’s almost race day…

Victoria Sprint this weekend at Elk Lake!

So, a few quick and random thoughts as Sunday approaches…

1) I’m actually pretty excited to race. Hoping for some good sunshine on race morning and a beautiful day to be out cheering on all the participants in the Half Iron (especially Kirsten – hopefully she has kicked the horrendous cold and allergies that have been plaguing her this week by the time the gun goes off).

2) Last weekend I had a great training run off the bike at Elk Lake and am hoping to replicate that feeling this weekend in a race setting. Fingers crossed!
[Actually, maybe I just need more positive self-talk – I WILL have a strong run off the bike this Sunday… and a fast swim, speedy transitions and a great bike too, right?]

3) One thing I miss about long course racing – the EAT EAT DRINK DRINK day on the calendar. There is not quite the same need to carbo load for a sprint eh?

4) Last but not least... I’m kinda excited for my new race hoody :)

The Title-less Post

Gosh, the weeks sure have been rolling along…

The weekend of June 4/5 was spent in the sunny Okanagan as Kirsten took on the Oliver Half Iron. Shane and I joined her for the whirlwind trip in order to spend a little time in Penticton with Doug & Di and to pick up our new (to us) barbeque.

Considering what a quick trip it was (arrival late Friday night, departure early Monday morning) it was a really great time and actually felt like a bit of a vacation. The weather was amazingly hot and I managed to get in a couple really good bikes (and even a so-so run). It was so nice to be out on the road in some different (yet still familiar) territory, just ripping it up and working on the bike short tan lines. I love riding in Penticton!

As for the race (and the main reason for the trip), Kirsten did great! The conditions were tough – nearing 30 degrees with not a stitch of wind or shade to be seen. Obviously I can’t speak for her, but I know it wasn’t easy. That said, from a spectating point of view - it was wonderful. I was pleasantly surprised how spectator friendly the course was and Shane and I managed to see Kirsten zip past at various intervals throughout the day without too much effort on our part.

Once home from Penticton it was back into the regular routine of swim, work, run, eat, sleep, bike, work, run, eat, sleep, swim, work… (well, you get the point). Last week actually felt like a fairly heavy week of training, but that will taper off this week as I start to get my head (and body) into race mode for the Victoria Sprint this coming weekend at Elk Lake.

I have to say I’m really looking forward to the Victoria Sprint. I did the sprint distance at this race last year and had a great time. It was so much fun. Also, since I did this last year, I figure I will be able to compare my times and see if my goal of “getting faster” this season is being attained in a race setting.

I have a feeling I might get a few more nerves than I had for Shawnigan… so, fingers crossed that I can pull it all together come race day.