This race has been on my schedule for awhile and I finally signed up for the olympic at Lake Miguelon last weekend after some soul-searching as I didn't know if I was in the mood to race. Having a taper week definitely helped with that! Although last week, I was still trying to find reasons to not go…smoke from the fires in BC, rain in the forecast, my horoscope told me not to etc.
Saturday morning, after porridge and coffee, Joel and I headed out to the Camrose area. I had a few pre-race workouts to do, and Joel had a 70 km ride to do (no tapers for sprint racers!). The day had actually gotten relatively nice; the sun was out when we pulled into the parking lot. Lake Miquelon is a provincial park that the province just did a lot of work on, so there are lots of paths, trails, and washrooms, plus picnic tables on the beach. We put our suits on while watching a few other racers come in from their swims. There was a few comments about the grossness of the water but I thought I would judge it for myself as they had never done an open swim before. The buoys were already out so we did a 500 m swim. The water wasn't too cold and very murky so you didn't really see anything which is fine by me as I don't want to see the bottom. It tasted pretty bad thought…kind of soapy and salty so I did my best to not drink it.
We went back to Camrose for the night, had supper and were in bed by 9 for the early morning. I was worried that it would be raining when we got up as it was in the forecast for Sunday.
Up at 5 am…ate porridge that we brought to make and some yogurt from the Ramada breakfast bar. No rain yet! Drove to the race start and were probably getting our numbers by 6:30. The sprint started at 8:10 and the olympic at 9 am. In June at Wasa, I made the mistake of not eating anything between my porridge and the race start. This time I had a banana about an hour before the race and I felt better for it. I watched the half iron and sprint racers go off, then did a little run to warm up before putting on my wetsuit. I was a little anxious about the race, not having really any one I knew around but I settled down with my mp3 player.
Then a quick warm up swim to get used to the water and pee!..and then off we went. The swim was relatively uneventful. I tried to concentrate on rolling and pulling with both arms when I remembered…I couldn't really see anyone in the water until you were on top of them but you could feel the turbulence. I had a really hard time sighting as haze/fog had set in, plus one of the buoys was white so I spent some time just sighting on people and the rest trying to make sure I was going towards a buoy and not the middle of the lake…so I think I lost some time here….overall swim time was 34 min and change.
Finally out of the water..and who do I see wet suit stripping, but Joel…he helped out after finishing his race wherever he could. So I got my wet suit off and ran up to my bike…a few 100's meters. Both people beside me were getting their stuff on and even though I was putting on a jacket, I still left transition before them. Transition was not that easy as we ran along the grass than up a dirt/gravel hill to the paved road. Finally on the paved road, and I was excited to get on my bike. I settled down with some gatorade to get rid of the lake water taste from my mouth and found a pace I wanted to hold. Which meant that I started to pass some people while a few men passed me. I think I caught about 10ish people and about 10 men passed me….I'm guessing some olympic and half iron man on their second loop cause they were passing me with fancy wheels and tri bikes. I ended up averaging 30 km/hr on the bike portion which was 43 km long…so a little longer than usual. There weren't a lot of cars and the course was a little rolly with lots of wind. I went back and forth on HR between upper zone 2 and zone 3 and had a hard time deciding what I wanted. I think I could have gone harder…I'm really torn with my effort here. I didn't want to kill my legs for the run but wasn't sure if my HR was just lower than normal due to the cooler temps….so finally back into transition…down the dirt/gravel hill, and I think it was pretty quick…I looked at the olympic rack and thought…hey at least half the bikes aren't back yet. Yay me! I'm turning into a cyclist.
Then onto the run. T2 was quicker than T1 and I used the tips from our camp in May. Turn your foot into your shoe, stay bent over while you do this. I ran out for the 10km trail run portion which I had assumed would be relatively flat. Well I was wrong. If you want to do a hilly 10 km, come to this race. It is a 5 km loop. There was a climb out of transition and then it was up or down for the next 4 km. There was a 1 km flat stretch near transition. I kept my effort in zone 3 and walked a couple of hill on the first loop, passing a few people and a few people passed me and then got up to zone 4 on the second loop. Here again, I wasn't sure what to do with effort. The last 20 min were starting to hurt and I was grimacing going up the hills. I had to tell myself that I had been running zone 4 intervals in training, and it was time to pull that out. I drank water and walked for a few seconds at the aid stations.
So in the end, I finished at 3hr 11min…
And my thoughts…I thought I would be faster. Why not? Swim - I wasted a lot of time sighting as I would sight and not be able to see the buoy, so had to sight again. I also felt I was going off-course a bit so changed my sighting from every 9-12 strokes to every 6 so I think I lost some time here. Bike - 3 km longer than typical length. I could have gone harder. Run - HILLY…I did this 10 km in 1:01 which is probably reasonable for my current flat 10 km time of 56:xx…still I could have picked it up in the first lap.
This was a fun small race..about 200 people in try-a tri, sprint, olympic, and half iron. Great campground if you wanted to come with families. Well run…volunteers where they needed to be. I'll probably do it again…as long as I do some hilly run training! It would be a hard half iron to run the hilly loop 4 times but it was a qualifier for world's.
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