Shawnigan Lake is an awesome triathlon. I have done it every year since it began and it is crazy to see how far it has come. The Lifesport crew clearly know how to put on a professional triathlon. This year, there were three distances: Half IM, Olympic, and Sprint. Since I have already done the Half IM and Sprint races, I wanted to do the Olympic, in part to see where I am in my training so far this year.
One of the advantages of having a race run by Lifesport is the pro talent that comes out to this grass routes triathlon. If we were in any other place, it would be a huge deal to have Simon Whitfield, Brent McMahon, as well as other Olympians toeing the start line. Here, it's not even a big deal to look to your left and wave to arguably one of the greatest triathletes ever before your heat starts. Anyways, to my race.
I learned a lot this week. I always learn things after a race, but this weekend was more than usual. Hindsight is 20:20 and now I see what I should have done.
Swim: 24:04.
The swim went fairly well for the first open water of the season. The start was a little crazy, but I managed to tuck in behind 1 guy for most of the swim. I wasn't going 110% hard on the swim, but the draft was nice and the guy ahead was really good at sighting. Since I couldn't see a thing, I felt it was better to be able to follow his bubbles than try and forge ahead on my own. The swim was about 1.5 minutes slower than what I want to do in Australia, so there is definitely room for improvement. Also, my groin was bugging me pretty bad out of the swim, which has never happened before. I can only assume that this is due to the wetsuit. I think I came out of the water in 16th or so.Simon only beat me by 6 minutes ha!
Bike 1:15:18
After T1 I was in 12th place. I started to aggressively attack the bike. I wanted to make up ground on a lot of athletes. The groin was actually getting worse, and it was freaking me out. I have never really been injured since I started triathlon 5 years ago. I figured there was no choice but to just keep pushing it hard and hope that it would go away. (DNFing is not an option)
On the second lap of the bike the groin started to settle down a bit. Either I just stopped noticing the pain or it was going away, I'm not sure. After T2 I was 10th out on the run. That's pretty crazy when I look at the results. I only passed 2 people on the bike! Crazy
Run: 40:59
I was excited to get out on the run. The run is my wheelhouse. I was hoping to catch a lot of people. After the 1st km however, my back started to ache pretty bad. I can onl
y guess that it is from the wetsuit as well, since I have never felt that before either. This extreme lower back soreness and stiffness made me feel a lot more tired that I probably was. I struggled out there. I was hitting 4 minute kms, which is considerably slower than my usual pace. I told myself that everyone was having this hard of time, and to just keep going as fast as possible.
I have always had problems with this run course. Although a beautiful track, the loose gravel slows me down pretty good. It's definitely something to work on. I posted the 6th fastest run of the day. Other than the top 4, the run times seemed pretty slow. I came in 5th overall and 3rd in my age group. Total Time was 1:22.59. If you factor in that the bike course was 4 km longer than a standard Olympic course. I would have finished in 1:15.30, which is roughly 4 minutes faster than last years PB.
One of the advantages of having a race run by Lifesport is the pro talent that comes out to this grass routes triathlon. If we were in any other place, it would be a huge deal to have Simon Whitfield, Brent McMahon, as well as other Olympians toeing the start line. Here, it's not even a big deal to look to your left and wave to arguably one of the greatest triathletes ever before your heat starts. Anyways, to my race.
I learned a lot this week. I always learn things after a race, but this weekend was more than usual. Hindsight is 20:20 and now I see what I should have done.
Swim: 24:04.
The swim went fairly well for the first open water of the season. The start was a little crazy, but I managed to tuck in behind 1 guy for most of the swim. I wasn't going 110% hard on the swim, but the draft was nice and the guy ahead was really good at sighting. Since I couldn't see a thing, I felt it was better to be able to follow his bubbles than try and forge ahead on my own. The swim was about 1.5 minutes slower than what I want to do in Australia, so there is definitely room for improvement. Also, my groin was bugging me pretty bad out of the swim, which has never happened before. I can only assume that this is due to the wetsuit. I think I came out of the water in 16th or so.Simon only beat me by 6 minutes ha!
Bike 1:15:18
After T1 I was in 12th place. I started to aggressively attack the bike. I wanted to make up ground on a lot of athletes. The groin was actually getting worse, and it was freaking me out. I have never really been injured since I started triathlon 5 years ago. I figured there was no choice but to just keep pushing it hard and hope that it would go away. (DNFing is not an option)
On the second lap of the bike the groin started to settle down a bit. Either I just stopped noticing the pain or it was going away, I'm not sure. After T2 I was 10th out on the run. That's pretty crazy when I look at the results. I only passed 2 people on the bike! Crazy
Run: 40:59
I was excited to get out on the run. The run is my wheelhouse. I was hoping to catch a lot of people. After the 1st km however, my back started to ache pretty bad. I can onl
y guess that it is from the wetsuit as well, since I have never felt that before either. This extreme lower back soreness and stiffness made me feel a lot more tired that I probably was. I struggled out there. I was hitting 4 minute kms, which is considerably slower than my usual pace. I told myself that everyone was having this hard of time, and to just keep going as fast as possible.I have always had problems with this run course. Although a beautiful track, the loose gravel slows me down pretty good. It's definitely something to work on. I posted the 6th fastest run of the day. Other than the top 4, the run times seemed pretty slow. I came in 5th overall and 3rd in my age group. Total Time was 1:22.59. If you factor in that the bike course was 4 km longer than a standard Olympic course. I would have finished in 1:15.30, which is roughly 4 minutes faster than last years PB.
I'm not going to lie, I am disappointed. To be slower than expected on two of the three disciplines is hardly a good day. Also, the back soreness and groin scared me. Here is what I need to work on for next time:
1) Do more back exercises to strengthen it up
2) Do at least 1 open water swim per week
3) Get a new bike fit, both for the back but also to optimize my running off the bike
4) Get my running back to form.
5) Stay out of the sun the day before
The one bright spot of the race was that my nutrition went pretty well. After the race we headed back down the island, as I had to work at 5:00. It was the worst shift ever. It was really busy and I was basically sleep walking the whole time.
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