Been a while since my last update so let's get right to it.
K Town (July 31)
A roller coaster of emotions. That pretty much sums up the Kingston Race where I was competing in the Swim/Bike once again. The race was the exact same distance as the Welland Long Course race a month and a bit before hand: 2 km swim followed by a 56 km bike. Although the distance was the same the swim course made the race a totally different monster. In Welland the swim took place in the Pan-Am Flat Water Centre where you were essentially swimming in a massive outdoor pool so the water was beyond calm. In contrast, kingston's swim took place in the Kingston Harbour where the St. Lawrence meets Lake ON. The water here is known for being choppy, and the wind to be fierce. The first few hundred meters I thought, "puff this is nothing," then all of a sudden once we turned south and we now out of the shelter that Fort Henry provided from the waves/current it became like swimming in a wave pool. Kept it together and had a fantastic swim other then the last couple hundred meters. As I neared the swim exit I got confused, and accidently kept going towards and around one of the other bouys nearby (it was the start bouy), and turns out you weren't supposed to go that way. Anyways, what it meant was that I swam probably an extra 150m or so meters. Then into transition. Here the chaos ensued. I pulled my wetsuit off as quick as I could, and ran out of transition with Elektra poised to smoke the bike course which had some rolling hills. I really like rolling hill courses since I find it helps break up the mentally into various segments, and then physically it means I can get up out of the saddle which helps relieve the tension building in my neck and shoulders when I'm tucked into my aerobar position, and with that also helps switch up the muscle demand in my legs to keep the muscles fresher. About 5km to the turnaround, I was really feeling it, and pushing a good amount and a steady amount of wattage. All of a sudden I looked down at my ankle for some reason, and saw my timing chip was not on my ankle. I had a complete meltdown. I got up out of my aerobars and sweared and yelled like I never have in my entire life for a good 10 minutes. I was so angry at myself. I was slowing down to a crawl, because I figured I'm out here killing myself, giving everything I got, and I'm currently not being timed for it which means I can't win no matter what. I was ready to stop at the side of the road and pull out of the race, until I figured I'll just finish the race, and since I have my garmin still running which was on since the gun sounded at the start, I'll just keep my finishing time for my own records and then maybe compare it to what the winning time was just to see where I would stack up. I then re-motivated myself, focused, and put down the hammer at the turn around. I put in a massive surge going past 2 or 3 riders, and passing them like they weren't moving. Then about 10km to the finish I thought, hey wait a second I have the watch on, so why don't I just give the watch to Sportstats (the timing company) and they can verify that I did infact do the correct bike course, and they already have my swim time since they got my time when I entered transition from the water (since the chip was still on at that point), and we'll see if they can still count my time. I pounded to the finish. The second half of the race avg speed was well into the 40s km/hr (43 km) and the last 8km was 45 km/hr. Not bad. I gave my watch to Sportstats right after the race and they very nicely verified my route and time, and counted the result. I won by 5 minutes. What a day.
Orillia (August 14: 750m swim, 33km, 7km run)
Leading into this race, I put in a massive volume of training thanks to being off for a couple of weeks following the conclusion of my last academic unit of my Master of Physiotherapy Program. I had one of my biggest mileage training weeks to date 2 weeks out from the race, with more than 30 hours of training, 25 km swimming, 500 km on the bike, and 80 km running. Yes, I said running. Leading into Kingston I started running about 4 days from the race and started with 15 minutes. I added 5 minutes every day until by the end of that big week following Kingston, I was up to 65 minutes. I was relatively pain free. The week before the race I did two pretty simple workouts at a steady pace: one was a tiny 10 minute tempo, the other was 3x5 minutes at a tempo type pace. The week leading into the race however my biggest issue was widespread tightness/stiffness at the beginning of runs. I would describe it as though for about the first 20 minutes I felt like the tin man. In fact, I had multiple runs that week where after about the first 10 strides I would turn around because the stiffness and widespread pain in my legs was unbearable. I would go inside and try to psyche myself up telling myself after a few kilometers that it will get better. This was mentally very difficult, but powered through continuing to run until race day. This would be the first time all year where I would do the full triathlon with the run leg on the end of it. It was only my second time doing the run portion (one last year) and with this extreme stiffness to start runs I did not know what to expect. Not to mention I had only been running again for 1.5 weeks leading in the race, done minimal pace work, and ran off the bike (brick style) once. That once was the day before the race where I was doing a simple shakeout type of workout just to practice my transition. It was an extremely humid day, and as I pulled into the driveway from the bike, I had my shoes on within 15 seconds or so, and was going to do only about 30 minutes of running. I've run without socks before with little to no issue, but this time with the humidity by about 15 minutes my feet were throbbing and squishing along with water building up in the bed of the insole. Soon irritation on both feet on the medial side of the midfoot started to build, and by the end of the run I had egg sized bloody blisters on both feet . The rest of the day I was unable to put with foot down without extreme pain. So that factor was added on. What it meant was that after a truly phenomenal swim: 10 minutes flat for 750 m, and a good 33km bike (not amazing) averaging 270 W (approx. 5 W/kg) on a hilly and rough road course, I had to take an extra chunk of time in transition to put on a pair of socks. I was down to the leaders by just a bit (there were two pros in the race) but after transition that deficit grew. I started the run and within 100m started saying to my Dad on the sideline I couldn't do it, and was going to pull out. Not only was it the blisters, but even more so my legs were beyond stiff. I was running like the tin man, and was kind of side shuffling along unable to make a half-decent stride. But kept going and somehow managed to have the fastest run split of the day by more than 2 minutes (24:30 for 7km - 3:30/km). Unfortunately despite running almost 2 minutes faster, and biking about 1 minute faster I lost to 2nd place by 12 seconds. How - he was about a minute and a half faster in transition between the two transitions. A beyond frustrating way to lose a race. My problem in T2 was that I trying to move so quickly to catch 2nd, I ended up fumbling around even more trying to put the socks on. Still 3rd aint bad, 1st in my category, and for only my second time ever doing full tri I was content.
Guelph Lake 2 (September 3rd - 750m swim, 30 km bike, 7 km run)
Leading up to this race training was pretty much going flawlessly, until August 29. I woke up that morning and was feeling very nauseous, and had a stomach ache. Biked to work (placement at physio clinic) as I normally would and the nausea, and stomach pains continued and worsened. I kept thinking the feeling would pass, but it didn't. I went for lunch didn't eat much, came back and threw up. It was the first time I've thrown up for as long as I can remember. The nausea and stomach pain was now unbearable and told my boss that I had to go home. I was going to take the bus but the nausea was so bad I figured it would not go well being trapped in a bus, so I biked back to my apartment. Pretty much as soon as I got in the door I threw up again, and continued throwing up for about 3 hours. I felt absolutely dreadful, and could not stand up due to both weakness and without the need to throw up. I crawled into a ball on the floor and cried due to the pain. Soon the pain became just completely too much to handle and called my parents to come down. I continued to throw up, and now had a fever, and a pounding migraine. When the throwing up continued they took me to the hospital where I waited until past midnight to see the doctor who said it was some stomach virus, and gave me bunch of drugs. In the hours leading up to seeing the doctor, I've never been more uncomfortable in my entire life. They were not allowing me to drink anything, so at this point I hadn't had something to drink for pretty much the entire day, so I was completely dehydrated and out of it. Eventually when they had seen me and got me on IV fluids, among other drugs for the severe migraine and nausea, they did not tell me that one of the drugs has a side effect of making people very agitated. Within a couple minutes of getting the medication I lost it. From what I've been told i was wanted to get up and rip out the IV, and was swearing like a sailor. They gave me something to calm down and finally I closed my eyes and actually feel asleep despite the hospital bench I was on causing extreme pain in my back. I woke up and felt half decent, and we went home. Eventually once we got home, I started having diarrhea (sorry if this is so graphic but it's the truth and needs to be told). I did get some sleep and the next morning woke up and felt decent, but the stomach pain (it was more pain than nausea at this point) was still there. I ate a minimalist breakfast (first thing I had eaten in 24 hours) and eventually made our way back to hamilton. The nausea was gone, stomach pain still there, but manned up got on the bike and did an hour and half of tempo stuff. For the most part I was on and off the bike to the washroom, but made it through somehow, I then went to the pool and powered through a tough/fast workout. I still don't know how I had managed to do all this.
Throughout the week the stomach pains continued, and was not eating very much because of it. In addition, my half decent streak of running was over. While I had a great couple runs the weekend before at the end of one of them I started getting a bad pain in my right knee and was unable to run on it at all. I did some water running during the week, but was unable to run period for an entire 7 days leading to the race. I went to the race that Saturday morning with the sole intention of switching into the swim/bike category. I got out of the car did a super slow jog to the trees to go pee, and thought maybe I could try to do the full race. I did a tiny warmup and the knee pain was definetly there, but I thought maybe just maybe if I went completely all out on the bike and built a lead the knee could be somewhat decent to allow me to coast it in for the win. 30 minutes out from the race I decided to give it a go. My main competition in the race was a pro triathlete who was a fantastic swimmer (a varsity swimmer at guelph), and a solid cyclist, and also the one who beat me in Orillia a couple weeks earlier thanks to his phenomenal transitions. My goal was to keep my deficit in the water to less than a minute then to bike harder than I ever had. I had a great pump up speech with my Dad before the race where it started quitely with me saying "What's my name," (for some backstory the name tag on my wetsuit says "Frank the Tank") and my Dad responding quietly Frank the Tank. Then I would say it a little louder, and louder, and louder, until we shouted "What's my name, FRANK THE TANK." Then gave me 3-4 real good slaps on the shoulders and I was psyched. The swim started with an in water start. Because of the amount the water had receded thanks to the dry summer it would take about 3-4 dolphin dives before you could get swimming. The gun sounded I did my first, came up for my second, and the competitor behind me essentially tackled me. I fought them off, did another dolphin dive, and got swimming. Instantly, I felt something might have been wrong. My wrist felt a little lighter than usual and I managed to see down to my wrist underwater only to see my 700$ garmin was not attached to it. I got really pissed, but could not exactly stop to go pick it up from the start with hundred of other swimmers coming behind me. I kept swimming, and after this commotion, the other pro was way up ahead already. I fought and fought with no one to draft off of, and managed to catch up well enough to about 45 seconds to probably one of the top 3 swimmers in the triathlon scene in Ontario. But once again he put another 40 seconds into me in the transition to the bike. At this point I had no clue what my time was, and would have zero data to give me a guide on the bike, no power, no speed, no timer, nothing. I would literally only be able to judged how fast I was going by the burn in my legs. And boy did I make it hurt. I pushed and pushed and pushed, and was essentially time trialing the bike. Eventually I saw Jessey, the leader, up the road, gave myself another pep talk, and put the hammer down. I wish I had some data to now see how many watts I was pushing. By about 14km (1 km before the turnaround) I caught and passed Jessey on one of the many hills, and passed in full on time trial position and didn't say a word, or look over. I hit the turn around and poured on more power, more leg speed, and felt more burn in my legs. They were absolutely screaming at this point to slow down, but I just kept pounding. I didn't look back, didn't do anything expect go into a bigger, and bigger, and then bigger gear until I had no more pushing harder and harder on the pedals. Remember I had no idea what would happen on the run, considering the 100m jog to the trees was the most I ran in a week and really it was probably just faster than walking pace. I entered back into the conservation area and kept pushing hard all the way to the dismount line. In fact, I was going so fast at the dismount line that when a braked to get off the bike my back wheel came up right off the ground like a nosedive and I practically went sailing over my aerobars.
Next I shuffled into transition, had no clue what kind of time I just biked on a hilly course but knew it was pretty fast feeling, and was now onto the run. This would be the first time in my entire running career I would run without a watch of some sort. In fact, I'm kind of known for being probably a little too obsessed with the numbers, in that I have countless amounts of race pictures of me out on course looking down at my watch. Since I have never, even when I first started running, run without a watch I really do not really have a good ability to judge my pace on the run. I guess you could probably go with the same idea as I had on the bike on run so hard that it hurts, but the probably was that I was injured going in so even just shuffling hurt. It hit the 1 km sign and was absolutely convinced I would be caught before I hit the turnaround at 3.5 km. I really believed and felt like I was running 5 min/km. I felt incredibly slow. In addition, in transition when I had put my shoes on, a rock the size of montana lodged into my left shoe, and with every step I took I could feel the rock digging deeper and deeper into my shoe. When I hit the 2 km sign I was sure I was probably running for around 10 minutes, based on both the fact I wasn't breathing particularly hard, and also the speed at which the trees I was running past were going by. My foot was also in agony at this point. Eventually I made it to the turnaround at 3.5 km and figured I would see Jessey momentarily. I kept running and running and still I didn't see him. It was all the way until about 4km when I saw him and figured that meant I had 3 and a half maybe 4 minutes on him and only 3 km to go. I calculated in my head if he kept running 3:40 or so kilometers to catch me I would only need to run about 4:40, and felt that may have been what I was running at this point. Eventually around 5.5 km my legs started feeling half decent and my stride opened up ever so slightly, but the stomach pain started up again, and my foot was just throbbing. I made it to the finishing chute, realized that I was about to win for the first time in the race, and was more shocked than happy. I broke the finishing tape in 1:23:50, almost 4 minutes faster than last years winning time, and won by 4 minutes. I found out afterwards that I had actually run 24:11 for the 7 km which is 3:27/km pace which is pretty darn fast for a triathlon, or any running race period. I was completely shocked when I found that out. I was sure I ran like 30 minutes if not more. When I crossed the finish tape, and didn't even really celebrate. I didn't really know what to do. I was so surprised, shocked, and had a whirlwind of emotions going through my head and body. I had no clue I could run that fast given the week I had leading into the race. I guess maybe the rock helped in a weird way in that my left foot hurt so much because of it, that it took my mind off my right knee. This was undoubtly not only a huge win at a prominent race, but undoubtedly the best win of my career, it terms of both overcoming adversity, and giving everything I had from start to finish. I went after the race to look in the water for my watch but no luck. But the situation was quickly solved as my Dad bought me another one just that afternoon. That'll about wrap up this long post.
Until next time have a good one. In my next post I talk about my race at the Provincial Championships, and a new Sponsorship signing!
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