Rose City and the Plans for the Future

The next race on the schedule was the Rose City Long Course Triathlon in Welland, ON on June 26. This was a 2km swim followed by a 56 km bike on a flat course. Heading into the race, I was so pumped about my swimming starting to come back to form thanks to starting to work with a swim coach from Milton, Sheryl Ross. She is amazing, and knows her stuff so well. Her background as a kinesiologist really makes the approach very scientifically based, and has been putting together my swim program which I will be following through the summer, and into the winter. After only 1 session with her I felt my stroke had become that much more efficient. The game plan was to work on basically lengthening out my stroke, so that I'm completing the stroke fully with complete tricep extension, and starting my pull slightly earlier. Also, I've been working hard on maintaining core stability in the water, bilateral breathing, and not lifting my body vertically in the water as I pull through the stroke, so all my power is dedicated to forward movement through the water. So far the workouts have a great mix of drills, and pace work, and it really makes the time fly in the pool, being able to shut down and focus on only my form, and not having to think about what interval I should do next, or combination of intervals to do each day.

So now onto Welland. My swim wave of (ages 18-39) started 1 minute after the 15 pro/elite group. The swim course was amazing. It was at the Flatwater Centre in Welland where they held the rowing events for the paralympics last summer, so it meant that the water was very clean. The course was a simple rectangle swimming about 900 meters out then across to the other side of the river, 900 m back and then back into the swim transition for 2km. Initially, when planning out how long the race would take, my goal time for the swim was 30 minute or 1:30/100m. After the pros went, my wave was sent off. It started at a furious pace, according to my watch I averaged 1:12/100m for the first 200 meters! I reached the 1km mark at 13:46. By approximately 600 meters I caught up to the tail end of the pro/elite group who started a minute before, and began passing. By about 1200 meters I caught a second pack of the pro group and passed them. I completed the 2km in 28:59 for a solid 1:26/100m average pace. This was the sixth fastest swim of the day among all racers in all categories. I'll explain later why I'm especially happy with this result. So now onto my girl Elektra. There was a very long run up to the transition up a set of stairs, and then an even longer run from the transition to the road where we could mount our bikes. Out on the course, the first half was entirely into a headwind (17 mph steady gusting to 30), that was hurting slightly from the left side as well. This meant gearing slightly down to keep my cadence nice and high. I saw up ahead after about 5km a rider slogging it in a big gear, and knew I would catch them shortly. Picked them off pretty quickly and according to strava's estimate, my surge to past was at 816 W, and had been averaging about 300 W for the first 10

kilometres, which is 5.4 W/Kg. After another few kilometres I saw my next victim up ahead by a good margin. It took a while but eventually at about 21km he was within striking distance. I tried to make a move to pass but about 10 m away from him I decided it was not going to be a clean pass so dropped back to a legal distance, regained some energy, then yelled at myself to let er rip. I averaged 340 W (6.1 W/kg) for the next 3 kms, and took a quick look back at the turn, and had him beat. So my position was looking even better. Past another competitor a little later and now made the turn back to the finish. The wind had changed slightly, it was helping a little but was now more of a straight south wind which meant a crosswind. I kept my cool, geared up and pounded it back to the finish. The final 20 km I averaged the highest power average I ever have with 352 W for about 27 minutes. That is 6.3 W/kg!! Tour de France numbers. Over this time I averaged 44.5 km/hr, meaning I completed the 56.5 kms or so in 1:23:13 for an average speed of 41 kph. It was one of the best bikes I've ever done, and my overall time was 1:55 for the win (four in a row). Was hurting bad into that headwind on the first half, but just took it 1 minute at a time. What I was most proud at was that another elite cyclist in my division was neck in neck with me in terms of my bike split, meaning that my swim won me the race, since I was out of the water 4 minutes faster than him. This gives me confidence that I'm not a one trick pony with just being able to win races on the bike, but being able to go toe to toe with some of the better swimmers in the sport which bodes well for my future.

So the game plan is now to do the Niagara Triathlon on July 17 and try to pb the swim. After that I'm hoping my running is back to form, and I'm able to compete in the National Championships which I've qualified for in Nebraska August 14, and then do a half ironman in August as well. After that will likely do Guelph Lake in September, and then another half ironman (Niagara Falls Barrellman) later in September which will be the provincial championships. After that the race season is not quite done, as I would like to do the US National Championships for the Aquabike in Miami in November. Luckily, doing these crazy tough bike workouts right now in the heat of my apartment is probably pretty similar to what weather I can expect in Miami. Today's workout was no joke, 2x7 minutes at 110% FTP, 2X5 minutes at 115% FTP, 1x3min at 120%, 1x 2minutes at 125% FTP. My apartment was 90 degrees Fahrenheit at the time, and with the intensity of the intervals after the fourth interval, I was no lie in tears from the extreme discomfort I was in. I have no idea how but I was able to dig even deeper for the two subsequent intervals with my heart pounding along near maximum, and legs absolutely searing from the lactate surging through them. But how did I make it through, I kept repeating over and over I KNOW I CAN DO THIS. I actually think letting out that emotion stirred up some more adrenaline and helped carry my body through the last two intervals. Forgot to mention that I was carrying a huge amount of fatigue into this workout with a number of difficult workouts in the days prior, including a 172 km long ride from Thornhill to see my grandparents on Canada Day in Trenton. For that ride the final 92 kilometres was completed 2:30 hours for 37 km/hr average speed. It was a beastly ride, and I felt like I could keep going for much longer afterwards which is re-assuring for my future plans to one day compete in Kona for the Ironman World Championships.