Well it’s been a while so I guess it’s time to catch up.  Unlike other years, this year for me has seen a heavier focus on the later part of the year in terms of endurance events.  Kimberly and I moved to Edmonton last fall, and had to adjust to a longer winter and shorter summer than we were used to in Ottawa.  Our first race of the year was going to be the Great White North Triathlon, but due to a collective lack of training and fitness in the early part of the year we decided to consolidate our individual entries into a relay entry.  It turned out to be a fun day and a really good way to kick-start some serious training.

My Strava file for the bike course is here:  http://www.strava.com/activities/65486119

(Above – Running towards the finish line at the Great White North Triathlon)

The next big goal was the inaugural Challenge Penticton, which we had signed up for last fall as a relay team.  Kim would do the swim, I would bike, and our friend Eric would run the marathon.  It was difficult at first to find good cycling routes in Edmonton as we were both completely unfamiliar with the city, but I joined a local cycling club (Juventus) and through them I was able to meet a few people and discover some good roads to ride on around the city.  It was a bit surreal at first to see oil wells in the middle of huge pastures full of cattle, but it didn’t take long for me to begin to appreciate the local flavour of the quiet country roads.

Arriving in Penticton for the race was pretty exciting.  I’d heard so much about this landmark course but had never seen or ridden any of it, and with Challenge stepping in after the city’s “falling out” with Ironman, I was excited to be a part of the rebuilding year.  Race morning started out cool and gusty.  The water was looking choppy which did not bode well for a smooth and fast swim for Kim.  We bumped into a friend from the Ottawa Triathlon Club, who was also doing the swim as part of a relay team, so that gave Kim somebody to share her nervous energy with prior to the race start.
As the time ticked by and the age group waves made their way along the single-loop swim course, it was finally time for the Relay teams to go into the water for the start.  Despite tough conditions, Kim did a stellar job and was out of the water in an hour, 20 minutes and change and handed me the timing chip in the Relay staging area.

As soon as the bike course made its way out of Penticton, I was bombarded with gorgeous landscapes!  The scenery and natural beauty of the area were definitely the highlight of the bike course for me.  Not to mention the net downhill and tailwind for the first 65 km of the course!  It was a quick ride down to Osoyoos, and then the course got tough.  Richter pass was the first big challenge and although the gradient wasn’t all that tough, it was long enough to put the first real burn into my legs for the day.  The downhill that followed was fun, but would have been much better without the congestion of traffic along the route.  It was a real traffic jam up there, which was unfortunate but the shoulder was wide enough that it didn’t interfere too much with the riders. I’m pretty sure I heard a rattlesnake in the rocks on the side of the road at some point along here!

(Ascending the Yellow Lake climb)

After the downhill came the rollers – a series of ups and downs that are perfect for someone who likes to power over a short incline and scream down the other side.  I ended up passing through these more quickly than I expected and then had a long, flat stretch of road into Keremeos before the dreaded out-and-back part of the course. Now when I say “dreaded”, I don’t mean it was the hardest part of the course – far from it.  I think the out-and-back makes it mentally challenging because you know it’s only there to add the necessary km’s to the course… your sole purpose for riding this section is to add distance to your ride! It was around here that I realized I wasn’t hydrating adequately and began to experience some cramping in my hamstrings. Rather than “putting the hammer down” for the last 40km of the ride, I ended up nursing my way to the foot of the Yellow Lake climb where I managed to pull myself over the top and was rewarded with a long decsent into the finish. As challenging as the two big climbs and rollers are, the long decent at the finish definitely makes the course a bit easier.

I rolled back into transition with a time of 5:44 and ran to the relay staging area to hand the timing chip off to Eric (for all of you data geeks out there, my Strava file for the bike is located here: http://www.strava.com/activities/78070757).  I felt instant relief when that thing was off my ankle!  Eric was our anchor for the day and did an awesome job of the marathon while I recovered from my efforts on the bike.  He also ran into some cramping issues but toughed it out and the three of us ran across the finish line together to cap off an amazing day!

You may hear that the attendance was a bit low, but make no mistake – Challenge puts on a stellar event and they are here to stay! I don’t think it will be long before Challenge Penticton sees the same numbers they did as an Ironman event. I think it’s great to have some competition among the triathlon “brands”. The end result is a better event for the athletes – we all benefit! I also want to plug the relay format for anybody who might be interested. Triathlon is a great sport, but done as a team who supports and encourages one another it just gets elevated to another level. Pick your favourite discipline and let your friends take care of the other two then celebrate together at the end. What a great way to experience an event!

So that’s about it for now.  This fall, the focus switches to running.  I’ll hopefully have another update for you all soon!

I hear a lot of people say that there is no off-season.  Their logic makes sense if you use periodization to plan your training year.  You start of with building strength and base over the winter; then you build into the spring and early summer; then you try to peak as you head into your “A” race.  Even following periodization, the time after you recover from your “A” race, which at one time was thought of as the off-season, is referred to as a transition period, where you are to keep active but do less of the sport that you trained for all season and instead do alternative activities to refresh your mind and body – this period should typically last for 3-4 weeks.  Then you go back into the strength and base conditioning period.  No off-season.

Well the day had finally arrived.  My alarm went off at 4:30am, I ate my bowl of cereal, had a small cup of coffee and then Kimberly and I were on our way to the race site.  There were two options for parking in the morning.  One option was to drive to the Gunstock Mountian resort and shuttle down to the race site.  The other option was an athletes-only parking lot at Ellacoya State Park, right by the swim start.  I had read before-hand that this parking lot would fill up by 5:00am so I wasn’t expecting to find a parking spot but we drove down anyway.  When we got there, vehicles were still being directed in so it looked like we were going to score a parking spot at the race site – and we did!  We would come to regret this later on when we found out that the gate to the parking lot would be locked until 3:15pm since it exited onto the main part of the run course.  Totally understandable, but it also would have been very nice to know this before-hand!

Having arrived with time to kill, I took my time setting up my transition area, waited in line for a bathroom break, re-checked my transition setup and then walked down the beach to the swim start.  We got there early enough that it was still pretty quiet on the beach.  As we sat there at our picnic table looking out at the calm, morning water, it was actually pretty relaxing given that my race was going to start in a little over an hour.  The rest of the athletes slowly filtered over and I saw all of the colour-coded swim caps gather together to get ready for their wave starts.  My wave started 45 minutes after the first wave.  After watching a few of the waves take off, I got into my wetsuit and headed over to join my fellow age-groupers and get ready for the start.  After a very anxious 30 minutes or so, I felt a bit of calm settle over me as I stood there waiting for the race to start.  I didn’t feel any butterflies as I heard the announcer counting down, but I was focused and ready to go and was waiting for the horn to sound.

At 7:45am, we were off!  My wave had 162 starters and it was a bit frantic at the beginning.  I got bumped a few times and probably did my own share of bumping, but after the first 200-250m everybody seemed to be sorting themselves out and I was able to settle into a rhythm.  It was a bit uncomfortable for that first few hundred meters, but once I got settled in I felt really good and the swim seemed to go by a lot more quickly than I had expected.  I swam a bit wide, and as a result didn’t have much traffic to contend with but in the end I came out of the water in 35:37, which was pretty much on par with what I had hoped going into the race.  I had a bit of a surprise coming out of the water when I wasn’t able to un-zip my wetsuit. The zipper was snagged on something and no matter how hard I pulled, it wouldn’t budge! I ran to the wetsuit strippers and thankfully they were able to free me!  After a semi-quick transition it was time for my favourite part of any triathlon – the bike!

The ride started out on the freshly paved highway 11 and went uphill straight away.  I had heard ahead of time about how hilly the Timberman course was, and because of this I had done the majority of my training in Gatineau Park, QC.  I was delighted to find out that even though Timberman was “hilly”, it was definitely no Gatineau Park!  The first hill was pretty gentle and I found myself rolling up it at over 30kph, even with my legs still wobbly from the swim.  After a few km’s of flat or downhill riding, the second hill started.  This one was a bit longer, but also had a pretty gentle gradient and caused no terrible hardships to the legs early on in the bike course.  The course became a bit more rolling after this and the third climb was actually pretty steep, but it was also quite short.  I decided to expend a bit of energy here to power up over it and bomb down the opposite side to being settling in for the ride out to the turnaround.  On the course profile, it looked like a net downhill after the hills to the turnaround, but I was expecting it to be flatter.  It ended up being a very, very fast section of the course.  I wasn’t pushing too hard, but Strava tells me that I averaged very close to 40kph for this 25km section of the course.  My legs felt very comfortable and I wasn’t pushing too hard, fearing the consequences of such pushing once I started the run.  Of course, after the turnaround I had to do this all in the opposite direction and into a slight headwind.  I was maintaining a speed of just over 30kph at this point, so I started pushing a bit harder to bring my speed closer to the mid-30′s.  Once I got back to the hilly section of the course I decided to slow it down a bit because I still had no idea how my legs would feel on the half-marathon after a 90km bike ride.  I spun as much as possible over the hills without slowing too much, and accepted the free speed of the downhills whenever it was available.  I rolled into T2 with a bike split of 2:37:12.  This was also on target for what I had expected – maybe a little bit slower.  Strava file is here: http://www.strava.com/activities/19191478

At this point my whole cheering squad had made it out to the race site and spread themselves out so I saw people on the bike-in; while I was in transition putting my runners on; and then again on the run-out!  Awesome!  I even heard my uncle yelling, “Go Chris!” as I was putting on my shoes in transition.  My T2 was about a minute quicker than T1, and then I shuffled off into the unknown.  What the heck were my legs going to do to me on a half marathon after riding 90 km’s?!

As I was running out of transition, I found myself really concentrating on slowing myself down.  I wanted to make sure I was going too slow, if anything, at the beginning of the run.  I set my Garmin to show my average running pace and kept a careful eye on it, trying to keep it at or just below 5:00/km for at least the first lap.  As I got going, my legs felt pretty good.  “Alright, this is good. Just keep it steady”, I told myself.  I hit the turnaround and still the legs felt good.  Steady… ran up the hill at mile 5 / km 8 and still felt good.  Coming into transition to finish my first lap, I was still chugging along at the same pace.  I felt great!  One lap to go and my legs hadn’t started rebelling yet!  A few km’s into my second lap and I started to feel a dull pain on the outside of my left foot.  Alarms started going off in my head.  Just over 2 weeks ago I had to abandon my final long run after 15km’s because my foot was hurting so much in that exact spot that I thought I was developing a stress fracture.  I had nightmares of having to pull out of Timberman because I couldn’t run.  Once I started having this sensation in my left foot, I tried to keep myself calm by slowing down a bit and trying to focus on landing softly and maintaining good form.  As I was approaching the turnaround for the final time, I seemed to have the foot problem under control but I started to feel a tingling sensation in my right hamstring that I recognized all too well as a fatigued muscle that was wanting to cramp up soon.  Crap.  I started taking cola at the aid stations and again tried to run as smoothly as possible.  There wasn’t going to be a negative split today, but I could at least try to maintain my same pace and finish in a decent time.  The cola seemed to help maintain my energy levels, but my hamstring was still arguing.  Wtih about 2-3 km’s to go, I hit the final climb and shuffled my way up.  The temptation to walk was very strong but I made myself run the whole way up.  2km’s to go.  “You’re close enough now, just take a short walk break.  It won’t hurt you.  In fact, you’ll probably feel stronger after you do”, is what my mind was trying to convince me.  I ignored it and kept running.  1km to go.  I could hear the announcer and the music.  I was almost done!  At this point the adrenaline makes it easier to subdue the voices in your head that want you to immediately stop what you’re doing and go sit down in that nice, shady patch of green grass, and instead I kept my head up, looked ahead and picked up the pace.  As I rounded the corner to the finishing chute I saw a few people ahead of me who were finishing their races as well.  “Those are places in the overall standings. There might even be somebody in your age group up there!”. Well, the voices in my head had certainly changed their tone from a few km’s ago! I did the best impression of a sprint that my tired legs would allow and picked off a few people (including one person in my age group ;), crossing the line with a run time of 1:47:06 and a total time of 5:05:05 (http://www.strava.com/activities/19191479).  I did it!

I staggered through the finishing area, allowing a volunteer to remove my timing chip, grabbing my finisher medal and a white cap soaked in cold water (very refreshing!).  My family was waiting to greet and congratulate me.  We took a few photos, then my Dad and Uncles made a quick exit to get in a round of golf. They invited me but I politely declined ;).

So my first half-Ironman is done, and it was a great success!  I went in with so many unknowns in terms of pacing, and how my body would react when running a half-marathon after a long bike ride.  I am very pleased to have pulled it off with no real problems to speak of, and I had a really great race!  There will be another 70.3 in my future, that is certain, and hopefully I’ll be able to build on my successes from Timberman.

-Chris

I am going to try to do this in two different parts, starting with the day before the race.  We got to our cottage in Laconia, NH late Friday afternoon.  I went up to Gunstock mountain resort for the athlete check-in, then had dinner and visited with my parents and aunt and uncle before going to try to get a good sleep since I expected sleep would be hard to come by on the night before the race.

On Saturday morning, the plan was to drive down to where the swim start would be and go for a short swim to see what conditions would be like on race morning.  However I forgot about one key factor in this plan – there was a sprint triathlon taking place at the same race site!  So I drove down and there was absolutely no parking and no way to get to the beach other than driving all the way up to Gunstock mountain resort and taking the shuttle all the way back. Okay, fine. If I must! So we hopped on the shuttle and I went for a short swim along the sprint triathlon course that was setup. The water was very, very shallow for a good 100m out from the beach, but it was really clear and the temperature was just about perfect.  I swam for only about 15 minutes and everything felt good so I got out of the water and made my way back to the shuttle.  We shuttled back up to Gunstock and then drove back to our cottage… 3 hours later!  3 hours of my day for a 15 minute swim.  One strike against Timberman, but since I didn’t really have too much else planned that day it ended up not being a big deal.

After getting back I wanted to go for a short ride to spin the legs out and also check out part of the bike course.  I rode out from our cottage towards the race course and everything on the bike was working well, the legs felt really good, and I climbed about halfway up the first climb on the course, which was a lot less steep than I was expecting.  After riding back to the cottage it was time to be boring for the rest of the day.  Yeah, my family had arrived in force and barbecued some hamburgers and were having wine and beer on the beach… the day before Timberman.  I had a plate of spaghetti and tomato sauce and a few glasses of water.  Dammit, why couldn’t I just do the race BEFORE it was vacation time?

Well other than being very jealous of my vacationing family I did manage to rest and relax and wasn’t as nervous or anxious as I had expected.  Sleep came quickly but was a bit restless.  Big day tomorrow!

-Chris