MultiSport Canada Sprint Triathlon - Woodstock

The Woodstock Sprint was my first triathlon of the season, first open water swim, first race for my Cervélo P2, and first race since the Yonge Street 10K, which had put me out of running commission for the past 5 weeks. Also my first race with my tri buddy ML, who's been encouraging me and "coaching" me ever since we met by chance standing waist-deep in Lake Ontario at a swim clinic last summer. I was considering switching to the Swim/Bike race, but as I felt better closer to the race, I thought I'd start in the Tri and see what happens.

The official water temperature was 22°, and since I loathe putting on and taking off my wetsuit, I decided to dip a foot in the pond-like Pittock reservoir to test it out. It felt warm like pool water. I hesitated a bit, and looking around, realized that basically everyone was donning their wetsuits. I mulled it over a bit more, but finally decided that this would be a "naked" swim for me. It would be only 500m, so I figured that any time I would gain along that distance would be annihilated in T1 when I'd get stuck in my wetsuit. I jumped in for a few hundred meters of warm-up, and I felt amazing. My new Aquasphere Kaiman goggles were great - I got the bad-ass mirrored lenses this time, way cool. I was also wearing my new Garmin 910XT watch (a.k.a. The Satellite Dish), and it was in Multisport Mode, so I was able to track each discipline plus transitions separately (although couldn't figure out the read-out, so all I'd get is periodic lap reminders, haha).

ML was starting 2 waves and 8mins ahead, so I cheered him off. I did some running ABCs and felt okay. Once we started, it was quite a frenzy in the murky waters, but that's the way I like it. ML had reminded me to pick some sighting points ahead of time, as the bright buoys are hard to see - thank goodness, because I immediately picked out a huge tree in the distance, and that would carry me perfectly straight to the first turn - best sighting ever! I was sprinting this swim, and all I could think was how long can I keep this up before I run out of breath? My strokes felt amazing, but I had no idea how I was doing, as I couldn't really see my competition over the splashing and thrashing. Turns out I finished way back in 8th out of 11.

On the exit, I used my friend CM's advice not to run out of the water, but to let my heart rate calm a bit. I still had a fun time getting my bike shoes on (noob!), but without the dreaded wetsuit, I moved up two spots to 6th on the way out of T1. Shoulda seen me try to get on my bike though - could not click my left pedal, how embarrassing!

The bike course was 20K of what seemed like light rollers, although looking at the elevation profile, it was uphill-rolling-downhill-rolling-uphill-downhill. I'm realizing more and more how much of a misconception I have of elevation on the bike! I decided to hammer this ride as much as I did the swim. I was only passed by two people along the course, one of whom I thought I was racing (she was just out of my AG), so I kept up with her just in case. Positive points developed at training camp: confidence in aero, confidence at high speed, going into rollers at good cadence, being able to check behind me in aero before passing. The ride was thrilling because of how fast this bike can fly. It's like I was cheating. I moved up another two spots into 4th off the bike.

The run was only 4K, but it was so hot at this point. Having not done any brick workouts like last year, I was dragging my legs. I was a bit worried that I'd killed them on the bike, but I also knew that in a field of triathletes, I can always pull a decent run out of my butt regardless of energy. It was a nice course through a park and I passed a bunch of people, but also got passed. I finally started to accelerate with about 500m to go, and I realized I was getting chased by one woman. I know I can out-sprint pretty much anyone at the finish, and that is what I did. Thank goodness - I hung onto 3rd place by 5secs!!

I can't believe I actually placed; I think it was a combination of concerted training in the past few months and sheer luck as to who showed up to my AG. I'd been dreaming of standing on a podium at the MSC series ever since my sprint last year, when I realized I can outrun many other triathletes. It seemed like an impossible dream to catch up in swimming, and especially in biking (and transitions!), but here it is. I'm gonna like this sport.

Official times for 500m / 20K / 4K

12:03 / 1:13 / 41:17 / 0:58 / 19:52

= 1:15:20

I have to pull my actual swim time off my Garmin, sans run-in to T1. I have a feeling I was faster than that in the actual water!
I am quite impressed with my ride time, but I think my bike did most of the work, haha.
A slow run time (should have been closer to 18:00), but with 5 weeks off, I'll take it. Watch out, triathletes - my running legs are making a comeback!

	S	T1	B	T2	R	F
Place in Discipline	8	3	3	3	3	3
Place in Real Time	8	6	4	4	3	3

So looks like other than the naked swim, I was consistently 3rd through the rest of the race.
And if I extrapolate to normal sprint distances and compare to my sprint last year, I would have been 3rd in that race too (as opposed to 12th), despite a much slower swim and run as well. But the racing bike obviously beat the pants off my commuter, haha. Until the next real sprint in July, I'm gonna chalk the slow times up to not using the wetsuit and to being off running.