Lakeside Sprint Triathlon

The final triathlon in the MSC series, and my first time trial, as I actually did this one last year on my heavy-ass commuter bike. That was also back when I could run, so the times for this year's race would prove to look like someone else had impersonated me by comparison.

It was a super-carpool edition to this race, as I got KB to grab one of the few final spots in this race in the hopes that she could finally do a proper triathlon on her third attempt - so we stuffed ourselves and our bikes into ML's car and took the endless ride to Lakeside, a needle-in-a-haystack somewhere out between Woodstock and London.

Eine kleine rant:
We did arrive a bit late for comfort, and since the race was over-sold and they had rearranged the TA to fit as many bikes as possible, it was quite tight. ML was in his primo fast gentlemen's area near the exit, and KB was pretty close too in the overflow late registrants' area. As usual, the rest of the ladies were stuck in the back. But behold! I see a perfect 4' piece of space at the near end of my AG rack, so I go for it. Well that didn't sit too well with a fast-looking girl to my opposite right. Her towel was taking up most of that space, and she complained that now it would be hard for her to get to her stuff with my front wheel "in the way." Firstly, the amount of space available was exactly per MSC photo instructions. Secondly, this TA was extra-tight, and every piece of space needed to be used. Thirdly, our rack still managed to look exactly the same as at every other tri I'd done this season. All I could think was, "take a look around, princess!" After a polite argument, she let me stay. Geez. I was fairly sure this was the girl whom I expected to win this race, which made this confrontation doubly ridiculous. I had meant to readjust my brakes, which were rubbing as we walked from the car, but she totally made me forget, gah.

I used my wetsuit this time, which probably did as much harm as good - but it was chilly in that little lake. The swim went by as normal for me - slowly. But pretty good sighting. Still a pathetic 10th place out of the water. Taking off the wetsuit wasn't a total tragedy. But my break pads were definitely squealing on the way out of T1, so I had to stop and fiddle with them. Crap.

The nice thing about starting way back out of the swim is you get to pass everybody. It's extremely satisfying. But the not-so-nice thing about it is that you have to pass everybody. I ended up wishing for a pre-recorded sound effect of "on your left," as I got tired of yelling it out. I'm sure the constant passing was eating into my time. Nevertheless, we were flying out to the turnaround with a crazy tailwind. Of course I didn't realize that until we actually did turn around. I just thought I was having a great race! Then BAM. On the way back, it was like we were tethered. It felt worse than climbing a steep hill. I finally got passed by a couple of guys, although they went past me with the familiar whoosh-whoosh of their disc wheels, so can't feel too bad about that! Turned out I had passed 6 women in my AG somewhere in that mass of riders.

I had no idea where I was in my placing heading out for the run, and I knew that provided Princess would win the race, I'd need at least a 6th place finish to overtake her on points and get my 3rd place in the series. One girl my age tried to overtake me right out of T2. Nuh-uh. I put on some speed and left her behind. I started seeing some female racers returning somewhere at 1.5km / 3.5km, Princess included, but it was hard to tell who else was in my AG. I finally caught one girl about 3km in, and we jostled back and forth for a few hundred metres, neither able to drop the other. When we caught up to a few slower people running abreast, I took the outside to pass, and she was left stuck behind them. She couldn't catch me after that. I sprinted in and shook RD John Salt's hand one last time with abundant thank-yous for a wonderful series.

Toronto Triathlon Club on the podium!

This was to be a truly awesome end to a year for both me and my season-long race buddy ML. He finally battled past the super-talented guys in his AG and grabbed a 3rd place podium spot - so well deserved, as that is a seriously competitive group! And then it was my turn - also 3rd! Thank goodness I was able to hold off that one girl and then pass the other one.

To speed up the awards ahead of the kids' races, they would cram both the men and women in each group onto the same podium, so ML and I have an award photo together, yay! Also felt so good to get up there in our club gear, so proud.

On top of that, I got catapulted up to 2nd place in the series, and ML safely locked up 3rd, so we'll be getting even more awards later in the fall. So awesome.

As we were clearing out of the TA, I showed ML the space I had picked for a second opinion - and his second opinion was that this was the perfect place to put another bike. So there.

Swim - 16:41 / 2:14
T1 - 1:57
Bike - 42:05 / 28.5
T2 - 1:01
Run - 24:46 / 4:58

	S	T1	B	T2	R	F
Place in Discipline	10	7	3	13	4	3
Place in Real Time	10	11	4	4	3	3

A comparison to last year's times on the exact same course reveals that... hold on, let me get the data...