Race Report: Meech Lake Triathlon
As Saturday morning rolled around I was so happy to be doing a tri stationed near us which meant that we didn’t have to get up until 6am! Woohoo! The race was in Gatineau Park, about a 20 minute drive away. We have been to the park many times to swim bike and run so we were much more prepared than last year.
I woke up feeling good and even though it was a cool morning, the weather looked like it would hold up. We packed up the car and got to the park with plenty of time to spare. The hard thing about Meech lake is that the transition zones are about 1km apart, so you have to drop your T1 and T2 stuff off in different places…at least we knew what to expect this year though!
I’m never sure what I should do for a warmup before a race…I always swim for a few minutes before and do some quick strokes to get my HR up but this time I decided to run for a few minutes too and work out some nerves. Then I donned my wetsuit and made my way to the beach (I was glad to have the extra warmth of the wetsuit too since it was pretty chilly!). I was in the 7th wave of 30 swimmers, based on my estimated swim time of 25 minutes. I bade farewell to Cliff as he was in the 3rd heat and waited for my turn.
The Swim
The great thing about wave starts is that it is less crowded and I can get in my groove much quicker. I’ve never been a person who can draft off another swimmer so I would rather just have open water to swim in. I felt the best I ever have in the water even with the waves crashing over me and as I rounded the buoys I felt stronger and stronger. I exited the water and looked at my time: 21:XX minutes! (23:02 total or 1:56 for 100m) Woooohooo! Almost 8 minutes faster than last years swim! I clumsily tore off my wetsuit and ran up to T1 300m away.
The Bike
T1 went reasonably well. I do want to start to work on flying mounts so that is my goal for the next couple weeks. The bike course was the thing I was least looking forward to but I had done it a few times already this spring so I at least felt prepared for the pain! About 1km into the ride there is a 3km climb that kills everybody…it was this hill that would make or break me. I needed to go hard enough to pass tons of people but not too hard that I would blow up later on. I passed probably 20 people on the hill and felt great doing it!
Tackling the rest of the course was mostly up and down with hardly any flats. As Cliff has told me, because I am a small person, there is no way for me to make up time on downhill; I just don’t have the weight on my side but I can make up a lot of time going uphill. That was my strategy and on every hill my goal was to catch 2 or 3 riders, and to get as aero as possible on the downhills. Coming in off of the 22km ride, I felt like I maybe could have gone a little harder on some of the hills but that at least I had lots in the tank for the run! Total time for the bike: 48:59 (avg 28.8 so this still needs some work!!!)
The Run
The run is slowly becoming my strongest suit. I have been working hard on it and the hard work is paying off. The run course was a rolling out and back. Because I started so far back it was hard for me to tell where I was ranked. So off the bike I just set out at a decent pace and said “its only 6.4km! I can do this!” I felt great and passed quite a few people on the run. When I looked at my watch though after the 1st km, it was slow (4:50ish) so I ramped up the speed a bit. I remember passing a girl with 24 on her leg meaning that she was in my age group and noticed she was in a wave way before me so I felt good that I definitely wasn’t last in my age group! I got to see Cliff on his way back to the start line (something that I didn’t get to last year as he was done by the time I started my run!) and we yelled encouragement to each other. There’s nothing like seeing a friendly face during a race! At the turnaround I picked up the pace a little more. I finished the run in 28:30, so a 4:28 pace, which I was happy with, although I was trying for around 4:20. I think the 1st km was what held me back a bit, plus it was a hilly run.
Total time: 1:40:30 (about 20 minutes faster than my race last year!)
So to cap it off, as the awards were being read I surprisingly got 1st in my age group and 15th woman overall. As I told Cliff, last year my goal was to win my age group but I never achieved the goal. This year was all about improving all facets of my race, and I have won 2 AG in the last two weeks! I give a big hats off to the Coach and bf for this accomplishment. :- D
Awesome race Amanda! You should be really really pleased. Kudos to the Coach too.