For those of you who aren’t super familiar with this kind of thing the bulk of your training ends between 10 and 14 days prior to the race at which point your body can no longer reap the benefits of high intensity or high endurance training in time for the race. Two weeks prior to the race I simulated the race over the course of 2 days, a 40 minute lake swim followed up by 2.5 hours of cycling with some triathlon club friends (interpret this as “go hard or go home”). The next night I ran a 2:05 half marathon at consistent but not fast pace. Based on that I took a good guess at what I thought were reasonable goals for the race coming up in 2 weeks. I figured 40 minutes swim, 3:10 on the bike and hopefully be able to hold things together under 2 hours on the run. That would allow me to go under 6 hours which I thought would be an excellent first crack at that race distance. If things went well I imagined I might be able to bike 32 kph with no wind and maybe run as fast as I did last summer at this distance which was 1:55. That would put me closer to the 5 hours 30 min mark for a best-case scenario.

During the 2 weeks prior to your race just because you won’t directly benefit in terms of strength or fitness you’re not going to benefit by laying on your back and getting fat, but you’re also not supposed to go out and do hard strength workouts. This wasn’t exactly how things panned out—Intervarsity Christian Fellowship held a leadership-retreat slash canoeing-adventure the weekend prior. I took it relatively easy i.e. not trying to race down the river, but I did solo a canoe for more than 4 hours but that’s another story. I wasn’t feeling to sore when I arrived back in Edmonton, Derek and I ran 32 minutes at 4:45 pace and I felt great. I headed to the pool Tuesday after work and that was a completely different story. My shoulders were super tight and I was having a tough time getting any speed in my turnover. Perhaps super repetitive use of relatively unused muscles was a bad idea, who would have guessed? I called things quits after only swimming a kilometer somewhat frustrated and, to be honest, more than a bit worried. Wednesday we (tri club) made our traditional trip out to the lake to go swim, I took it relatively easy and because I could focus on breathing in choppy water my shoulders didn’t cry bloody murder, I ran 26 minutes on 4:20 pace out of the water and could tell that I was starting to get antsy, not having done more than a 2.5 hour workout in more than a week.

Race morning arrived soon enough: I claimed the 5th best spot in transition for my bike, made good friends with a bottle of SPF 45, and put in about 600 calories for breakfast before 6:00 am. The race started at 8:00 am sharp and was 2 laps of the lake. I got in behind some good feet from the start and was able to follow in their draft and keep my sighting to a minimum. My first lap was 1X:XX but all I could see on my watch at the time was the 1, so I knew I was on track for a good swim but had no idea that I was on track for a really good swim. I lost the good feet for the second lap and breathed in a bit of water so I was a bit slower for round 2 but still climbed out in 36:27. Needless to say, I was surprised and also pleased.

I passed more than a dozen people in transition and ran into a bit of trouble knocking a bottle out of a cage while leaping onto my bike. I was concentrating on getting my foot into the dangling shoe and it cost about 20 seconds.

I cruised out onto the course, passing 3 and being passed by 3 others in the first half hour. I started eating at the 25 minute mark and got 400 calories in within the first 70 minutes. The wind was calm and the sun was in and out. By the time I reached the first aid station I had passed about a half dozen more people, this is where the bike course gets hilly.

I was no longer gaining quickly on those ahead of me and put in 200 more calories by the time I made it to the turn around. I passed a pair of guys in my age group right before the turn around. You needed to cross a cattle grate twice right at the end and I lost the same bottle again here because the cage was slightly bent and wouldn’t hold it tightly. I was passed by those two people whom I quickly re-passed. I had a tough time staying focused between kms 50 and 60 but by the time I made it to the big hill and ate a powerbar I was refocused and kept myself relaxed and my cadence high. It was a good thing I got that under control because a head wind cropped up and I really needed to concentrate on keeping an aerodynamic body position. I reeled in about 5 more people on the last quarter of the bike, including the top two females. I didn’t put in quite as much fuel on the return as on the way out, finishing the bike with 1050 calories in me. I didn’t want to start the run full and because I had met my target of > 280 cals/hour I wasn’t super concerned. I was off the bike in 3:05:34.

T2 was very quick and I passed two or three people there, I was instantly passed by one guy on the run, I ran the first 2 kms alone and was really concentrating hard to keep my turnover high, descending the hill into the park I could certainly tell that I had pushed hard on the second half of the bike and took a couple E-load salt tablets right away. A guy named Kevin slowly caught me from behind and I decided I would try and stay with him to see what kind of pace he planned on running. We cruised through the 5 km mark in 23 minutes. I said I thought I should have been closer to 25 and he agreed that he was a bit eager as well. We slowed gradually to an 8 minute mile pace and we stuck together at that pace for quite a long time. I took 200 calories of gel on top of the gatorade.

Kevin got away coming up hear break hill from the valley but I caught him at the top. We continued through the majority of the second lap together but coming up with 3 kms to the finish I walked an aid station trying to get in two full cups of gatorade, Kevin didn’t and put in a gap. I kept pace with Kevin (maintaining 8 min miles) for 1 more km but it was really starting to hurt and I couldn’t quite catch him. With 2 kms to go I couldn’t keep the 8 min/mile pace and Kevin started to pick things up. I slowly fell away, I took caffeine at the last aid station and walked the steepest portion of Heart-Break-Hill. I managed to run all the way to the finish but was having a terrible time doing so. With about 200 meters to the finish the lead female caught me and ran right past, you don’t need to give me a hard time about being beat by a girl because my mom already did. I couldn’t do anything other than try to keep moving at that point but finished the run in 1:45:54. Almost 10 minutes faster than my half-marathon personal best (without going for a bike ride).

Overall my time was 5:27:54, more than 2 minutes faster than my “best case scenario”. My last 2 kms took about 12 minutes, obviously falling back a bit from my pace earlier in the race, I guess those 2 minutes faster in the first 5 kms came back to get me at the end. Anyhow, all that turned out to be good enough for third place in my age group. So I’ve got a cool soapstone trophy and a big bronze medal (because this was the provincial championship).

• Detailed Results Page
• More Photos

I was a bit worried when I went and jumped in the pool on Tuesday after work and felt like my shoulders were wrapped in tensor bandages. Everything was tight and a fast stroke turnover was not on the menu for the day. I gave up after about a kilometer and went to sit in the sauna, hoping that the muscles which were obviously a bit tense from the canoe trip this past weekend would loosen up relatively quickly.

Wednesday is synonymous with going to the lake if you’re part of the summer Triathlon club at UofA. I figured that I’d better go for the swim even though swimming on Tuesday was a massive struggle. I showed up on the beach and the water was pretty cold. Not exactly the best way to loosen up tight shoulders I thought to myself. We jumped in and got to work swimming the Great White North Triathlon swim course (2 clicks) and I felt really smooth which was super. I won’t be swimming again until Saturday but things should be alright, I don’t have any residual muscle fatigue from the past weekend.

The IVCF leadership team (minus Lilia) took off to Rocky Mtn House this past weekend to spend some time on the North Saskatchewan River getting to catch up with one another, do some planning for the next school year, and also to beef up on canoe skills.

Our trip was around 80 river kilometers, 6 hours the first day fron Saunders to the Devil’s Elbow where we camped overnight and then 4 hours the next day from Devils Elbow down into town in Rocky. An odd number of canoeists meant that there was a boat to Solo down the river all weekend. We took Ryan Lempers’ play boat along which proved to be a challenge but certainly an entertaining one. Steve and I spent the most time in there which was kinda odd because it’s not built for anyone close to 6 foot 5 inches tall. Some fun was had on Fishers where I ran the big ledge and climbed out of a curler that was about as tall as I was when kneeling in the boat.

Coming only 1 weekend before the big race it probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do but I brought my bike along and went for a 60km 6 km brick at 6 in the morning on Friday. I felt quite good on the bike so early in the morning which is a good sign, I haven’t had a ton of early morning workouts this season.

Following a 41 minute open water swim (in and around 2.0 kms) I headed out on the roads surrounding cooking lake for a little bit of speed work with Lucas from Tri club, a couple hard sets and a pretty solid east-south-easterly wind made for a good hard workout. I’ll admit we threw in a 15 km easy section in the middle but I ended with approx a 32-33 kph average speed. Map of the excursion.

I tried out my pearl-izumi racing top for the first time and it felt pretty good, gels stay in the pocket and it’s nice and tight (aero!). It leaves a little gap between the top of my shorts and the bottom of the back of my jersey, sunscreen would have been a good idea for that little patch, ’nuff said. I’ve decided upon nutrition for the race; powerbar and 4 gels, and gatorade, if there are any bananas on course I may take 1/2. I have to see if there are gels at aid stations on the run, if not I will run with one, taking it before the hill out of fish creek park (km 8 or so).

I finished the logo for the Engineering Physics summer clothing order 2007.

Piranha is a 3:1 mixture of sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) and Hydrogen Peroxide (H₂O₂), used for cleaning organic deposits in the nanofab, the UofA’s microfabrication facility. It is also , of course, the name of a flesh eating fish found in the Amazon river basin. For more information or to order clothing check out this document.

I was checking the weather from the CBC.ca website and saw a link for a “Falcon cam”. So naturally I get distracted from trying to figure out what the high is tomorrow for my excursion to Half-Moon lake and decide to take a peek at the said falcon cam. Following a short download I was greeted by a falcon pulling strips of flesh from a dead gopher in it’s talons and feeding it to it’s young. It wasn’t quite what I expected when I decided to follow the link, my imagination was more along the lines of hoping I was lucky enough to see the bird while actually there sitting on some eggs. Click Here to see the falcon cam.

I made my way out to Devon this evening which amounted to an 85 km round trip. Plenty of wind, luckily the bulk of it was predominantly a sidewind but that still makes you concentrate. I was 1 hour and 29 minutes on the way out, and then tweaked the height of my seat amounting to about 2 minutes. I then made it to the door 12 seconds under 3 hours taking a slightly longer ride home (2 km more). Click Here to see the route.

I didn’t take nearly as many calories as I plan to be taking during the race in 2 weeks, 80 calories in my gatorade, 110 calories in a gel and 220 calories in a powerbar. That amounts to just over 130 calories per hour (for those of you who are uuber lazy), about half of what I plan to be consuming in the race. The difference being that I departed directly after a big pasta meal and that I wasn’t climbing out of the water dehydrated and hungry. This weekend I’ve got a swim/bike brick planned with some Tri Club peeps, and I’ll be giving my “250-280 calories per hour plan” a trial run. I’ve done a bike ride trying 800 cals in 2 hours… I felt no gastrointestinal stress but I didn’t run more than half an hour following that. The plan at the moment is 4 gels, 2 bottles gatorade and the “something solid” that I’m undecided on, whatever works this weekend is what I choose.

Google has a new application associated with google maps. They drove down a bunch of roads in San Fransisco and took 360^opictures from the top of a car. Check out the entertainment from A random curbside in San Fransisco. I guess there are cars equipped with cameras I’m not sure if they are allowed to photograph absolutely everything it seems kinda like a good planning tool for illegal behavior. Speaking of which, the aquisition of these photos is breaking at least one law.