Banff Bike Fest is arguably Alberta’s most prestigious stage race of the year. It’s not necessarily a stage race that suits my strengths as there is a lot of climbing and I’ve got a lot of mass to move around but I was still very excited to race there, partly just due to the fact that it would be quite hard. The race was composed of 5 stages in the invitational mens race, and as a Cat 3 rider I’d have the opportunity to race 4 of them. I skipped the Thursday evening prologue because I couldn’t take two days off of work for this trip and so just raced Saturday (ITT (Individual Time Trial) in the morning, Criterium in the evening) and then again on Sunday morning (a short 78km hilly 6 lap circuit race).

Saturday morning we arrived early for the TT, and knowing that both myself and Travis had UCI illegal bikes we went an hour before the start to the commissaire to have them checked so we knew what we had to change and adjust before the start. We were both told that our bikes were barely legal. I was a bit puzzled, I was pretty certain that the seat setback was not 50 mm but the jig they had to measure the bike was the final ruling and so we went back to warm-up. I did 25 minutes on the rollers at about 220 watts, just enough to start to get sweating and then hopped off with 10 minutes to the race start, dried myself off and put on the skinsuit and rolled over to the start 3 minutes before my start. The rules are that you have to measure the bike immediately prior to the start, and so he popped it back up on the jig and now it was illegal. I reminded him that I had been there and hour before and it had been legal, now it was too late for him to make such claims, I picked up my bike off the jig and walked away. Travis had the same thing happen to him but he was sent off to go adjust his seat and thus missed his start by 15 seconds and also got his heart rate right up to maximum rushing around before he even started the race.

The course starts with about 2km of false flat out of town and then dips under the highway. We had a tailwind through this section and I found myself going 50kph at about 380 Watts and was content with that. I caught my 30 second man just as we turned right onto the Minnewanka Loop road. The loop begins with a quick descent past cascade ponds and then a very steep climb up towards the turnoff for Johnson Lake. Masa was shooting photos from there and gave me a good scream and I went really hard up that climb. I passed my 1 minute and 90 second guys at the crest of that hill but I was really suffering, I had loaded up the muscles way too much and could hardly keep the legs turning. As we came through a pretty fast section in the trees near Two-Jack Lake I caught and passed my next guy, he could have been my 2 minute man or 2:30. I wasn’t really sure the order of the people as they could have been passing one another by this point.

Leaving the edge of Two-Jack Lake I knew the next rise was the final one before we rode across the dam at Lake Minnewanka and went really hard again but this time managed to hold it together enough to get back up to 50kph across the dam. I caught another person just as we left the edge of the dam and then the descent began where I passed one more person. It was terribly fast and winding but nowhere did I need to touch the brakes, plenty of it required me to stop pedaling through the corners to prevent clipping a pedal on the pavement. The descent was interrupted with short flat sections or little rises which I really spiked my power on to prevent myself from loosing speed on the downhill. I ran 53×12 most of the way, 53×11 wasn’t really necessary. I had been thinking that the descent would be a bit of a break before having to deal with the flat into the headwind once back under the highway. The huge power spikes required to keep the speed up meant that I wasn’t getting any of that anticipated rest on the descent, and I reached the dip under the highway with just about no energy left and a couple kilometers yet to go. The final stretch really put me over the edge. I was doing everything I could to keep my head out of the wind, my forehead was right down on my hands for a few sections and I was just watching the white line beneath me and peeking up to take a quick look for upcoming corners and cars. It was the deepest I had dug myself in on a bike all year, possibly ever. I was killing myself to try and keep up 400 Watts, and if you check the stats I was almost able to do it. I’ll do an in-detail analysis of the power-output from this TT in a few days when I find some time. Perhaps along with the Devon TT next weekend for comparison. Across the line I could barely breathe hard enough and once I had finally got that under control I started coughing quite hard. Only afterward did I realize that this had been done at relatively high altitude compared to Edmonton. It’s nothing crazy high, but when you’re pushing the limit on VO2 max the difference matters. In Edmonton we typically work with 93% of the oxygen at sea level but at Minnewanka we were working with only 84%, the difference is non-negligible.

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The comissaires took forever to deliberate about how they were going to rule on illegal bikes. I hadn’t been the only person to ride an illegal bike, that’s for sure. I had also done everything in my power to comply by the rules. In the end they decided that they had screwed it up badly enough that they couldn’t enforce the rule fairly so it wasn’t applied at all. Lucky for me. I figured my chances of winning were about 25%, 50% chance that I was the fastest person there from Cat 3 and a coin toss on whether or not I’d be punished by the ruling on bike legality. I think this begs the question regarding UCI legality in the best of circumstances. Is it possible to apply these rules fairly in the best of times? I don’t think so. Why are the measurements fixed and not variable by rider size? In some regard I feel like I should have to put my seat even further back the the average person. 50 mm for me will cause crotch pain, but 50 mm for someone who is 5′2” is going to destroy them. I also think it’s a bit of a farce that you’re allowed to cheat a rule about using “a bike that looks like a regular bike” by putting on a saddle (an Adamo) that doesn’t at all look like a regular saddle.

Travis and I got some coffee and then tried to nap in the hotel room for a bit in the afternoon before suiting up again and warming up for the crit. A discussion with Cory before the race had me settled on the following plan. Try and line up with a good position at the start and ride near the front for a while and get a feel for the fastest line through the corners. When an opportunity presented itself I was going to be ready to go for it. I anticipated that someone would go hard from the start and indeed one of the Calgary Cycle guys (I think it was Craig Fraser?) leapt from the gun and had a gap on the peloton. The chase was hard and we ran through in mostly single file for the first 3 or so laps. At this point things slowed down for two laps and people started to look around and scope out who was where. The slowing at the front meant that the group started to bunch up a bit at the back and I was not interested in being in the peloton going two people wide around the corners. I saw an opportunity on the back straight and went hard down the inside past everyone, held my gap and went full gas for a full three loops. A Bow/Cyclemeisters rider sucked my wheel but I was interested in having him along as we had 20 laps to go and didn’t exactly want to do the whole thing myself. It took a lot of convincing to get him to finally take a turn on the front, and even then he was only interested in doing the two easy corners on each lap. Another 5 laps went by, each of us doing a half-lap, and then I convinced him to switch which half we were going to do, but I needed to pull for a whole lap to do it. Our gap had stretched out to about 8 seconds by this point and a few people had tried to come across the gap but they were ultimately unsuccessful and got reeled back by the peloton. We were starting to gain a bit of time on each lap again, and I believe we were up to 12 seconds when my tyre exploded. It was on the third corner, and just as I went to commit to get around the corner my rear tyre went with a loud bang. I overcompensated so hard from skidding out that I tipped over the other direction and landed on my right hand side and slid to a quick stop before I reached the fence. I leapt up and was out of the way long before the next group came through. I guess I could have tried to get a new wheel and get back in the race but I just wasn’t interested at all. As I would learn later, the cable had slipped in the derailleur and I wouldn’t have been able to shift anyways. There was some minor road rash but nothing bad, I have some on my forearm and my greatest worry is that I won’t be able to rest it on the aerobars for the TT workout on Tuesday. When that’s your greatest worry, it’s not really a worry at all.

Sunday morning was the circuit race and we were all lined up and ready by 6:50 for a 7:00am start on wet roads with cloudy skies but the rain wasn’t actually falling. All of ERTC got lined up near the front and was positioned well so I felt the liberty to drill it a bit down the long flat approach to the first hill. Our team-mates would be well positioned by default from the beginning of the race and it would be a good opportunity to make some people near the back of the pack work harder than they wanted to to get up the first hill with the group. I did a lot of pulling on the front with some help from Tim, Travis, Greg, Brett, Neil… a lot of ERTC! We were able to stretch the pack out but unfortunately 50kph wasn’t fast enough on the big fat flat road to thin things out into single-file while everyone was still fresh. We didn’t exactly fly up the first hill but I came over the top about 12th wheel. I was happy with that positioning and the pace dropped, people were a bit gassed already I think. Either that or still in the process of waking up. Stefan then launched an attack and I went with, about 4 of us went for a while, it wasn’t enough to put in any time but we had formed a good gap and it needed to be closed down. The peloton needed to work to do it, not bad. By this point I was really starting to feel a bit worse for wear as a result of the crash the evening before. My hip, which had sustained minor road rash wasn’t feeling too good, one of the supporting muscles that goes around the outside in the glutes was under some duress. I debated pulling the plug and quitting, but then we got to the next couple climbs and descents and I was having quite a bit of fun riding in the rain and so I soldiered on.

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Our first lap was fast and as it slowed down a bit Stefan went up the road with one other person. The gap went out quickly at first but rather abruptly it stopped growing and looked like about 30 seconds. It would hover between 30 second and a minute for the next 4 laps. It rained on and off, sometimes hard and sometimes not. We had a few people jump off the front of the peloton and go across the gap to the break which grew to six at its largest. On the penultimate lap I gapped the field on the final climb and descended the hill as fast as I could go off the front. I had put in some time and when coming through town I was joined by one Rundle-Mountain guy and Cory Dickinson from United. We agreed to give it a shot and took a few pulls each as we began the last lap before being caught by the peloton. I immediately went back to about 12th wheel and sat there biding my time. The last ascent saw the breakaway break apart into a few pairs. I stayed within myself on the final climb, positioned myself well and stayed out of the wind until Tunnel Mountain Campground. At this point I decided that it was time to go. The lead pair from the breakway still had about 15 seconds on the peloton. I attacked up the right and had a gap right away. I quickly leapt across the gap to Stefan and one other who had been in the break with him. I took a little pause here in the draft as a few other people had come across. I let someone else make the next surge to go across and followed a wheel for the next bit up over the second-to-last rise. It was now time to go full out all the way to the finish. The road through here was fast and curvy and the peloton began to shatter. I went as hard as I could over the top of the hill and got it in the big ring and turned the pedals as hard as I could. The final descent was definitely my fastest of the day. Coming into town I had two people on my wheel, the lead pair from the breakaway still had a gap on us by about 5 seconds as we flew along the road. I was positioned second wheel for the sprint and when the third wheel came around from the right I went from the left. In the end the guy starting from two lengths back took third at the line and I wound up third out of our trio (5th overall). I’m not unhappy about the result. If I wasn’t able to make that lead group I wouldn’t have been able to have the chance to sprint for third place. I’ve never made the lead group like that in a race before, and I’ve never won a sprint, so I’ve got to just take this stuff one thing at a time. I made the lead group this time, maybe next time I can make the lead group and have enough left in the tank to take away a few positions in the sprint as well. Good thing I only have to wait until next weekend for the next race.

Raceday arrived at 4:25 which harkens back to Ironman, the only other race I’ve done that started at 7:00am. We weren’t the first to transition by any means but we did get there early enough to pump tyres and get in the line for toilets before the bulk of the other athletes. Travis and I suited up and made the 800m or so walk down to the beach from the transition area. It’s definitely a longer transition than I’ve had to do before but figured it could be used to my advantage if I was smart about it… but that would be getting ahead of myself.

All of the men below age 44 went off at 7 sharp and I lined up slightly to the inside of the bulk of the pack on the first row. I’m not really a first row swimmer in terms of speed but I felt like I was a first row swimmer in terms of confidence if there was some argy-bargy going on and wanted to try it out. The people who were going to swim really fast were all jockeying for a position in the mosh-pit right in the middle of the group. I think it was about 400m to the first buoy and I set out hard, two stroke breathing full tilt to the first buoy and while I watched a lead pack form off on my left I was right near the beginning of the second group. Our group squeezed a bit near the first buoy as the people out on the edges are inevitably drawn in and I caught a few good drafts. From here on around the rest of the 2km loop I really drifted backwards through the pack. Partly due to the hard start meaning I was almost guaranteed to fade but also because of some missing swim fitness as I’ve not sonsistently been in the pool for the past 3 weeks. I couldn’t find great drafts behind people swimming in straight lines but kept swimming. Almost all of it I kept to two stroke breathing as the sunrise was really blinding if I looked to the east, and I was going too hard to restrict myself to four-stroke breathing.

I exited the water in 36:51 for 2kms which amounts to 1:51 per 100m if the course was accurate. Travis was right behind me and he basically swam the same pace as me at the Spring Thaw last month (1:36/100m) and so I’ve got a bit of evidence that the swim may have been a bit long. We could have also just been slow.

Transition was an 800m run with a wetsuit and I adopted a strategy I’d seen on the WTC broadcast from IMNZ where you put the legs of your suit up over your shoulders and run with it on like a backpack. It worked good. The switch from swim to bike is pretty difficult on your body as the blood needs to be redistributed to your legs. A slow jog early meant I let a few spots go by but I got myself under control before picking up my jogging pace and when I got off the painful barefoot pavement run I was able to open it up and run harder across the grass. Taking it easy at the beginning of the long transition meant that I got my HR down a long ways before I was even aboard the bike which meant I was ready to go with some real power once I got aboard. Not having a bib number to wear on the bike meant I just had to grab my helmet and go. I nailed the flying mount and was en-route. All told I passed 35 of the 112 people who swam faster than me in transition. I also passed 5 on the start line who had come to a stop there to clip in and get going. Fast transition skills were worth passing 40 people, and I half jog-walked the first 100m to let my HR settle. I’m going to keep exploiting this advantage of mine with fast transitions until people start practicing this stuff.

The bike in Oliver is two and a “half” laps of a 40km loop and amounts to 93 kms (the half isn’t really 50% but geographically this is a sensible way to describe it). My estimates for race wattage was that I could do between 290 and 300 at a HR of between 150 and 155 bpm. My hopes in the previous weeks was that I might get a chance to try to totally drill the bike and go for broke and then see how the run went. I decided in the days before the race when the forecast was for heat that that wasn’t a good strategy to employ in adverse conditions, if I want to do that experiment I should do it under appropriate circumstances and this was no-such circumstances. I could learn a lot more by successfully deciding to manage a race in the heat than I could by going nuts on the bike and then melting on the run. The plan should be to try for optimal execution (meaning run my best) in tough conditions rather than to try and do a bit of an experiment by riding really hard. The plan was to try and average about 290 for the first lap and to try and pick it up by 10 watts or so, on average, for the second lap. I’ll post more statistics and analysis of the pacing strategy employed once I download and process the recorded file but for now I’ll say that for the first half lap I did 298 Watts, the second I did 299 Watts, the third I did 302 Watts and then I did 318 for the fourth and fifth “half” laps, I forgot to split them apart with the button.

I guess it goes without saying when you swim 36+ minutes on the swim and are a good cyclist that you spend most of the first half of the course passing people. I definitely did that. I caught another cyclist around 15kms into the race who had been just up the road from me for a while and we traded positions a few times. I’d go faster up the hills and he would really push on the descents, I could see that he was running a powertap and could tell he was rather blindly trying to do even watts across the full duration of the course. I felt like it was silly on a rolling course like this to try and maintain watts once I was over 50kph and so he’d go by me on the downhills pedalling hard while I soft pedaled (soft pedalling for me is still 200+ watts when I’m in race-mode but it was a big drop from the 330-340 I did most of the rest of the time) and then I’d pass him on the ascents. The trades went back and forth for about 30kms and he always rode legally behind me when he was back there, a great competitor and he came and found me after the race as well to have a brief chat. When I would get passed I’d drop back and typically took in some food or drink while I waited for the gap to stretch out to 12+ meters to ride legally myself. It worked well enough, I got in a fair amount of nutrition in this section as a result of him coming past on probably half a dozen occasions – bonus. After we rode through town again I had noticed my HR was only high 140’s and that I could really pick it up and be stronger in the second half of the ride. I put in a few solid sections here and the average watts started to rise. I often found myself doing high 300s on the uphills but my HR was never drifting above 155 so I kept pushing. It was a good feeling as I was now in sparse territory, starting to lap the very back of the pack athletes and not always able to see the next person up the road who was on the lead lap. I kept the gas on though and really felt rewarded when I could spot another fast athlete up the road and then slowly reel them in. I maintained solid efforts on the uphills and pedalled easy when above 50kph.

My nutrition strategy was to eat 800 calories of shot-bloks on the bike and drink Gatorade for 400 calories minimum, switching to water if I felt like my stomach was running on the edge of success with that amount of sugar. The stomach felt fine which indicated my pace on the bike wasn’t an overestimate and that was confirmed by my HR being at the low end of my goal spectrum. In the end I got in about 600 calories of Gatorade and didn’t need to drink much water, it meant I was going to go into the run well fuelled and could focus on drinking for thirst and hydration rather than having to try and slam gels down my throat which in 29 degree heat wouldn’t be terribly palatable.

I hopped off the bike in 7^th position overall, having passed 66 people on the bike course. The bike course is 93kms long and I averaged 39.8kph over it. I had hoped for 40 or a bit more, but after riding it I realized that the course was tougher than I had imagined and with a few spots on each lap where you needed to scrub speed for navigation it’s not really fair to compare it to GWN where I didn’t touch the brakes for the entire 90kms with the exception of the U-turn turnaround. There is hardly a flat section, some really fast areas and also lots of gentle climbing at 1% or 2% grade. The kind of stuff that’ll waste lots of time or cause a lot of stress if you’re not paying very good attention. Travis watched a combination of speed and grade on his EDGE500 to stay alert which was pretty intelligent, I wish I’d thought about that strategy last year before the powermeter, I just tried to check in on my watts on occasion.

T2 was OK, but I had forgotten to turn on my garmin during the final portion of the bike ride so I didn’t have satellite reception from the beginning of the run. I started out with a little internal debate with myself about how I was going to run as fast as I could over the full course in the heat. I decided that monitoring heart-rate was probably the most appropriate feedback combined of course with how I was feeling. Using feedback from pace was going to be misleading because it was hot and it was going to take more bloodflow than normal to the skin to keep me cool. I also hadn’t done any realistic testing of what sort of run pace I could expect in the previous few weeks to base those estimates from. By the time I was a mile into the run I had dialled in my HR to a goal of 160 bpm and was maintaining it with controlled breathing. I anticipated that as the temperature kept rising and I accumulated fatigue that this would result in a fade in pace but still figured that would be the fastest way to the finish under these conditions. If you’re suffering heat stress and that’s the cause of your slowing I don’t think you can really escape that by going easier at the beginning. Anticipating a bit of pace-fade would also help me stay focussed and strong when the time came and I needed to deal with the mental consequences of seeing that you’re slowing down and can’t do much about it.

There were quite a few aid stations on the run and I did my best to get in a cup of calorie containing beverage (Coke when I could get it, or Gatorade) and then put a cup of water down my shirt and a sponge of water onto the top of my head. I was passed by a few people but when they came past me they were really really flying and I didn’t even consider latching on. Two of them went on to run 1:23:XX in hot conditions which is really fast considering the course was around 22.05kms long (by my calculations from the GPS). I kept up the running and tried not to think too much about anything other than keeping track of the kilometres and monitoring my heart rate and temperature regulation. At around 160bpm I did the first 5kms in 20:20 for about a 4:04 pace. I came through 10kms in 41:46, for an average pace of 4:17 for the second quarter. Onto the second lap of the run course I was going pretty good, I was focussed and was still running in a top 10 position. I started feeding myself some positive vibes at this point which is a bit early in the race, still at least 40 minutes to go. Normally I don’t need to start thinking positive halfway through the run, I don’t know why, perhaps I don’t normally think I have 40 minutes of pep-talk to give to myself.

I rolled through 15 kms in 63:22 for a 4:19 average pace for the split. Fading but still going, still ahead of the arbitrary 4:20 pace I figured was probably realistic based on my condition. I was happy and at the far turnaround on the second lap I realized I was gaining on someone ahead of me. He was a younger guy, and pretty skinny. I knew that if it came down to a footrace with a mile left I didn’t really have a chance purely due to turnover. If I wanted to reel back that slot I had to do it now, and put in a gap and then try and hold it to the finish. I was pretty hurting, my pace was fading due to the heat, and my right foot had gone a bit numb for a while. I was now running in water logged shoes because of how much water I had been pouring on myself. If I had instinctively decided that I had no chance to catch him I would have finished and been satisfied but somehow I had the desire to go for it, to roll the dice and risk a total detonation with the hope of trying to earn another place on that ladder. I went hard, the 160 bpm guideline was now thrown out the window and I was going between 166 and 170 bpm. I hit 20 kms at 84:36 for a 5 km split pace of 4:15/km. Things were going in a different direction, and it wasn’t because the clouds had come out or the temperature had started to drop, I was digging a big hole and climbing right in. I had made the pass with about 3.5 kms to go and immediately gone hard to create a gap, my fastest 500m split in there was a 2:02/500m done at a blazing 4:04 pace while I was opening the gap! I kept myself focussed on the task at hand which was to run as fast as I could to the finish line and not play any more games.

The final 2.05km (these splits were all according to my measurement, not the course indicators) I wrapped up going totally crazy and speeding up on each 500m portion bringing me to a 1:32:53, and a final pace the last section averaging 4:03/km and doing the final 500 under 4 minute pace. I was breathing as hard as I could breathe which is an interesting thing to be doing after 4.5 hours of exercise, I’ve never done that in a HIM before, it feels a lot different than breathing as hard as you can in a 15-20 minute XC run race. It’s really satisfying to be pushing yourself that hard late in the race but along with that comes a huge amount of pain. My HR peaked at 187bpm. Crossing the finish line was fantastic and I had totally raced as hard as I could. I had a bit of a stumble and loss of balance when one of the volunteers threw a towel on me so they took me to medical to keep an eye on me. It took about 5 minutes for my HR to come down to 100 after the finish, normally something that happens in between 40 and 80 seconds in normal conditions. My blood pressure was 138/53 for those of you who are interested. After recovering in medical for a while they let me go just in time to grab a couple bottles of Gatorade before getting to cheer Travis across the finish line. Travis was frustrated by his race coming in slower than last year, but the heat definitely was a factor and his decision to try and run according to pace early on the run made for a hard fade later in the race and a situation that felt rather out of his control. Hopefully there are tidbits of information to glean from this day to make Ironman at the end of the summer a more successful experience than it otherwise would have been. Lesley was the next of our contingent to cross the line, having also had a tough run in the heat. Describing the experience as “using my legs to prevent me from falling through the pavement rather than running”, shows the kind of grit it took to get through “the hardest race of [her] life”. Claire finished her first half iron distance triathlon and was able to run the whole run course after a tendon problem in her foot for the past number of weeks that has prevented any run training. There’s been discussion of the acquisition of a wetsuit instead of future rentals, so perhaps she’ll be on the start line a few more times in the next number of years, we’ll certainly be interested in having her there!

Other things worth mentioning: The race was announced by Steve King (pictured). He announces at Great White North and also at Ironman Canada and I think he really makes a special day out of it for a lot of people. As I was running out onto the course he had a whole list of information about me, most of which I didn’t provide and he listed off most of my recent palmares. Also, I won a slot for Ironman Canada based on this performance. I was 2^nd amongst under 29 men and the winner disappeared before awards and thus wasn’t there to claim the slot for Ironman either.

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this was a Half Iron+++ because according to my estimates and measurements, the swim, the bike, and the run were all longer than the standard distance. This is not a complaint, this is an observation. I don’t think anyone was trying to mislead anyone about it, the course is well documented and I don’t think anyone cares to do the little bit extra or not, but it highlights the importance of making adjustments when comparing courses. The long T1, the long bike and the long run account for relatively sizeable amounts of time. If I make the adjustments for the run distance, this amounts to a 1:28:53 half marathon. I’ve already discussed the speed on the bike so there’s no reason to pro-rate it.