The "I wish I was in Brockville" Triathlon - 2005 - TriathlonOlympic

Not a bad swim. One of the longest distances I've done with a freestyle stroke. Just kept it going at a sustainable pace. Got some sludge up my nose about 1400 yards into the swim and started gagging. My concentration never really recovered. 3 marbles down.

Nothing. Well aside from the sludge snorting incident.

A pretty good T1. As my own race director, I enacted the T1-Timewarp rule and timed myself out of the water to the car and then when I got the bike/run location, I started the clock where I left off. Saved 25 minutes that way :)

Nothing

Manged to do OK here. The false flats had me at 12-14 MPH, but nothing crazy. I did a 2 loop course with a 2.5 mile tail (5 miles total) at the transition end of the course. Right at the 2nd turnaround, I heard something behind me go sproing! Funny, I don't recall seeing any rocks... What is hitting my leg? Oh, my FREAKING BROKEN SPOKE!! Get off the bike, bend the broken spoke around the one beside it. Hmmm, back wheel is all over the place. So I disabled the back brakes entirely so that they wouldn't rub, jumped back on and limped back to transition. I was on time to do a sub 90 minute 40k too. Oh well. I didn't die or wreck because of it, so no big deal. 4 marbles down. As I'm getting within 2 miles of transition, I noticed that my back tire is starting to get a little squishy. Although it quit rubbing on the frame as it lost air. Doing 12-14 mph the whole way back (8 miles). 5 marbles...

Um, not break a spoke, but since I didn't do it on purpose, let's just skip to the next part.

One of my cleanest T2's ever. Everything felt pretty good. Since I'm familiar with the park that they use for the transition area in Brockville, I tried to guess what distances the dismount line would be from my rack...

Nothing

I started off with the plan of running 9 minutes and walking 1 minute. That worked well the first time around, but not after - so I changed it to 8 minutes running, 1 minute walking. That worked for another 20 minutes... After a couple of miles, I ran into my TnT tri coach who was out doing his workout. He rode beside me for a couple of minutes and we chatted. It was cool to actually talk to someone. The last mile before the turnaround had a bad cant to the road and I was really starting to feel it in my knees and ankles - so I walked to the turnaround. Tried to start running a number of times after the turn around, but could never get up to speed. I could feel my left knee going out around me instead of back and forth, so I figured I was better off walking a couple more miles before I hurt myself. I swear I looked like Cookie Googleman at the end of "Best in Show" when she was walking out onto the show floor and her knee was doing this weird orbital thing... OK, where was I with the marbles? Screw it, the marbles are getting too heavy to carry at this point, so I dump the rest of them on the ground and keep going. I was glad that I had my fuel belt with some water and sports drink. Because of how evercast it was, I didn't realise how hot it was starting to get. About a mile and a half from the end, these 2 guys came up behind me on their bikes and as they passed, I heard the one guy say "Oh my god, did you see that guy? I bet he can put away the hamburgers." My reply? "F#@k you a$$monkey!!!!!!" You know, I wasn't really having a sufferfest until they came along, but that one pretty much deflated me. During the last mile I tried to start running a couple more times, but would get a pounding headache as soon as I started, so I went back to walking. Three tenths of a mile from the end, I figure I better run now because with the exception of the one race where I messed up my ankle, I have yet to walk across a finish line. So I ran. And it sucked. I've never wanted to cry and vomit at the same time like that. It was a feeling that I hope to never feel again, but somehow I doubt that will be the case. As I crossed my imaginary, but very real, finish line I felt completely drained. And then I smiled...

Not hurt myself 5 weeks before my A race.

I walked around the running track at the high school while making a couple of phone calls and drinking my recovery drink.


Lots of stuff, but it's all in the past. I had put so much effort into training for this race that I wasn't about to quit even if I had to withdraw from the actual event. There will be more races ahead of me and I've got nowhere to go but faster at this distance. So for my first Oly distance tri, it was everything I hoped it would be and a few things I never imagined.


Don't do the "I wish I was in Brockville" Triathlon. No volunteers anywhere :) Instead, do the actual race in Ontario - I hear it's nice...