New Balance 1/2 Ironman - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

I had to bust a move to try to catch up as I was about 30 secs behind my wave, but I seemed to catch up quite easily. As a matter of fact I started passing a ton of people which kind of surprised me as I generally consider swimming to be my weakest leg of the race. Not today! My sighting was great for the first time in the open water, and I just seemed to be picking the perfect line the whole swim. The only drawback is that as I was swimming through a pack of people someone grabbed my leg around the ankle and tore a hole in my wetsuit!!!! Guy must have had a damn good grip!!!

Get to the race earlier and maybe set-up and get ready with a bit more of a sense of urgency. Once I got there in the morning I almost felt like I had forever until the start but that time goes by way quicker than you would expect.

Pretty good transition for me, I was quite well organized and my wetsuit came off with no effort so that was good.

Learn to have shoes clipped in on the bike so I don't have to put them on before getting on the bike.

Up to the day of the race I was getting more and more worried about the bike, but I felt like I did a solid job on the bike today. Fortunately I had biked the course several times in training so I knew what to expect and I felt this gave me an advantage. The first lap was going really well, I was taking it easy but not too easy, and I had a gel around 20 mins in and felt good. About halfway through the first lap I hit a bump in the road and both my cliff bars fell out of my back pocked. This sucked as in training I had been mixing eating gels with cliff bars and now I was stuck with gels the rest of the day!!! The aid stations were really well organized and always ready with lots of volunteers to hand you stuff so that was good. The second lap I started to push the bike harder and I succeeded in dropping some people who had hung around me for the bulk of the first lap. The third lap I wanted to push the first half hard and then recover the second half which I managed to do pretty well, although the road going back to transition was hilly and pretty tough on the legs.

By the end of the 3rd lap I was missing solid food so I need a better way to keep my bars on me. Maybe time to invest in a bento box!!!

Pretty quick, threw on my shoes my visor and out on the run.

Nothing I can think of. Wait actually maybe try to get a funky towel to leave in my area. About 3 people had the same green towel as me and even though I knew where I was set up it made me hesitate seeing the green towels.

Right after getting out of transition I realised I had to go pee big time. Thankfully, about a km in to the run there was a washroom so I stopped to go pee. I immediately felt better and took off running again. I hit the first couple of aid stations grabbing only water, and dumping one cup on my head and drinking a cup. At the 3rd aid station I started to feel tired so I walked the aid station drinking gatorade and dumping water on my head. For the rest of the run I would get either coke or gatorade to drink, and dump a water on my head at each aid station. I never thought coke would be good to drink while running but damn was it good. Every second aid station had coke and I kept looking forward to that. As far as food went, I had been eating gels the whole way on the bike and I could no longer even look at a gel on the run, so it was liquid nutrition the whole way home. As I hit about the 10 km mark on the run I stared feeling fresh again and I picked up my speed on the run, and managed to hold it the whole last half of the run!!! At 19 km I could see the finsh at the next beach area and I tried picking up the pace again but I could feel my left hamstring twinge a little so I just paced myself home.

Nothing on the run. I feel that despite the fact that I have run faster before that I had a good run, and I will always be happy with a negative split run.

I crossed the finish line and saw my Mom which was cool as she had caught an early ferry from Vancouver to make it in time to see the race and my Dad was there as well so it was nice to see them at the end. I walked around for 5 minutes or so then went and got a massage which was fantastic. Then I loaded up on food and sat down by the lake with my parents.


Probably experience. This was my first half iron distance and the only triathlon I have done before was a sprint last summer, so I am really happy with my time. I thought I would be around 5:35-5:45 so I did better than expected.


This was a really well organised race and I will be abck next year to do this one again. Now I just have to worry about my ironman distance race coming up in August....