The water in Peninsula Lake is clear and crisp and up ahead, maybe 400 metres in the distance, you can see the first right turn of this morning’s swim. Across the horizon lies a thick forest of beech and elm and black oak, each tree clinging desperately, hopelessly to the last breath of summer. In a week or two their leaves will explode in a rich spray of Fall colours.

The sun is already pitched high in a blue sky, but the air is chilled. It’s an in-between time in the Muskokas and today it belongs to a thousand triathletes.

When I enter the lake, the water is fresh as it drops down my spine, finding the small crack of space at the top of my wetsuit. It wakes me up. Roots me to seriousness of the day.

I take a dozen strokes and I still see the bottom of the lake, fifteen or twenty feet below me. I remind myself not to panic and then I’m suddenly reminded of how far I’ve come from the muddy, freezing lakes of northern Alberta and the great men and women I swam with up there. It’s one of those moments that pass by slowly and allows some clarity.

My thoughts are broken by the sound of a klaxon. The blast starts the swim wave before ours, and immediately the still water is chewed up with arms and elbows, feet flying, a neat arrow of white caps splayed across the lake, breaking for the orange buoy in the distance. This is what triathletes have come to call “the washing machine effect.”

The wave ahead moves towards the right turn. Our wave is called. Men 35 to 39. Strong, fit men in the prime of their lives, men keeping physical decline a good arm’s length away. Men ready to chew this motherfucking lake to pieces.

We swim to the start line. The beginning of our race is close. My heart rate is noticeably low. I’m not sure if this is good or bad.

All week I’m concerned about the deep water start. It means lingering in the water for a couple of minutes before our race begins. It means floating – an aqua-concept that my body is unaccustomed to and until now, unable to execute for more than a few seconds, but here I am, positioned at the back right of the pack, lined up hard to the buoys, and I’m floating. I’m fuckin’ floating! In a day of limitless tests it’s one small but tasty victory.

The klaxon goes again. We’re away. Some stray feet connect with my body and face but there’s no panic in me. I just try to find some kind of rhythm: left arm, right arm, breathe, left arm, right arm…. I do this for an awfully long time.

***

The year before, at the Timberman Half Ironman, the speed with which I was dropped at the start of the swim shocked me.

My swimming was poor. I knew this. The first time I managed to swim a full length of a 25 metre pool without stopping was five months before Timberman, so it’s fair to say I was under no illusions about my ability. Still, I expected to hang on to the back of the main pack for a few hundred metres, maybe catch some draft and save some energy.

It didn’t turn out that way. Less than sixty seconds in, I was out the back, lost like some forgotten wisp of smoke shot from the wrong end of a rocket ship and so Timberman became a lonely swim. I continually pulled to the left, moving wildly off course, adding unnecessary distance to my race, and numerous times race volunteers in kayaks would paddle towards me, then hammer their oar against their kayak with a hollow thunk to get my attention and point me back on course.

Every so often, when I stuck an ear out of the water, the thunk was broken with the sharp sound of another klaxon on the beach. That sound became a mournful soundtrack. It heralded a new wave of swimmers who would quickly catch me, swim over me and push me underwater for a few seconds at a time. It was like a fresh herd of bulls being set free on the streets of Pamplona.

It took 51 minutes to complete that swim and I was one of the last in my age group to emerge from the water. On the short run to my bike, volunteers were ready to help rip our wetsuits off to save some time. As I made my way to transition, I searched but couldn’t see any of these wetsuit strippers. I reckoned I’d taken so long in the water that they’d packed up and gone home for a pancake breakfast, their jobs done for another year. It took a couple of weeks and an actual photograph to convince me that in my myopic, disheartened state, I had blindly ran past the strippers.

***

Back in Muskoka, I had the first right turn in sight before I heard the next klaxon go. I was clinging to the back of the pack and had a couple of other swimmers for company. I was moving half-gracefully and at least resembled a swimmer. I let my mind fast-forward and calculate splits and predict my eventual race time and I landed at a sub-5.30 Muskoka Half Ironman.

Bad idea. It turned out the beast was just wiping the sleep from its eyes.

At Muskoka, there’s a sharp climb of about 400 metres that rises from the lakeshore and tapers off at transition. It gets an unfair amount of coverage during pre-race banter and for somebody like me, involved in a straight-up battle against the clock and my own expectations, an extra like this can eat up valuable seconds. That short hill was in my head as I lifted myself out of the water but it passed so quickly and I was so focused on getting on the bike that it barely registers now.

Right at transition, I saw The Fish and Rob, each waiting to tackle the bike/run as part of separate relay teams. They shouted “48 minutes” at me. I was slower than I’d expected, but 48 minutes kept me alive and in the hunt, just about, to go sub-5.30. I realized, though, that I’d have to roll the dice on the bike.

Pro triathlete Cody Beals provides the most accurate description of the bike course. In a nut: it’s rough, it’s relentless, it’s pockmarked by steady climbs and it’s four kilometres longer than a standard 70.3 bike distance.

After 20 kilometres the race settled down. Things got quieter and the field found its natural order, moving like a school of fish though an ocean. As happens on such occasions, I found myself tangled in a mini-race with an age grouper from New York. He’d pass by on an uphill, I’d respond on the flats and on and on it went: one hour, two hours, until most of the bike had slipped by.

I’d maintained a solid speed but as the time passed, I noticed I’d floated out of the moment. My mind drifted. I shifted in and out of the aero position, fixing my eyes on other athletes, watching the wind stir the tall trees, catching the sun dapple against the passing lakes. I wasn’t there to admire the scenery and I forgot I had a job to do. The athlete from New York was the only thing keeping me honest.

With about 30 kilometres left I turned the mental calculator on and figured I’d climb off the bike, give or take, with 2.55 on the clock. A sub-3 hour bike seemed possible, but I hadn’t taken the higher hills on the backend of the course into account. And now, every kilometre that went by meant a little more time lost, a heavier feeling in the legs.

Somewhere on a narrow, tree-lined Muskoka road, I consciously decided to let the sub-3 hour target go. I also promised that for 2015, I’d get my hands on my first TT bike – carbon fibre and fast, anything to help push those damned pedals a little quicker.

So one way or another, the summer’s goal was slipping out of reach. It didn’t snap in one loud rip; rather, it broke away fibre by fibre, quiet, and without fanfare.

I was relieved to be done with the bike. In 2014 my running had improved. I’d spent much time studying my great Peace River friend, Ken, always from a few steps behind. And I’d worked hard on mimicking his faster cadence and the soft manner in which he lands his feet. The changes were working.

I’d managed to race a few duathlons in 2014 and felt my form off the bike could withstand an aggressive target. I fixed my goal at a sub 1.40 half-marathon and came out of the gates like a train leaving the station an hour behind schedule. Ten kilometres in and I was maintaining a 4.35 min/km pace. I’d gotten through those dull few kilometres along the highway and entered downtown Huntsville. The only thing that now mattered was a decent run, I kept telling myself. “You can still salvage a decent run.”

At the turnaround I ditched my last two gels, because, I’d decided, they were weighing me down. Lighten the load, lighten the load, I was thinking. Almost immediately, I began to regret throwing the gels in the trash. My mind then took over. I had a real pang of hunger and I knew I’d made a big mistake. My pace slowed, my brain was unable to help. All I felt was the dull thud of concrete on my feet, rising through my ankles and up my spine.

Hungry and tiring mentally, I still had ten kilometres to run and I couldn’t draw any inspiration from my well of memories. By now, the sun was beginning to bake down and for a few minutes I felt half-broken and contemplated quitting. I just couldn’t rise above a sense of desolation. What was the point in even doing this race? This was my ‘two-by-four to the head’ moment.

About to enter the highway stretch on the way back home, I saw The Fish coming against me, running strong. It gave me a brief spark, but it vanished as quickly as he did.

I ploughed on. More hills, more hills. I promised myself I would’t walk one hill all day but with four or five clicks left to roll, I gave in. I grabbed a coke and some gels at the last aid station and sucked them back on a steep climb.

I finished the run in 1.48. A week before Muskoka, that time would have represented a serious disappointment, but the perspective of a week or two helped me box it up and package it with some reality. It’s not a personal best course and in a sense, I’d underestimated the ferociousness of the bike.

But the goal of a sub-5.30 half triathlon stayed with me this off-season. I traded in my old Cervelo S1 for a new Felt, I made friends with the treadmill and I’ve tried, very slowly, to improve my swimming.

In the depths of winter, a new race came to the foreground and with it, a new thought, a new target: sub-5.30 beneath the Niagara spray.

Enter Barrelman.