Race Report Below or on http://www.fyzz.ca/blogwith photos.

I knew this would be a tough race to win but I did indeed want it. Andriy Yasterbov and Jasper Blake can both run like no tomorrow and certainly not good to have next to you when leaving the second transition if your hope is to come across the line first. Unfortunately Jasper had to pull out due to sickness. In all honesty I would rather lose the race to Jasper than not have him in it. Yasterbov was still in the race, however. Along with uber swimmer Daniel Wells who I was indeed nervous about. He was very close to both Yasterbov and Blake one month back at the Lifesport Shawnigan Lake Half Iron, I was thinking he would be equally as fit if not fitter at this event and knew he’d be a tough cat to beat.

The swim played out pretty much as expected. Wells off the front by 4 minutes, a gap that I was expecting. I think he may have actually grabbed on to the Howitzer missile from the starting cannon. Dude was literally gone the first time I looked up to sight. In fact I had thought that 5minutes may even be a possible gap, but I managed to get onto the lead chase group and pulled in a respectable swim. My major hope for the swim was to get out in front of Yasterbov. This did not happen.

Riding with him is a frustrating experience, of which I’ve had the joy of experiencing 3 times now. He’s not exactly a work horse on the bike and loves to let someone else do the pace setting. Which is entirely legal, just a little bit of a strategy play that I’m not fond of. It is very surprising how much easier it is (feels anyway) to be behind someone and let them dictate the pace. I have no problem having someone ride off my back for awhile…but I would certainly have appreciated a little bit of a pull through. Especially when I asked him to do so. So Andriy, if you’re reading this, next time we end up on the bike together do your part, pretty please. Or, swim slower so that I can be gone before you get there. Haha, only joking. It’s all competition and he played his cards better than I played mine. He’s a great guy and I’m sorry to hear that both him and Zyemtsev got screwed over by their team sponsor. Please keep in mind I heard this through the grape vine so don’t know the details of the screwing. I do know he wasn’t wearing his normal gear yesterday so can only assume this was true.



We caught Daniel Wells about an hour and 40minutes into the bike. I stayed off his back for a few more minutes to try and let my legs recover slightly, then put in a good surge with 25km to go. My hope was to shed both him and Yasterbov and give myself a bit of a cushion going into the run. I’ve been running very well this year but Yasterbov has been known to unleash some monster run splits so thought best not to chance it. I couldn’t really tell what happened behind me but, sure enough they both clawed their way back. From there I made the decision to get Yasterbov in front of me. I basically sat up with the intention of coasting till one of us came to a standstill. To my surprise Daniel decided to set the pace, even after being alone all day. Thankfully Yasterbov went through as well and I had a relatively peaceful 10minutes off the back. Wells had finally had enough of his alone time on the bike as he seemed to hit the wall over the final couple climbs. Yasterbov then took off with his own acceleration that I failed to close before coming back into T2. Ugggh.

I had a quick transition and left T2 with Yasterbov about 10 seconds up. Judging by the sound of the race announcer Daniel was about a minute back of us. I put in two very hard km’s to try and get back on Andriy and see what I could do in suffer mode. I got close to him but going through 2km’s in 6min 45sec was a bit much. I held tough for another couple km’s but really started resigning myself to second place. I had a look behind me along one of the longer straight stretches and couldn’t see Daniel so I hoped he may be resigning himself to 3rd place. Even so, I wasn’t really sure what he could do on the run so had to keep the pressure on pretty good. After one lap, 10km’s, my run legs still hadn’t come around. I was really struggling to shed the fatigued feeling from the bike and get a rhythm going. It always hurts, but somehow this hurt was not my normal kind of ‘running well’ hurt. Andriy went on to get close to Kevin Cutjar’s run course record of 1:12:00 with a 1:12:06 split. I rolled in for second place a few minutes back and Daniel came in for 3rd. Happy days for the Wurtele crew!!!