Solid MOP swim, and my fastest race swim yet! Really happy about this development. This one was quite nice. There was decent open space at the start, there few quite a few people to draft off, some people drafted off me, I kicked a few people back (accidentally of course (no, really)), and I made it back well.

I missed a few breaths, and then it took a while to make up for them. I pushed pretty hard. It kinda sucks that pushing harder doesn't really make you all that faster.

Navigation was pretty good. I drafted some pretty good navigators this time. When I did lose the people in front, I kinda diverged sharply. But what can you do? Learn to be more straight?

Funny, there's really not much to say about this swim. I just really enjoyed it.

Oddly enough not a whole lot. Become a stronger (literally stronger) swimmer maybe. :)

Lost my rack again. Found a great bike position, but for the life of me I couldn't find it. Still not a bad transition time considering. The suit was a little sticky this time, but I managed.

Bad move though... I forgot to fill my Perpetuem bottle with water before the race.

I got onto the bike pretty well, but I wasn't pushing too hard through transition so it was fairly relaxed.

Be a little more liberal with Body Glide on the ankles.

Not my best bike performance. I didn't do my research and I had no idea we were going to be climbing the Niagara Escarpment! I was pushing pretty hard right off the bat, so you can imagine my surprise when I turned the corner to see the road go straight up.

Not only did I blow it up the hill, but this gave me a solid reason NOT to dump my triple ring yet. 2.5k of solid climbing can really blow the tits off you. Speaking of blowing, at least we didn't have to deal with the headwind when we were going up.

Since I forgot to fill my Perpetuem bottle, I only had one bottle of fluid for the ride. I squirted half my water into the empty Perpetuem bottle, but it made it a little too dense tasting. I could eat it, but my mouth got super dry.

Most of our time in the rectangular loop was spent with a strong crosswind. Didn't bother me much. And I didn't even realize until right now I didn't see a lot of solid disks pass me.

Still I wasn't very inspired on this ride. The loop was bone flat, but as tired as I was, it just didn't do it for me. My bike training has really fallen off the wayside, and it showed.

On the one part of the loop where we had a tailwind it was freaking amazing. Then the tailwind head start combined with going back down the escarpment was mind blowing. It wasn't the fastest speed I've ever hit, but at 66 km/h it was my fastest this year.

Overall it was pretty uninspired and a little slow at 28.6. The strange thing is my heart rate was pretty high. I've never been averaging near 168 on the bike before. So even though it felt like the slowness because I wasn't feeling it, it looks like I was actually pushing hard. Harder than I was in Gravenhurst.

And the placings don't lie. I still had a MOP ride.

Well... train better. Do whatever it was that I did before the Gravenhurst race. I think that time I did 80k hard on the Sunday before and had a couple small short outings during the week.

A pretty good transition. I was still a little drab from the ride, so I came in relatively soft and took time to sit and deal with my IT band strap and shoes. I probably should have spent more time putting the strap on, because later during the run it slipped down and I took it off.

Put my strap on properly. That's what she said.

This was actually a pretty decent run. Not my fastest ever, but pretty close. Let's say it was my fastest 7k in a race. My IT band hurt around the halfway point, but I was able to continue without too much pain.

I was passed a lot, but I'm used to that. I was ready to walk so it could have been worse. It's a little discouraging to lose so much time on the run when I worked so hard on the bike and swim.

Train longer

Sat down and ate my goodies.


I'm going to put the blame on the running again. It's going to be a common thread until I'm able to run at the speed I want.