Vegas Detour

I just barely missed my flight on the way home from Austin. I got the times mixed up and thought I flew out at 6:30 when instead it was 6. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the awesome people from SouthWest were able to give me a new travel itinerary. Instead of flying from Austin to Denver to Spokane, I was now going to fly Austin to Las Vegas to Spokane. I have never been to Vegas and I was excited to find out that I had a 4 hour layover in Vegas. So I did what any runner would do, I put my stuff in a locker at the airport and headed out for a run on the Vegas Strip. Somebody has to be the worst dressed guy in Vegas and today it was most definitely me. I had on Black compression socks (The only socks I had with me), running shorts (I was already wearing them under my khakis, cause you never know when a good run might breakout) and a tacky The Hangover souvenir T-Shirt I bought in the Vegas airport (Light blue with a printed on Baby attached to it just like in the movie). It was a beautiful day out and I more than enough time to run over to the strip, walk around and run back to catch my flight. Hanging out there got me pretty pumped for the possibility of racing two World Championships there. The ITU Long course world Champs and the 70.3 World Champs. I even found a great place to open water swim (see picture Below).





Looks good, though I have heard the Bellagio has some wicked currents.

Austin 70.3

Austin was another solid race and a great tune up for Clearwater. The trip itself was top notch as well. Austin is a great city and I was able to experience a few things this time around that I did not get to last year. Barton Springs was an interesting experience as it is a 200 yard section of a river that has been turned into a large swimming area. The Saltstick BBQ is a place that I would highly recommend, especially for a tourist like myself who was looking for a real Texan experience. It was the first BYOB restaurant I have been to. I also got a chance to ride on the famed Mopac TT loop. It was pretty mipressive to see the hype around the city when the Longhorns were playing a football game on Saturday. I felt a little out of place not wearing burnt orange. The couple I stayed with here in Austin, Jack and Kat were really great and I am thankful that they let me stay with them while I was down here. Hopefully they’ll be out racing the 70.3 next year. One thing I did not do was get out to Mellow Johnny’s and grab a coffee and buy a T-Shirt like Austin tourists are supposed to do. I did go to Austin Tri Cyclist, which apparently has a higher cool factor as it is less cliché. I would agree, it's a great place.
The race.

It was a deep water start which usually I am not that good at, but this time I got out decently. I could see a few guys going off the front, but could also see Richie Cunningham Bryan Rhodes right in front of me so I settled in. The rest of the swim was at a pretty relaxed pace and I exited the water 5th and in the lead pack. Good enough.


I was second in our pack coming out of transition and felt good. I worked solidly to chase down a couple of guys that were trying to pull away over the first 15k. After that I was able to ride my pace and stay in the middle of a strung out line of riders. There was about 8 guys in the line including most of the other good runners. Definitely with everyone marking each other and feeling confidant in there running there wasn’t a lot of incentive to push the pace. The pace slowed considerably in the last half. One of the guys that was driving the pace got upset thinking that the people behind him were drafting. He was throwing his arms up in the air and complaining to the motor bike. The motor bike was with the line of athletes the entire ride and everyone seemed to be riding fairly legit. There is huge pacing and mental effect by having guys in front of you but the drafting benefit at 10m is not that substantial (less than 10 watts). The rider really needed to give the other guys in the line more credit. There were some really good athletes riding with him. What he should have done is continued to drive the pace hard to try and get some of the strong runners in the group to either fall off the pace or blow up. Instead he just complained, took his mind off his race, let the guys behind catch up and kept the good runners fresh. At some point James Cunnama caught the group and started to move up with about 5 miles to go. There was one guy out front who ended up being 6 minutes ahead after the bike. Off the bikes and the chase was on to catch him.


My plan was to just run my pace and have confidence that that would put me in a good position. However when I got into T2 and heard the announcer saying “we got 9 guys coming into T2 with some really stronger runner, it is on!!!” I lost my cool, didn’t grab my gels and just hammered to try and catch up with the other guys. James and Richie were out front by about 100m and Alesandro was about 50m up the road. I killed it to catch up to Alesandro at about the 1k mark. He was push it hard to catch Richie and James who were pushing it hard to get away. All this added up to me going way too hard. I was cooked and fell off Alesandros pace. I got caught by fellow Canadian Brent Poulsen and settled in to the pace that I should have been running. At this point three guys ahead of me were about 200m up the road. After about 1k of running with Brent I started feeling good and not only did I start to hold the gap but also started to close it. I had worked my way to about a 100 meters from the three at the halfway point in the run. At this point the race got broken up. James was gone. I was holding steady behind Ritchie and gaining on Alesandro. I moved into fourth at about the 13k mark and felt pretty good. I had closed the lead to Ritchie to about 50 meters by the 15k mark when the wheels started to come off. I am pretty sure it either was the heat or a lack of fluids/calories on the run but I went from feeling pretty darn hot to cold and clammy and totally zapped of energy. With 5k to go I knew it was going to get ugly. With about 4 k to go alesandro repassed me and I made a futile attempt to match the pace. I focussed on just getting to the finish line and grabbing everything I could at the aid stations I passed. With about 800 to go I started swerving and felt like I was going to pass out. Things were getting blurry as I crested the last kicker at about 300 meters and my legs were stumbling as I rounded the last sharp corner before entering the finishing straight in the arena. Exhausted I cross the line fifth, thinking I never want to go through that again. It is amazing how short your memory can be, as 20 minutes later I was totally amped for Clearwater.

The Canadian men represented the Maple Leaf well putting 5 guys in the top 20 overall. Brent Poulsen was 6th, Trevor Wurtele was 9th, Anthony Toth 19th and Nathan Killam 20th.

BMO Okanagan Half Marathon

I made sure to give myself ample time to recover from Muskoka and then got back into training. I got into the nice training rhythm where you just eat ,sleep, work and train. I put down a solid training block and finished it off by running the Half Marathon at the BMO Okanagan Marathon. The race has about 3500 people in it making it the biggest running event in the Okanagan. The plan going in was to run my goal half Ironman pace for the 70.3 in Austin the following weekend which meant 3:27 kilometres. The rain and wind really picked up as soon as the gun went off. A really big guy, I mean massive guy, took the lead. He had a shirt that said something like "Extreme Boot Camp Hardcore Fitness" and was rocking headphones. I am glad I was running against him and not getting in a scrap or an arm wrestle otherwise I would have had no chance. The pace was pretty hot but it was only a matter of time before he slowed and at about the 1k mark I took the lead and locked into my pace. I was amazed at the consistency of my kilometres. I felt like a bit of robot out there and got to the finish first at 1:12:51 feeling pretty good. Dave Matheson had a great race on a tough day to finish second. My brother also took part in the event and finished the 10k. There was no official time for him as his chip did not read. This means he has to sign up for another one in the near future. He did really well off almost no running training. After the race he asked me what the secret to not cramping was? I told him “Train”.

Muskoka 70.3

Huntsville, where the Muskoka 70.3 is held, is an awesome place. It was my first time in cottage country and can definitely say I was impressed. The atmosphere made me feel like chilling out and going fishing as opposed to going out and smashing myself on the race course. But come race morning it was business time. I felt super fresh on the start line and was able to have my best swim at a 70.3 coming out of the water just 35 seconds back of the leaders and feeling great. After a super hilly transition we were on the bike. My plan was to keep things in control for the first 15k as I heard people like to smash that first part of the hilly Muskoka course. To my surprise the guys around me didn’t do this. The pace was solid and consistent and I tried my best to keep Raynard Tissink in front. This was probably a little ambitious of me as around 60k things start to get tough. We recieved reports that we were gaining on the guys ahead of us so I smashed myself for the next 10k to try and keep him in sight. At around 70k I was blown and decided to back off so that I would be able to put my left foot in front of my right foot for the run. In hindsight Raynard Tissink just finished 5th at Hawaii so trying to ride with him on such a tough course was definitely not a good idea. Throw in the fact that he didn’t run too well shows how hard we were going. I was caught in transition by Chris Legh and we set out on the run together. The Muskoka bike course is not stop hill after hill and the run course is much the same. I managed to hang on to Chris for the first 5k but I had expended way too much on the bike to run well. I was able to catch Sean Bechtel, eastern Canada’s best long distance triathlete, at around 15k to move into fifth. I was able to put a bit of time into him over the next couple of kilometres and then things got tough. I was zapped of energy and had to do everything in my power to make it to the finish. The Muskoka course has one brutal hill that you hit with about 2k to go. They could just as easily by pass the hill all together but they cruelly take you down a side street to hit it. I was just crawling up the hill and I must have shoulder checked 5 times in 150m to make sure Sean wasn't catching back up. I made it to the finish in fifth, top North American and the last money spot. I was stoked to have put my horrible August behind me and throw down another solid race. It was a super stacked field and definitely boosted my confidence.

August

It’s been a while since I posted last so I think it is safe to say an update is far overdue. A lot has happened over the past two months, so as Wayne Campbell would say “Let me bring you up to Speed”. The Cagary 70.3 was a tough race for me. The swim did not go as planned and I came out with the chase group about 90 seconds down on the leaders. I was able to bike my way back into contention, but unfortunately flatted about 70k into the bike. I had already gone over the two main climbs and was feeling pretty good with a solid net downhill for the last 25k. I changed the flat and got back at it. I made a huge mistake in trying to make up the lost time in the remainder of the Bike and the first 5k of the run. Not a solid plan as it left me blown apart both mentally and physically. I walked jogged it in for a less than stellar finish.

I decided to change things up for my next race and chose to race the ITU short course nationals in Kelowna. I was determined to make up for my poor performance in Calgary and started hammering workouts a lot sooner than I usually do after a half ironman. This worked great for about a week and a half but then something had to give. I should have listened to my coach and rested more as I caught a wicked cold the Sunday before the race. Despite my best efforts I just could not get healthy. I woke up feeling like trash and when somewhere between pounding back the buckleys and having my head over a bowl of vick’s vapor rub I realized it probably wasn’t going to be a race. I was right, it was awful. However it was a great open water experience as where else can you get an open water swim with 60 good swimmers.

The week after was Ironman week in Penticton. Always an awesome time. There were so many good performances out there by training partners and friends. It was definitely inspiring to see Justin Birks throw down a huge PB, Anthony Toth go sub 8:50 and see Steve Kilshaw get the monkey off his back. I was also stoked to see the "bearded competition". I was unaware that this was a category but Shaw TV ran a great segement informing everyone that it was. I had to put quite a few more hours than usual at the Bike Barn. The store is just madness during Ironman time so the days leaved you bagged. This was probably a blessing in disguise as it allowed me to take back my training and recover the sickness. Once the IMC circus left town I got back into training with the motto of making each workout a deposit not a withdrawal leading into the Muskoka 70.3. Apparently it is better to be 10% undertrained than 1% over trained and I felt like I was going in feeling 20% percent undertrained.