The weather was almost perfect. No rain and ~75 degrees at the start. It said a high of 85 but I think it almost hit 90 because it was hot!
This year we had 3 team participate:
Dave and Jesse were JUST GOT BACK FROM OUR HONEYMOON AND BOY ARE WE TIRED.
Casey and Brad were TRI BEING ENGAGED
and Cousin-in-law Scott and I were CRUISING COUSINS (slogan "Partner's for Life")
Annie and Julie were our ATHLETIC SUPPORTERS and met us at the top of the hill and the finish line.
Top things I learned this time:
1) Wear sunscreen! With all the pumping up of bikes and getting things sorted I forgot to put sunscreen on and got a little burned on my next, arms and face. Not good.
2) I don't think I ate enough the night before or the morning of so I just didn't feel like I had much energy even with eating 3 shot blok bars during the race.
Some things I noticed was that the triathlon was under staffed. There were not enough canoes when we got there so they were pulling out of the "bad" piles. All 3 of our teams ended up in metal canoes even though only Scott and I should have had one. Also at the end of the canoe you almost couldn't reach the shore due to the HUGE pile up of canoes. It looked like volunteer boy scouts were helping but this part of the race was much less organized than in previous years.
I was concerned about battery life since my larger back up battery didn't fit in the waterproof pouch so I didn't run the HR monitor via bluetooth. At the end of the race I think I had ~40% life left on my battery which seemed pretty good even while using the small extra battery.
On to the results: I continued to generate data proving that if you don't exercise much you are slower than when you exercise. Hopefully that motivates me to find more time to exercise even with a
Side note: I wore my Louis Garneau yellow jersey to stay cool but was chased for 0.5 miles on the run by a bee so next time I'll wear white!
Scott and I had a pretty good canoe trip. For the first half we were pretty close to the front of our heat. Then we probably got tired and slowed a bit. Casey and Brad also contributed by trying to T-bone us a few times so both teams were slowed down for those shenanigans.
I think the main reason our time was ~10 minutes slower from the fall was because we got stuck on rocks 3 times. We really got surprised by a set of rocks that lines the river. We should have stayed to the right but we went left into all sorts of trouble. I think Scott and I did an awesome job of not panicking even when water was starting to pour into the canoe (I really don't know how we didn't end up swimming). We were able to get free and we continues on but got stuck 2 more times for 3 in total and I think we never made back that time. Looking through the data based on our initial splits we probably lost 5-6 minutes in total on the rocks.
I hadn't run since the indoor tri in March so I knew this wouldn't be that great. It was also a hot day so I didn't feel that great. Only remarkable thing to say on the run was the fact that a bee was chasing me on the bike trail for about 0.5 mile. It would land on Scott's hat and "launch attacks" at me so I waited until it landed on Scott's head and then I killed it. Unfortunately in doing so I slapped Scott's head harder than I anticipated (sorry partner!). But we triumphed over the bee! I saw one other person being chased by a bee so I think I'll wear white next time.
At the end of the run Scott went ahead because he was going to change into bike shorts so after the canoe and run I was the last one up the hill. I ended up on the bike ride ahead of Scott but it didn't take him long to pass me for good on the bike.
I knew getting on the bike that I wasn't going to break my PR. I was pretty far behind my times. As I said Scott was gone and for most of the bike ride I was pulling up the rear. This was also my first event on my Cervelso S3 so it was not a good debut for my bike.
It was surprisingly windy for what initially seemed like a calm day. There was a stretch around mile 10 into the wind and those uphill "S-curves" until mile 13 that still seemed a bit hard. But in general I think my time was slow just because I didn't have any energy.
Other notes would be that I didn't cramp much at all this time which was nice, however after the race the bottom of my feet were tight so I need to look into that. Also my S3 isn't geared for hills but I had (just) enough gears for this course.
Summary[ +17 mins from last FALL]
It's amazing to have lost 17 minutes from the fall, though I was only 3 minutes slower than last spring so I guess I don't keep in shape much over the winter and then get in a little shape furing the summer.
Also looking at 4.5 years of doing this event it is interesting that my times haven't moved much so I obviously haven't figured out how to build on fitness year over year which is something I would like to do. I really like having a consistent benchmark 2 times per year to track my fitness. No other race on my calendar is as easy to fit in as Morgna's Tri.
If you read this blog to this point you must be interested enough to try it in the Fall of 2014! I'll see you there!
