Lacombe RV Charity Triathlon 2010

I was excited to go back to Gull Lake and Lacombe to do this race again after last year: the race was billed as a sprint, but was actually shorter in all 3 legs, a nice race to end the season off after the Olympic distance two weeks ago. However, the race organizers thwarted my plans by lengthening all three legs to regulation distance. Don't get me wrong, that is a positive thing, and the organizers should be commended for an awesome event. I definitely hope to be back for a third year next year.

The Lacombe Triathlon is a unique one for me. Both the swim and the bike end in diferent spots than they start, and that also means that the 2 transition zones are separated by 20 km. This year there were shuttle buses to take the racers from one zone to the other, which was extremely helpful, since I was at the race on my own.
(Thanks to Dawn for letting me use this picture. I'm right in the centre, waist-deep, wearing blue goggles.)

The swim was very difficult for me. For one thing, the water was ice cold! I didn't get as much time to warm up in the water as I would have liked, due to a mandatory race meeting right before the start, and I struggled with the cold during the whole swim. But what was worse for me was the wind. This made the lake choppy, and for most of the swim, we were swimming with the wind blowing from left to right. Unexpectedly, this had the effect of completely disorienting me halfway through the swim. If my face was in the water, the feeling of the waves sliding under me made me feel like I was spinning in the water, and every time I looked up, I expected to have turned 90 degrees. Of course, I hadn't, but when I was underwater, I lost all sense of what direction I was facing. That was difficult to work with, and slowed me down a lot. I forced my way through it, though, and surprisingly for me, passed a few people during the swim. Just like last year, the swim course (which was farther out, and thus longer than last year) ends with a 200 metre stretch of knee deep water. Like most people, I walked the first half of this, and then I ran in, passing a few people on my way into transition.

Swim time: 17:39
Rank: 27/72 overall, 4/10 in age group.

The bike course was almost identical to last year, with a few key changes. The course started along the highway, instead of going through the village of Gull Lake first, and the finish was in a different part of Lacombe. The highway between the lake and the town (sorry, City as of today) of Lacombe is beautifullly paved, and riding it is a real joy. The only problem was that we were biking directly into a headwind the whole way, which is the kind of thing that can happen when 80% of the bike is in one direction. The effect of moving the finish was twofold: it lengthened the course, and it added several more hills. The final 3 or 4 kilometers were almost completely uphill. I passed a few people on these hills, but it really took me a lot of time to recover in the run, considering we had to climb a hill into transition!

Bike time: 42:38
Rank: 20/72 overall, 4/10 in age group.

Like I said, it took me a while to recover from the bike when I started the run. And, just like last year, the run started with a long uphill. It was not the same run course as last year, though, not even close. For one thing, this one was actually 5 km long. Last year's was a relatively flat road course through a residential neighbourhood, while this year's was a twisty, hilly, narrow, muddy trail run through low-hanging trees. I loved it, though. I found a guy going at a nice, slow steady pace, and ran on his heels until I got my breath and legs back, then went past him and found a new pace-setter. This guy's pace pushed me a bit, probably faster than I would have gone otherwise. That was a good thing, and I stuck on his tail until a volunteer told me that we had 1 km to go. I had been stronger than him on the hills the whole time, so the next hill I ran past him and built up a bit of a gap. I clearly pushed a little too hard, though, because as we turned onto the final road (about 400 metres from the end), this guy blew past me and got about 30 metres ahead. With 150 metres to go, we hit the final hill, and I spotted the top of the finishing arch just around the next corner (until that point, I wasn't sure exactly how far we had to go). I broke into a flat-out sprint up the hill, feeding off the large crowd that had gathered, and motivated by a desire to beat this one racer. I passed him a few metres before the final corner, and sprinted across the finish line 3 seconds ahead of him.

Run time: 26:47
Rank: 14/72 overall, 4/10 in age group.

Final time: 1:27:02
Rank: 19/72 overall, 4/10 in age group.

I am very pleased with this result. The wind made both the swim and bike tough, and the run was another cross-country run, unusual for me. However, with the Alberta Challenge run 2 weeks ago and my last workout being a run on hiking trails around Lac Beauvert in Jasper, I felt comfortable with the terrain and pushed hard. I'm especially pleased with the fact that I came out of the water in 27th (after passing a couple on the run into the transition zone) and finished in 19th, a gain of 8. I only counted a gain of 5, so I passed 3 people in transition, which is awesome. I went without socks, which cuts out quite a bit of time.

What I'm most pleased with is how my overall rankings improved with each leg, culminating in the 14th best run! The field was not as tough as last year's, I recognize, as the same guy won, but with a 5 minute buffer, instead of having 14 guys within 5 minutes like he did last year. But still, I was in the top third of the field, and the top quarter on the run, and I'm very proud of that. I was 10 minutes behind the 3rd placed racer in my age group last year, and this year I was only 2 minutes out of the top 3. Unfortunately, I was unable to achieve my goal of finishing in the top 3 in my age group, but I know it is possible. I just got myself a bike trainer, so I'll be training on my own bike all winter, and I'm hoping to see some significant improvement. I'm excited about training through this off-season again, and looking forward to running triathlons again next summer (which will be interesting, since we're hoping to do some travelling, and I'll be starting my articles at Alberta Justice).