Race Report - Leduc Women's Triathlon

I read somewhere that it's not the night before a big event when it's the most important to get a good night's sleep, but actually 2 nights before ... then you don't have to worry if you have trouble sleeping because you're nervous or because your neighbours always seem to have really loud parties on nights when you need to get to sleep early (yeah, that happened last night - they were still loud past 2 am. We think next time we'll yell out the window at them ... but we were too tired and that would have made us wake up fully last night ...). So, having to wake up at 6 am was difficult ...

Pretty nifty when the race organizer comments that you have a really good-looking bike as he's walking around while your bike is getting checked over by the techs. When they asked in the pre-race meeting, it looked like maybe a quarter to a third of the 120-or-so participants were doing their first triathlon ... maybe that's why Ed says my bike was among the best of the "bike porn" (ie. bikes that are admired by others and nice to look at), a few Cervelos and other Treks, but not a lot.

And I'm not used to not having to start really early (ie. 7-8 am) at a triathlon - my heat time was 10:20 am so I had a few hours to watch others and get ready before I had to race (we had to be set up in transition by 8:15 am, then there was a pre-race meeting at 8:30am, and the first heat was at 9am). Not only then was there time for it to get warmer outside by the time I was racing, it was also a much warmer day overall than 4 weeks ago for the last tri - today it was already 21 C when I started and 24 C when I finished. I got a bit sunburnt, the spray-on sunscreen I tried in 1st transition didn't go on so well to wet skin. I guess I was being too nice in thinking I shouldn't really put on sunscreen ahead of time that could partially come off into the pool - better to protect myself rather than their pool next time!

I felt tired in the swim, though it improved the longer I swam, got into a groove so to speak ... and improved my 750 m swim time by over 20 seconds! Much better than Coronation in that there were only 4 to a lane (25 m pool) and we seemed to be well-matched and spread ourselves out fairly well, so didn't have to worry much about passing/being passed.

Ed wasn't there to yell encouragement at me for a fast transition, as he was volunteering on the bike course, and my transitions were pretty slow today - I kept thinking I must be forgetting something and rechecked several times before I left.

I felt pretty good on the bike, passed a couple of people on the initial flat stretch, then broke my speed record by going 58.5 km/h down the major hill. Going up the other side felt pretty good, and I made it to the turnaround (where Ed was) in about 23 minutes. Back down again I got to at least 50 km/h, and the major uphill was easier than I thought - I'd been worried that perhaps it was steep enough that I'd run out of gears and run out of energy, but that was far from happening. Then back onto the flat stretch again, and into transition, and the run ...

Amazingly enough, my leg was great - my shin (stress injury) didn't hurt at all during the run or afterwards, but I had a horrible abdominal cramp develop and had to powerwalk for about 10 minutes in the middle (guess I need to figure out something better to eat for breakfast). I was able then to run again without too much trouble, and ran all the way to the end ... think the run course was a bit less than 5 km actually because my run time was actually not as bad as I thought it would be, despite walking for so long. My final time was 1:52:27 (improvement of 7 minutes from my last triathlon of this distance), and Ed had finished his volunteer duties by then so was at the finish line even to greet me and take a photo. So, overall a good race for me, and well-organized.

addendum: overall results now here, 55th in the swim of 131, so I guess my future goal is to get my bike and run to match my swim placing :-). And I wasn't last! (oh, and the listed bike time would include both my slow transitions, my actual bike time for the 20 km was about 52 min).