My debut as a long distance pro triathlete, at the Subaru Shawnigan Lake Triathlon, encouraged and humbled me.
With a time of 4:08:43, I raced to third place overall and managed to have the fastest bike split of the day (88km in 2:13:40). I suffered greatly on the run portion.
I came out of the cold, 1.9km swim about 40 seconds back from the lead pack. My T1 was lousy, with me dislodging the lenses from my sunglasses and fighting to do up my helmet. Lesson: rushing doesn’t make you faster (in racing, as in life).
By the end of the first lap, I managed to catch the front three guys, but after that, the pros all kept fairly close together (but never drafting!). Because Shawnigan is rolling hills, someone out of sight could be a minute ahead or five minutes ahead. No one wanted to risk giving someone a breakaway, so we responded to surges accordingly.
I felt solid on the bike, although I wasn’t sure if my pace was too conservative or too ambitious for a race of this distance.
Because of the cold swim, my hands stayed fairly frozen for most of the ride, which meant that I had a little trouble opening the boa lacing system on my bike shoes in preparation for T2. Similarly, I struggled to get my run shoes on and had the tongues of my shoes bunched up near the toe of my shoes.
The run was painful and surprisingly warm. While all the pros left transition at roughly the same time, Adam quickly started pulling away with only one other guy able to stick with him. I wore a Garmin for the bike/run portion of the race, so I was able to assess my run cadence and pace during the final portion of the race. The numbers confirmed what I already knew (I went to some dark places in my mind while running that sunny trail): I was hurting. Still, I knew I was in third place and that I needed to keeping plodding along with my lousy run to see if (1) one of the guys ahead might crack or pop (2) maintain a place on the podium.
It felt amazing to finish, bloody feet and all. I’m proud of placing third at my first half-iron race as a pro, especially given that this is also an early season race. I’m eager to work with my coach to incorporate my learnings from this race and improve for the New Balance race, which is coming up in June.
Shawnigan Lake Course description
- Swim: beautiful, clean, chilly. It’s Canada’s first open water triathlon, so the water temp. hovers between 12-13.
- Bike: a looped course of rolling hills with one tougher climb and a few fun downhills. I noticed a couple of the pros used disc wheels, but I wonder if those wheels were all that advantageous on this course.
- Run: more hilly that in 2010 but still a gravel trail with a steady, but gradual, uphill climb from km 10-15.5. The fact that I noticed a bunch of slugs and garter snakes on the trail speaks to my slow pace.
