Race Report: Subaru Vancouver Triathlon – Standard (Oly) distance - 21:05 faster than last year!

Overall time: 2:59:42; Swim: 38:32; T1: 3:08; Bike: 1:23:03; T2: 2:16; Run: 52:43; Age group (F 45-49) 7/13; Gender 67/130; Overall 274/403

This was a race rematch. Not between me and someone else, but between me and this race. I did this same race last year as my first (and until now) only standard distance triathlon; I did not love it, it did not go well, I was relieved to just finish. Because of that, it was supposed to be my goal race this year. But due to injuries and work and saddle issues (which are thankfully now solved), I have not been training like I needed to for this distance. Last year I learned that I had not been training to the right fitness level for the longer distance, and I had plans to change that, but those plans didn’t really work out. (Not making excuses, just explaining.) But mentally I was ready this time around. I knew it was going to hurt, and I knew I could finish. So I adjusted my goal of having a great race to maybe taking about 3 minutes or so off of my time. I thought I had done it in a little over 3:18 last year, and so was aiming for 3:15. My plan was to swim a bit straighter, improve my transitions, and hopefully run faster (my run last year was slow, even for me). But I don’t wear a watch while swimming or riding when racing (I do have a cyclocomputer, but don’t like to look at that for time either, just for pace), only while running, so I wasn’t going to know how I did until the end of the race. (I don’t race by time, as I am much less likely to push myself hard if my time seems good, and so can end up with a race time that isn't as fast as it could be.)

So that’s the background. How about the race?

Got to the race venue at just before 6:30 in a car2go (left the parking pass we got with our registration for DH so he could come down later), with plenty of time for my 7:42 start. Got my numbers put on by someone from the SBM facebook group Tri-Fecta I’d met 2 days before. (She was visiting Vancouver for the WWC, and wanted to get in a few training sessions while here. We went for a nice 8-9 kms in Pacific Spirit Park. She’s a bit slower than me and we chatted the whole way, so I had to go easy, which made it a perfect shake-out-the-legs pre-race run. She had a pretty bad tumble near the end, which was awful and I felt really bad about. But apparently, she went for a bike ride the next day, so it wasn’t quite as bad as it looked. But this is how cool she is: I mentioned the race to her while she was figuring out things to do here in Van, and she signed up as a volunteer! So I let a few people behind me in line go in front of my so I could get marked up by her.)

Went off to transition where I met someone else I know from social media (this time twitter), @englishbayally. We’ve crossed paths at a few races before, but had never managed to meet. This time we were racked within 4 bikes of each other (and I’d figured out her bib number beforehand, so I knew I could figure out who she was despite not really knowing what she looked like). It was really fun getting set up and chatting. I needed to pump my tires, but hate doing it (I have real trouble doing it – I can, but it takes a long time). The woman next to me perceived my distress and had her tire-pumper do mine too, which was really nice. Most people in the tri community really are helpful and supportive, and I had a lot of reminders of that this week.

Swim: Eventually I put on my wetsuit and popped 2 shot blocks, and headed down to the beach for the swim start. I hadn’t realized what time it was, so by the time I got down to the beach athletes were being called out of the water so they could get the race started on time. That meant no warm up for me, which was not good. I needed to get in and feel the water temp, especially on my face. So I prepared myself for a slower start to the swim than I had planned, as my acclimatization time would now come at the start of the race swim. I had been aiming to swim a little faster this year, and knew that this would interfere with that goal, but that’s how things go sometimes. At least I’ve done this enough times to know what I need to do at the start to make the swim bearable. My sighting had improved over last year, so I did go straighter. Notice I didn’t say straight, just straighter. It was choppy, and the current was stronger than last year, but I was better at adjusting for it because I was prepared for it. What I wasn’t prepared for was the smoke. Driving to the race venue I was driving into what had looked like dark grey cloud. It quickly became clear, however, that it wasn’t rain clouds, it was smoke clouds from near-by forest fires. At the time the race started you couldn’t smell the smoke from the beach (that later changed) but you could out on the water. Rounding the first buoy it hit me, hard. I was just about choking from the combination of the effort and the smoke. I didn’t quite realize it at the time, but I was having asthma symptoms. I flipped over onto my back for a bit, but it didn’t really improve my breathing at all (because it wasn’t about the swimming). I thought of abandoning the race for a brief bit of time. As I got closer to shore, and so farther from the smoke, my breathing improved and I was able to flip back onto my front, and felt strong enough to finish the swim (as in, finish that lap and do another one). Same thing happened on the second lap of the course. Hit the buoy, and with it the smoke, and pretty soon I couldn’t get enough air. Add to this the current that occasionally had you swimming just to stay in place (as in, you weren’t moving forward, but sure would have been going backwards if you stopped) and the swim was pretty challenging for me. I got passed a lot, but I also passed a few swim caps from the group that started ahead of mine, so I was mentally OK after the swim. And to my surprise, my swim was still faster than last year, so staying calm and just getting it done without worrying about speed worked out.

T1: I usually run to transition from the swim, but found it hard to do so this time, so my T1 time was not going to be as fast as I wanted. And I found myself very dizzy. So I took a few deep breaths and slowed down a bit and took the time I needed to get in and out of T1 with everything I needed, including a gel. (It was the new(ish?) GU chocolate peanut butter if I recall correctly. I highly recommend that flavor.) Being organized in T1 is such a big deal. Have everything ready and don’t give yourself choices. Even though I had to slow down and literally catch my breath (stood holding onto the bike rack for a bit), I was faster than last year by a little under a minute and a half. Ran my bike over the mount line, hopped on, and I was off on the bike leg.

Bike: I know the bike course well. I rode it a lot last year, but this year hadn't been out on it so much (because of saddle issues). In fact, I had been up the early hill only twice, when I rode the course the Monday prior to the race to reacquaint myself with it. Incidentally, that was the only time I’d ridden more than 20 km this year before this race. (As I said, I was not as well trained as I should have been…) But I had done it, so I knew I could do it again. I just didn’t know how fast. The day before I had thought that I had taken about 1:40 on the bike last year and figured 1:35 might be doable this year. But then I looked back at my times and discovered the bike leg had taken me 1:33.12 last year, a time I was pretty sure I couldn’t improve on. But I resolved to go as hard as I could without totally destroying my legs. I passed 7 women on the bike and got passed by 2. I didn’t count the number of men who passed me, or the number of men I passed (there were a few). It is both good and bad to race on a course that’s so familiar. One the one hand, I know all the twists and turns, although not the bumps in the road, since I ride on the shoulder/side of the lane, and we were riding in the road, and sometimes even unable to ride on the more familiar shoulder. Where this really helped was on the downhill, as I could confidently zoom down (I hit 60 km at one point on the second descent for the first time ever and didn’t freak out!). On the other hand, it’s easy to settle into a slower familiar training rhythm and stop pushing hard. (It was weird to be racing past my office.) Anyway, it went well. I was getting tired legs by the end, and knew the run would hurt, but when I changed the readout on my cyclocomputer near the end I saw a much faster shorter time than I had anticipated, somewhere at the end of 1:22! So I kept on peddling as fast as I could, and ended up beating my bike time from last year by a smidgeon over 10 minutes!

T2: Went fine. Not sure why it was slower than last year, but it was. Maybe it was getting the barrette into my hair? It’s longer than last year and wearing anything to keep it off of my face is uncomfortable on the swim and bike portions. I keep a barrette clipped to my race belt so I don’t have to fumble with finding it, just with getting it into my hair. I did have to move a bike out of the way a bit so I could fit mine in, but I had the same problem only worse last year, so I don’t think that was it. Anyway, it was only slower by 24 seconds so I’m not going to get too worked up about it.

The run: They changed the run route this year. Last year it headed off into the forest for a bit, before heading out on the flat gravely trail in the blazing sun. This year it was 2 loops on the flat gravely trail in the blazing sun. It used to have a hill, so the flat part is better, but it also used to have shade and wasn’t all on lose ground which is slower to run on. I don’t mind running hills, so I prefer the old course. Thankfully, due to the smoke cloud cover it wasn’t as sunny and hot as it was supposed to be. But of course, that also meant we were breathing in smoky air. More on that later. I popped a GU as I ran out of transition, and grabbed a bit of water at the first aid station that was not too far from the run start. My stride was short and choppy, but my legs didn’t feel too tight, just tired. Part of not being too tight though was that they never really loosened up. For some reason I was thinking that it was a 10 km loop (that we did twice, I know, if I thought about it for half a second I would have realized) and so was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I got to the turnaround. I was tired but knew that I was ¼ of the way through the run. According to my watch I was making decent time and was likely to break 1:00 for the run if I kept my pace up. (That had been my goal the previous year that I had failed to make, so it seemed like a good one to have this year.) I just tried to keep up my cadence, and used my hips to move my legs. I’d feel myself slouching and I’d straighten back up and concentrate on form. Reached the turn around and headed back out on the second loop. This one seemed much longer, but I just kept reminding myself that I had less than 5 km to run and 5 kms is easy. (I didn’t think about 5 km ‘left’, that just makes me tired because I think of what I’ve already done. One of the interesting things about triathlon for me has been figuring out what mental triggers I have and what mental tricks I can use on myself.)

I had been keeping pace with a woman with 47 on her leg for most for most of the second loop of the run. I was trying to just hang on, and maybe spring past her at the end, but I got a bit of a cramp in my knee about 1.5 kms away from the finish, and she got away from me. I managed to reel her back in a bit but eventually fell too far back again. (Turns out she was in the sprint, so I wasn’t actually racing her, and so I don't feel as bad about not being able to keep up as I did then and there.) I passed the last aid station and turned the corner into the home stretch. Saw my husband and son there waiting and waving. People pointed to the turn and I turned too soon; I just about ran back into transition again instead of the finish chute but I quickly recovered thanks to more enthusiastic yelling from the spectators.

I lost my momentum, but turns out that didn't really matter. I usually reserve or find an extra little bit of energy for a fast push at the end to cross the finish line. That was impossible here. The new finish was brutal! It was in soft deep lose sand. There was absolutely no sprinting going on at that finish line for anyone. The finisher pics taken just short of the finish line tell the tale: a whole lot of people with looks of surprise, grimaces, etc. I think I'm swearing in mine. Instead of going fast I was just concentrating hard on just moving my feet as much as possible. I had seen the clock on the finish line and it said 10:41 something or other. My swim wave started at 7:42. That meant I could possibly finish in under 3 hours!!! I had never ever had any goals, even the idealistic if everything goes perfectly and I suddenly turn into a super hero kind, to beat 3:00. But I was so close. So I willed my legs through that sand pit as fast as possible, and hoped I’d made it. I did! I did the 10 km in 52:43! I would have been happy with that time in a straight 10 km race, let alone at the end of a triathlon. I was super pumped.

And I couldn’t breathe. Or more correctly, I could breathe, but I didn’t feel like I was getting any oxygen. I wasn’t hyperventilating, I knew what that felt like. I figured this might be an episode of exercise induced asthma, possibly caused in part by the forest fire smoke. I was still and got it under control. I grabbed a bit to eat, bumped into my twitter friend, congratulated each other, had a photo taken, then I set off looking for my family. That meant walking in the soft sand again which was enough exertion to set off the breathing problem again. They weren’t where they had been, so I went back to transition to grab my phone so we could meet up. Found them (or they found me) near transition. Husband was going to go in to grab my gear for me (because I was having trouble) but my bag was nowhere near my bike and I couldn’t explain where it was. So I sucked it up and went and slowly got packed up, met up again outside of transition. He took my bike for me and I walked slowly to the car. Eventually I was fine, but I’m going to chat with my doctor about this. It might just have been the smoke, but it might still be worthwhile making sure I have a puffer in case it happens again. I think if I hadn’t been so happy about my time I might have been more freaked out. But I wasn’t. I knew I was going to be OK. I just wanted to get home, have a shower, and eventually some lunch and a beer.

I am really happy with how it went. It wasn’t perfect, there’s room for improvement, but all in all, I’m happy. Other than the breathing difficulty I felt pretty good at the end, mentally and physically. I was just over 20 minutes faster overall than last year. I was 1:44 faster in the swim, 10:09 faster on the bike, and 8:13 faster on the run. I improved in all three disciplines. And I beat a lot of women who are much younger than me. All of this feels really good. I did not podium like in the last race, but I knew that I wouldn’t. Oly races are a different beast, and they attract a lot of very fit very fast women, especially older women. I will never podium in a standard distance race and that’s OK. (I was 10 minutes slower than the next woman up from me in my age group, so trying a little harder here or there wouldn’t have made a difference to my placement.) I raced my race, against the course and myself, and as far as I’m concerned, this time I won.