Milton Triathlon

I wandered a bit, made a pit stop at the washroom and slowly met up with all of the gang that I train with now, or trained with at NTT last year, or watched doing Ironman Wisconsin last fall. I love being part of this great group or supportive fun athletes.

The coach told me to do a 15 minute warm up on the bike, but I knew I’d loose my spot on the rack if I moved my bike, so I did a 15 minute warm up running instead. I got into my wetsuit and into the water for a warm up at about 9:15. I swam out to the far tetrahedron, and back for my warm up. It was wonderful for me to look at the swim course and feel like that’s a nice looking distance, instead of the “Oh my God, I can’t do this distance” feeling I had at every race last year!

I hung with the gang at waters edge for the starting gun. I was sorry Vicki was doing the Du along with Frank instead of being out here with us. Vicki’s been my training partner all year, but she didn’t really want to do the race this year.

The gun went for our wave (the 6th and last) and we were off. I’ve always started at the back and way off to the outside or the pack. This time, as per the coaches instructions, I was about 2/3 of the way to the outside, but in about the middle of the pack. I got bumped, kicked a little bit, but I felt great and just thought about making nice long comfortable strokes. I eyed the marker about every two dozens strokes or so. Every time I looked around and saw I was keeping to the middle of the pack I felt great. For once I wasn’t looking around in the hope that at least one person was behind me!

We got bunched up at the first buoy. I saw Steve beside me and hollered out a quick “Way to go” to him. This was Steve’s first Tri. I got stuck between a couple of guys on the outside leg of the swim. I couldn’t pass, and I’m not sure which of us were swimming at odd angels but we kept bumping, kicking and scratching each other along the way. I felt like I was in pretty good shape coming into the last leg towards the beach. I kept to my even pace, but it felt like most of the others wee now sprinting. Lynne and Emily were at waters edge cheering like mad as I came out of the water. They’d dropped by flip flops there for me which was great. My bike was racked a long way from the water and the gravel on the pavement was very sharp. (Nothing like trying to be a great triathlete, but with tender feet!)

I wasn’t as organized as I could have been in the transition area. Id’ out my socks with my running shoes, my sunglasses were not where I thought I’d left them, but all in all, I only wasted about an extra minute. I ran off towards the start line and made a bad mistake. Instead of stopping and clipping my foot into the pedal, I thought I’d just stand on the pedal and swim my leg over. I guess I thought I could get some speed up and then clip in. As soon as I swept my leg over, my left leg slipped off the pedal. I almost killed “The Boys” on the crossbar! I eventually gained control again. I didn’t fall, and I was off.

Lynne and Emily were about 100 meters down from the line, again cheering like mad for me. It’s so great seeing them! I took off quickly, but not racing too much on my way to the BFH (Big Friggin’ Hill) about 5k from the start line. I’d biked up the hill a couple of weeks earlier for practice. I didn’t want to be tired at all when I got to it. 1500 meters of hill and steep! Just what you don’t really want to be looking at early on. Actually, I can’t think of any time I want to see that ahead of me! I ground my way up, occasionally looking to see I was speeding away at 8 kph! A few people were walking it. I took some sort of pleasure in knowing that I could bike it, and eventually got to the top. I saw four or five people changing tires. I passed about as many people as passed me on the bike. At one point I was chasing down a couple of folks. I get great pleasure out of catching anyone. I looked at the age markings written on their legs to see the first guy was 66 and the next was 75. So much for feeling like the “hunt them down, super duper triathlete!”

Heading down the BFH is a totally different story. It looks much steeper and longer going down than it did grinding up. I’d hit 69.4KPH on my training run going gown, but this time there was a fellow just in front of me who was moving from side to side instead of just going straight down. I didn’t want to take a chance of hitting him. I had to touch the break twice so my quick time was 67.5KPH. Not as quick as I wanted, but still amazingly invigorating!

Just as I was about to turn into the park again, Vicki went past me. I called out, and caught up to say Hi. The shoot coming off the main road into the park entrance was narrow. Vicki went ahead and we pretty much rode together for the last kilometer into the park and into the transition area together.

Again I spend a few seconds longer than I had to in transition. I took off my bike shirt and swapped it out for my “Running Free” singlett. The weather was extremely humid. I was glad that I’d put on that ‘weight nothing, loose fitting’ shirt moments after I started the run.

Vicki was heading out at the same time as I. We talked as we walked up that first hill. There was no way that either of us were blowing a gasket trying to run up a hill at that point. I was hopping that we’d run together, but I could see Vicki was not up to her usual speed, and I decided to keep going at whatever speed I could. I was hoping that I could keep a 6 minute pace and finish he 7.5k in 45 minutes.

The course was hard for me. I was feeling a bit tired. I kept looking ahead, and I could see a line of folks running back on one side of the road and our line head out on the other. I kept thinking that the corner ahead was the turn around. Common sense, and my Garmin, told me I was no where near, but every time I hit a corner, and then saw that we had another friggin’ hill to go up, I cursed quietly under my breath and headed off again up the hill.

Simon was the first person I ran into. Again I thought the next corner was the turn around and I was amazed to think he was only this short distance ahead. Again the “turn around’ turned out to be a corner, and eventually I saw almost everyone that I knew, coming towards me on the other side of the road. I love the feeling of hollering out to one of the gang, getting a big “Good Going” or “Keep going” or a high 5 on the way past. Eventually I got to the finish line. I was 33 seconds longer for the run than I’d hoped to be, but I was happy as hell to be that close.

Most of the gang were in the transition area when I came in. The fact that they’d been in long enough to go for a swim, dry off, gather their stuff before I got in was . . . . OK. At least they weren’t all packing tier cars up already!

I met Vicki as she was packing up here bike. She wasn’t happy with her run time. Frank wasn’t happy with his run time, but I think we were all happy to have done it. I love training with the two of them. I added a lot to my day to be with them both in that cool racing environment.

My final time was 2:08. I was expecting to be 2:20 – 2:30, so again, another happy ending to a race. I looked at my times from the race last year and compared my pace times for each leg. I’m seeing some big differences which is encouraging.