Muskoka is such a fun event. It has the atmosphere of a smaller race, but there are a ton of people there. Most of the best make it out for this one.
I wasn’t expecting much out of this race as those of your who read this blog will probably realize. Training has been extremely sparse. I didn’t taper at all and still did my long run/ride during the week so the legs were a bit tired.
Got to the venue nice and early this time, and had pick of the racks and parking which is allways nice. One neat thing was that there were less pro’s this year, and as a result they moved one of our racks right next to theirs. Definetely cool to be suiting up next to these guys. It gives you a chance to chat with them, and more importantly check out their rides.
The race.
Swam down to the swim start which is so much nicer than walking. The pro’s headed off and we watched the women fly by before we left. Got into a nice little pack off the gun, but lost them before the first buoy. I’m not sure if it was me or them, but I thought I had a good line to the buoy so I am thinking that they weren’t sighting to well. It was hard into the sun.
Cruised the swim nicely. As usual with the longer swims I find a good rythym and can hold it well for the whole swim.
Out of the water I was feeling ok. From looking at the times of the pro’s and myself, I think that the swim was about 150m long. Everybodies times seem a bit inflated.
T1 was relatively smooth.
The bike was the biggest x factor for me. I have been riding very little lately. Muskoka is a very tough and hilly course so I thought I would ease through it. I did ease through it, but the hills still smoked my legs pretty good. I had some GI issues about half way through the bike as well and my nutrition kept repeating itself on me. I had a very slow bike split. About 6 or 7 min. slower than last year.
T2. I knew I was going to be in trouble coming into transition. Had a slow transition removing a stone from my shoe. The first few steps were tough, and my abs were cramping really badly. I knew though, as a mature athlete :>, that if I just eased into it my running would come around. From experience it allways does.
Unfortunately today it took 8km to finally start feeling good. I got passed a lot in the first 7km, but I was determined not to walk. By the turn around the gut was starting to feel ok, and the legs were back on board, so I slowly ramped up the pace. I wanted to try and finish strong anyways.
I estimate that I was able to start running 4:20min. km’s by the end, and I was feeling really good. To bad the race wasn’t another 5km long I could have made up some time.
So that is the race. I know what I need to do to get back on the wagon. Bike, bike bike!!!
