The Toronto Island race is my favourite event on the multisport calendar. The reason is because I don’t have to wake up at 4 am to get ready, or pay $600 to fly to somewhere else, etc. This is literally a 5 minute drive from where I live. So naturally, I have this race circled as one of my key races!
Laura and I woke up around 6:30 am and managed to catch the 7 am ferry, just in time for my 8:15 start. For those who don’t know, Hanlan’s point is a crystal clear body of water. You can literally see all the way to the bottom of the lake at the furthest buoy. I had a decent swim of 13 mins, and including the long run up to transition, I managed to register a time of 14 mins and change for the swim portion of the event.
I did the try-a-tri the previous day, and I had done a quick mount with the shoes on my bike. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do it for the sprint race, because of the narrow roads at the beginning of the sprint bike course (due to the bike and run courses sharing the same road). It was my first real race on my brand new Quintana Roo Lucero, with my custom 85mm deep race wheels. On the straights, I was averaging nearly 38-39 kph on this course. Just simply a fantastic course to be riding on. John Salt did an amazing job with the marshalling of the traffic. I ended up finishing the 30km in under 50 mins, which was a big mental boost.
The run was hot and humid, and unfortunately, I ran an extra loop of the course that only the duathletes had to run. I ran faster than last year, pace wise, but ended up having a slower time due to the extra loop. I finished with a PB nonetheless and waited around to catch Laura finishing! All in all, a great day.
