August 8, 2010
During the winter I was told August 14, 2010 was going to be the day of my cousins wedding down in Florida where she lives. Not long after I found this out I started to search for a triathlon that I could do on the drive down. I found a small race held in Canton, North Carolina not far off our route. It sounded like a beautiful race site as it was situated in the Appalachian Mountains. I also found a You Tube video of someone competing in the race from last year and got an idea of the race venue.
I signed up for the race and the day before the race we had a short drive towards Asheville, NC (30 minutes from the race site) along part of the Blue Ridge Parkway. If you ever get a chance to go to North Carolina go for bike ride along part of the Blue Ridge Parkway. My husband and I have had the opportunity to do this the last couple of years during a training week in March and it’s always a highlight of the trip.
We went the day before to pick up the race kit and there was also a short debriefing on the race course. It was a rectangular 500m swim with a long run to transition and then a long run out of transition to the bike start. Despite being in the Appalachian Mountains the bike course of 20km was actually quite flat with one short incline at the beginning and near the end of the race (which seemed tough on race day!). The run course was an out and back crossing over the lake on the bridge with a net downhill on the return to the finish.
After over 6 years of racing triathlon I am still learning!! In my experience if wetsuits are permitted in a race I always use one! The day before I was told the water was likely going be 69 degrees in the morning. As I went down to the race start I noticed most had wetsuits but I didn’t realize (until I saw some pictures later) that most had sleeveless wetsuits. I briefly chatted with another competitor who commented that it was great to be able to finally use a wetsuit in a race as she was from Wilmington, NC.
I did a small swim warm up before my wave was ready to go. It was an in-water start and the horn went and I swam out in the front with 2 other girls towards the first buoy. About 100m into the race I was overwhelmed with heat! I started to panic which I haven’t done in a long time. So many things went through my mind including whether I could take off my wetsuit in the water. I managed to slow myself down, did some backstroke and tried to get cooled down by getting water into my suit. Eventually I cooled down a bit but it was still warm and I could tell it was affecting my arm speed. I finally made it out of the water second in my swim wave!
Off onto the bike I passed the girl that was ahead of me on the swim about 5km into the bike. It was a nice bike loop but the incline near the end was tougher than expected. Onto the run it was a bit slower on the way out as there was a net uphill. The National Aquathlon Championships were also going on so I was getting confused as I saw some female athletes on the return run and was unable to tell whether there was any female triathletes ahead of me so I just focused on the task at hand. I crossed the line and met my husband near the end. He believed that I was the first female in the triathlon across the finish line…my second overall first! Later I found out a female in a later wave beat my time so I actually finished second overall in the race. If I had a better swim it may have turned out differently but like I said before I always continue to learn things from my races.
It was a beautiful location and the people were very friendly. They didn’t seem to realize I was actually from Canada as they announced that I was from Bethany, Ontario, North Carolina!:) I received a nice frame with a watercolour picture of the race site centre with an engraving of my placement in the race. It will be a nice memory of my race day. If you are ever headed that way I would recommend checking out this race!
