On September 9, 2012, I raced Ironman 70.3 Muskoka in Hunstville, ON. This was my third half-iron distance race, but my first time doing this specific course. I had come off a really great race in Bala Falls a few weeks earlier and was really looking forward to racing again and finishing the season strong.
My family has a cottage about 45 minutes away from Hunstville, so I headed up on Saturday morning. I had been watching the weather forecast all week and Saturday and Sunday were not looking good – cold and rainy. When I arrived at the Deerhurst resort, it was raining quite steadily. I really wasn’t looking forward to racking my bike and leaving it sitting in the rain until race morning, but what can you do. To make things worse, I realized I forgot my wallet, meaning I had no ID for check-in! I really have no idea how I managed to do that, but needless to say, I wasn’t very happy with myself. Fortunately, the volunteers were super understanding and I was able to Google a newspaper article with my name and picture that would suffice as ID. After the ID mishap, check-in was a breeze.
When I woke up Sunday morning, I was happy to see that it wasn’t raining, but wow was it ever cold! The thermometer showed 6 degrees! I arrived at the Deerhurst airstrip and was able to grab the shuttle over to the resort in a couple minutes. When I got into transition, I set up my gear and then tried to orient myself with the entry and exit points for the swim, bike and run. After getting my bearings, I made the long walk down to the swim start. Note: bring shoes or flip flops! The road and paths down to the swim start are quite rough and will take a toll on cold feet!
The volunteers did a great job keeping everyone in their proper swim waves and things were really well organized. After some dry-land warm up, I got in a good warm up in the water and felt ready to go. I went off in the 3rd swim wave and felt good in the early going. The shape of the swim course is a little odd, but it helps to break the swim up into smaller chunks which I find helps mentally. Another positive (at least in my mind) is that there were no weeds throughout the swim, with the exception of the last 200m or 300m before the swim exit where it gets shallower.
I took it easy in the swim and found some fast feet to draft off. Things got a little more hectic about halfway through as I started to catch up with some bigger packs of slower swimmers from the previous wave. After the turn around the final bouy, there is a straight away of probably 400m or so back to shore. Things got a little busier here as I caught even more swimmers from the previous wave. I had to battle a little bit, but not too bad. One thing I found challenging was sighting the swim exit. It must have taken me a good 200ms after the final turn to actually sight the swim out! Also, the last 50m or so before the swim out gets a little mucky as the water gets churned up, so visibility was down to zero. I hit the shore in 32:56 (1:39/100m). The 300m run up (and when I say up…I mean up) to transition was a bit of a grind and you really have to take it easy.
Including the long run, I was in and out of T1 in 3:58 and on the bike. I have done a ton of training in Muskoka, so I was used to riding hills, but even I found this bike course super hilly and challenging. There were long gradual hills, short steep hills, long steep hills, rollers…you name the type of hill…this course had it! It was quite chilly (especially on the down hills), so even though I didn’t feel hungry or thirsty, I made sure to take in lots of nutrition. Overall the bike course was great. There’s one really cool section where you come into a small town with tons of spectators cheering you on and then you go up and over a bridge and out of town. Super fun! However, there were 3 sections of probably about 3 or 4km each that were really rough chip-seal. These sections really batter you and there are a couple decent hills mixed in there too.
I felt like I was riding well and pushing the pace, so I was REALLY surprised to come off the bike in 2:57:39, which is a good 10-12 minutes slower than I was anticipating. I really have no idea why I rode so slow, since my bike splits on every other race this year have been a marked improvement over 2011. Still a mystery to me!
I was in an out of T2 in a quick 55 seconds and out onto the run course. My brother – who had done this race a couple years ago – warned me about the hills on the run, but I didn’t find it too bad. I started out relatively slow to get my legs going. After about 5k, I started to find my pace and started to pass some guys who had passed me on the bike. I kept fueling with a gel every 6k and some water and Ironman Perform at each aid station. By this time, the sun was shining bright and the temperature had warmed up to about 18 degrees – perfect racing weather! I started to feel stronger after making the turnaround at 10k, so I picked up the pace and began to pass even more runners. I got to about 16k or so before the fatigue started to set in. From there, it was a bit of a battle to keep my pace up. There were a couple short steep hills through the trails at around 17k that really made me dig deep.
I kept my pace to the end and clocked a run split of 1:38:51 (4:42/km) which I was quite pleased with considering my run training was relatively minimal throughout the season due to shin splints. Overall, I finished in 5:14:17, good for 10/58 in my age-group. Not exactly what I had in mind, but my oddly slow bike really affected my overall time and put me about 10-12 minutes away from my goal time. Oh well…it happens.
All in all, this was a great race. Awesome venue and course, great volunteers, AMAZING post-race buffet, great organization and strong spectator/community support. If you’re looking for a race to really challenge you and push you to your limit, Ironman Muskoka 70.3 is that race.
