'Twas the night after...

Just for those really into the details, I thought I would post a quick summary of my self-made 70.3. As a summary it was a bit slow overall but a solid effort in the swim and the bike. The run felt extremely hot and I ignored my pace and set off way too fast…the result was obvious. While I planned to start right at 7am, we got started a little late in the morning. The day was certainly ideal in terms of weather conditions: clear blue skies and only a little wind.  I set off straight out into Buffalo lake and maintained a fairly straight course headed out.  On the way back, I struggled with what seemed like an odd current pushing me further west than I was aiming, but who knows it might just have been tired arms.

Because road conditions from the lake weren’t ideal, I had the longest T1 in history, 12:24, but that involved a 2km drive to the pavement so I could start the ride.  In terms of race organizer, I forgot to put the water in the car so had to send my trusty race support vehicle back to camp for the water…we met up a couple of kms later before I headed out onto the 601.  The beautiful pavement and slight wind at my back for the first 20kms made for a brilliant start.  Then I hit the crap pavement of the 56 and the 12. Sigh, those were some of the worst roads in my cycling history.  Once I hit Alix and turned back onto the 601 things went beautifully.  So beautifully, in fact, that even after doing a couple of loops to bring my distance up to 90km at the end of the pavement, race support was still catching up on breakfast, so I ended up riding an additional 2kms to my running shoes.

The plan for the run changed a bit the night before, which was a good thing.  Rather than running a somewhat untested loop, we decided to run an out and back to The Summer Village of Whitesands. This proved a good plan with starting the run at a different spot that originally envisioned.  The run itself was largely on gravel, in the blazing 21 degree sun, with dust from vehicles coating me inside and out.  Not ideal.  To add insult to injury I let my ego get the best of me and took off at a 5:09 pace.  Needless to say, I didn’t keep that up.  I finished up the run with an average pace of 5:56 min/km but I was moving pretty slowly by the end.

All told, redonculously long transitions included, I finished the day with a total time of 6:31.  That doesn’t bode well for an ironman sub-12, but it certainly means I’ll finish faster than my first attempt.  fingers crossed.