Victoria Half Ironman

From a triathlon perspective, yesterday's Victoria Half Iron was my A-race for 2009. Obviously, Big Sur was a big event for me too, but after this I don't have a whole lot planned this season. I'll probably throw an Olympic race in somewhere, but mostly the rest of the year will be about building base for a potential run at IM Canada in 2010. So, with all of that in mind, I had some pressure on myself heading into the weekend.

I felt that training had gone fairly well. While it took a little longer than I had hoped to recover from Big Sur, I was able to spend four or five weekends really building up the bike fitness I knew I would need on the Victoria course. My run was in good shape from the marathon, though I needed to build the speed up a little. And my swim has felt reasonably strong this year, though I was a little concerned since during the two open water practices we did I wasn't super comfortable in the wetsuit. All in all, I was mostly prepared and I managed to convince myself of the old axiom that my body will perform better slightly under-prepared than over-prepared.

We headed to the island Saturday morning, which was good since it allowed us to spend most of Saturday afternoon shopping for all of the things I had forgotten at home. In my preparation for the marathon, I must have gotten used to not having to bring much with me. I completely forgot the stuff to make my drinks for the bike, my race belt, and I'm sure I would have forgotten more if Amy hadn't been there to take care of me. Frankly, she was amazing on Saturday keeping my head on straight when I was feeling a little overwhelmed. I don't really have any excuse for being so forgetful, just a huge amount of thanks that Amy made my life easier! We took in the pre-race meeting, though really just to make sure of the schedule for race morning. Spent a few minutes with the other LETC folks who were racing and then headed up to Amy's parents for dinner and early to bed. I was asleep by 8:30 and actually got a great sleep until the alarm was blazing at 4 am.

Race morning went smoothly (for me anyway - Amy will tell you that I was too early for everything). I was able to relax through getting marked and setting up transition, doing a short warmup jog, and getting into my wetsuit exactly as I had scheduled in my head. I got a few hundred meter warmup swim in and only had four or five minutes to hang around the start before the cannon went off. It was great because staying on my own schedule definitely minimized any opportunity for me to build up the anxiety level.

The swim start was far less chaos than I expected with nearly 500 people going in a single wave. While there was a little jostling, I have to say there was less than during those 30-person LETC swim starts at Sasamat! I guess those Leading Edgers are just more aggressive. I went out at a pretty good clip and just as I was settling into a pace slightly slower, another swimmer went by just a tiny bit faster than me. I managed to take in the lessons of our coaches and jump onto his toes for a draft, which I held for the better part of 800 or 900 meters before he pulled away at the last buoy. The swim course appears to have been a little bit short because all the times are fast, but whether it was 1,800m or 1,900m, I had a great swim clocking in at 30:41.

After a relaxed T1 (1:52), I headed out on the bike determined to just ride my own race and not letting all the crazy fast people passing me get into my head. I was feeling pretty good though, and accomplished this "ride your own race" thing a little less well than one would hope. I ended up attacking a few of the hills pretty hard on the first lap and by the time I was coming through the half point I realized that the pace was way too high. Talking to her afterwards, Amy knew it was too fast too as she calculated my bike split coming in around 2:40 for the 87 km if I had continued on at that rate. Fortunately, as the bike went on and racers spread out more, I was able to do a better job on lap two of reigning it in. I geared right down on a few of the big climbs and tried to make sure I was spinning through the tough parts instead of grinding away with the big muscles. One of the best parts of the ride came just when I was starting to suffer the most on the ride during one of the worst climbs up at the northwest corner of the course. As I was suffering up the hill, I spotted Joanne at the side of the road ringing her bells and yelling encouragement. It was amazing how that friendly smile and yelling gave me a physical shot that propelled me on through the last 35 minutes or so of the ride and into T2. After that 1 hour, 20 minute first lap, I had calmly held 30 km/hour on the second for a total ride time of 2:47:59.

My T2 had a slight delay as I struggled to find my spot, but with a deep breath and turning the brain back on for a moment, I still passed through in 1:06. The Victoria Half run is two 10 km laps of Elk and Beaver Lakes which is a trial that we love, having run it several times both in training and in the Self Transcendence race that Amy and I have done the last few years. I started the run with frozen hands and frozen feet that finally began to thaw around the 3 km mark. As my body warmed up, I felt that I had taken in a little too much fluid near the end of the ride and had to stop for a quick trip to the bushes around the 4 km point. During my pause, a bunch of people ran past and once I started running again, I picked a girl who seemed to be about the right pace to try to outrun. I caught her just after the 5 km mark and when she was still hanging around by the 7 km mark, I started up a conversation because I figured it would be easier to keep this going with a partner than an adversary. Our pace had been just a shade over 5 min kms to that point and my new friend Susie didn't show any signs of slowing down. Running by the finish line the first time, it was great to hear the encouragement from Amy telling me to stay strong and that I was looking great. The energy from the crowd was fun as well and I actually commented on how big the crowd seemed. Through the beginning of the second lap it started to get harder to hang onto the 5-ish minute pace and, still running side by side, Susie and I gave away a little bit of time. Once we hit the 15 km marker though, the pace started picking back up again to bring it in. At the 18 km marker, she managed to find another gear that I didn't feel ready to give yet with two km to go, so I played it a little safer until I came into the clearing on the far side of the lake. I knew that with 1,500 meters left, I could lay whatever I had left on the line and still stagger across the line. I managed to pick it up and pass a couple more people in that last kilometer and a half and as I came into the finishing shoot, I had ten seconds to cover the last 25 meters or so and break 5:05. I managed to pull it off, with a run split of 1:43:20 for a total time of 5:04:57.

I still can't quite believe it. I know that the swim was a bit short, but I came in twenty minutes below the time I had set as my "if everything goes right" goal. Aside for a couple of brief moments while climbing on the bike, I stayed in a massively positive head space the whole race. I suffered on the run, yet I never gave up for even a moment. I'm just so pleased that I was able to leave everything I had yesterday on the course and blow my expectations out of the water.

Thanks to everyone who came out to cheer and congratulations to everyone else who race yesterday too! LETC had another fantastic showing and I'm proud of you all! Thanks especially though, to Amy, who put up with me being spastic and out of sorts on Saturday, put up with me getting her up too early on race day, made the perfect pre-race dinner on Saturday evening, cheered all over the course, and generally made me feel like a million bucks out there. I couldn't have done it without you sweetheart!