Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Race Report: Triathlon Olympique de Mont-Tremblant

Well, first tri of 2012 is in the bag! A gang of 8 of us drove up on Friday night - 7 racing and 1 supporter  (thanks Emily!) from Ottawa for le Triathlon de Mont-Tremblant. Emily was our token supporter and driver whilst the rest of us raced the Oly, except Eric who nailed the Sprint
Pre-Race: Fog lifting..

The course was tough, period. No easy time to be gained - you had to earn each and every minute. I'm actually suprised the Race Director couldn't find a way to make the swim uphill.

The short version: 17th out of 399 (5th in AG) in a time of 2:18:27

And, the long stuff..

Swim: 26:09. The swim was a two-lap affair including an Ironman Lake Placid-style exit and re-entry on the gravel beach. A few guys by the results at the Sportstats van after the race who swam with their Garmin 910's thought it was ~2-300m long. I'm not sure about that, I'd take the accuracy with a grain of salt. I did swim, however, a minute slower than my last Oly race and I know I'm in much better swim shape than then. That said, it was only my 4th open water swim of the year and my goal on Saturday was to just chill out and swim well within myself - there was no way I was going to gas myself into some decent oxygen debt only to run 500m to T1 in my wetsuit then jump on my bike and nail 10km uphill to Lac Superieur! 

Finally underway after a long wait in the rubber.

T1: Holy crap, a 500m run to transition?! This was 10% extra running for the folks doing the Sprint race. Ironman folks won't notice this too much in August, though I can't see why they'd want to make a long day longer. Nothing really else to report for transition except it added 2.5 minutes to my time with that bloody run up.

Bike: 1:11:09. Meh. Getting on the bike and pedaling up Duplessis for the first 1km or so I thought "Shit, this'll be long". My legs felt flat. I didn't exactly taper into this race given I was still finishing a  solid training block prior to the 70.3 in two weeks including +400km of riding in the prior 10 days. We could say I tapered Friday, where I limited myself to a 25-minute recovery paced jog on the treadmill and my bike commute. Anyway, back to the race: legs are flat and I'm suffering. 6 minutes into the bike I realised my Garmin has stopped. WTF? I think after putting my race wheels on my cadence magnet wasn't aligned properly (or something of that nature) so the Garmin decided to 'auto pause'. What does that mean? No idea about race time, or my pace. Oh and no file to check out after. No big deal. I just tried to pace of the bike studs who were riding around me (and dropping me one by one like a sack of [insert your favourite manure synonym]). About half-way up Duplessis on the first lap of the bike my front derailleur shifter decided it wasn't going to play along, either. It's a friction-type shifter and the bolt had come loose enough to the point where it was useless. I literally had to hold the shifter up the entire time to keep it in the big chain ring. PITA. The end result was that I found it near impossible to hold a good (or any) rythym on such a punchy little course with lots of little hills where you want to get out of the seat and just hammer up in the big dog and keep going. Oh yeah, and my rear tire was rubbing on my seat stay. Awesome. I guess all this crap lost me a few minutes. Oh well. Lessons learned: mount your wheels earlier and make sure you do a good warm-up ride.

T2: Dismount, rack bike, check. Helmet off without penalty, check. Grab shoes and run, check.

Run: 38:47. Not too bad; it was the 7th fastest on a day where only two guys went sub-37. I ran without any electronics so I had no idea what my pace was like (not like having a timer would have helped as the flippin' KM markers were way off. i.e. KM2 to KM3 felt like 2km's and 4 to 5 felt like 800m). I just tried to repass a few of the guys who had passed my depressing ass on the bike. The course was rolling and the hills felt massive compared to when we ran it on fresh(er) legs in April. I tried to sink a bit of Gatorade at each of the aid stations to keep a bit of spark going as my legs had given up on laying down any kind of power. I always felt like I was running with a few extra gears, but without the power to use them. In other words, my legs gave up long before my engine. The last few up-hills were brutal, but the little down-hill through the pedestrian village to the finish chute was worth it even though I had no kick what-so-ever!

Other stuff: Start was delayed for over an hour and I wish I had of drank a bit more or had a few more calories before the race. Sank 300 calories on the bike, a rate which I think will suffice on the 70.3. Race swag was pretty decent for a local race: Bag, bottle, shirt, shitty medal and enough Oreo biscuits to sink a ship. That said, race organisers could have used a lot more volunteers to get things running better. 

Audrey did really well! She nailed her first Oly on 'panic training' and finished 19th in the womens (3rd in her AG!). She wasn't really inspired by the difficulty of the course, but I've promised her that her next race will be a million-times better, especially if she keeps up the hard work she's been doing in the last few weeks. Everyone from the UO Tri Club had a good weekend! A few noobs nailing their first races and learning some new tricks and some lessons! Proud of everyone! Thanks guys for a great weekend!

The UO Tri Club gang :)
The take-home: Happy with my day. The delta between myself and the Quebec studs is decreasing. Will need to do a quality taper for the 70.3.

1 comment: