Guelph Lake Olympic Tri Relay Race report

June 19, 2011

Ang - swim 26:21
Going in to the relay today, I knew we had a very good chance at doing well as we had a strong team put together. I had signed on for the swim leg of the relay and was pretty excited at the prospect as I find the swim leg to generally fun and the bonus being that my part is over the quickest and I get to relax and cheer on the rest of my team as they tear up the course. The morning was cool as we headed out to the Guelph Lake Conservation area. But the sun was shining and it was shaping up to be a great day for some fast racing. We got to the race site and, in typical Subaru fashion, the registration went quite smoothly and we got our race kits picked up and bodies marked up (though why I needed it was beyond me as my portion of the race had all my markings covered up for the duration...) After that we went back to the transition area and I started the fun process of getting my wetsuit on so I'd be ready to go.

Heading down to the race swim start site, I noticed some changes from last years race. They made the race a long rectangle shaped course (2 loops) in an effort to increase beach space and decrease congestion. The water looked a little choppy but not too terrible. I got in for a short warm up and found the chop wasn't nearly as bad as it looked and the water actually felt warmer then the air. I then got out - and headed to the beach for the mass start. They had us 'guestimate' finish times to semi-corral us by swim cap colour. So I lined myself up with the other yellow swim caps and before I knew it the cannon went "boom" and we were off.

The start of the swim was typical mass start ROUGH!!! WOW...as a strong swimmer, I've never had an issue with being nervous about the swim leg. But this year, the trip out to the first bouy was tough. I quite literally got pummelled - that cliff bar commercial from a few years ago, where the guy practiced swim start by having his friends pummel him with oars and such, felt quite accurate! I think the effort the race organizers made to decrease congestion actually served the opposite purpose and made it worse. I even stopped at one point to let a few people go by in an effort to get into some clearer water. That seemed to help but as I approached the first bouy I found that people who'd been taken off course from the current were making a mad effort to get back on and I got sideswiped a few times. Rounding the second bouy was more washing machine craziness. Somehow though when I found myself making the turn back towards shore I found the crazy roughness was easing up a bit and I had a much nicer swim in to shore. Got out on the shore, and ran along the beach a short distance and then back in the water for lap 2.

As it turns out - loop 2 was typically less congested and crazy so it was a much more comfortable swim, with only minimal pummeling. Although I did find that I was in the mix of people with Royal Blue and Red caps so they clearly had overestimated thier swimming speed as I was bang on within my time estimation. When it was done, I was out of the water and running up that crazy lung buster of a hill, remembering that I was done, once I handed my chip off to Rick, I needed to run as hard as I could to get there. I did this race (tri relay) last year at Guelph and with how rough the swim was for the first loop I was anticipating a slightly slower swim time. As it turns out - my swim time was actually a little faster this year, and I can definitely say that, even though my tri racing/mass start experience is limited, this one was BRUTAL!
Talking to a few swimmers I knew after the race, I discovered that they all felt the same way, including some who are multiple Ironman finishers. One said that was worse then any Ironman race she's ever done. So, given that, I'm really happy with my swim result as I know I got beat up and stopped a few times to center myself in that first swim loop. After my part was done I was able to enjoy cheering my teammates on as we rocketed into a first place finish for the relay. With our name being Chocolate Pie Buttertart - the announcer got quite the kick out of the fact that we won, as did the people who had stayed around for the awards. What was even funnier is that we beat a team called Speedplay. I personally loved when he asked how a team called speedplay could allow themselves to get beat by a team called Chocolate Pie Buttertart...All in all a great day for racing despite the fact that the swim was extremely rough.

-- Ang

Rich - bike 1:05:54
As I dismissed the 5:30 am alarm on my Blackberry, I wondered to myself why the heck I agreed to register for this stupid damned relay. The day before included a hot 100k ride, a hot performance in the Flower City parade with the Brampton Concert Band, a barebecue at Colin's place, and a gig with the Dixie Cup Tower of Power horns at Hugh's Room. It was past 1:00 am before I got home, set my alarm, and lay down on the couch to watch a little t.v. Next thing I knew, my Blackberry was yelling at me to get up.

The plan was for Ang to drive over to my place and together we would pick up Larry and head to the race site. Ang was right on time, we were early picking Larry up, the line up to get in Guelph Lake Conservation Area wasn't too bad, registration went smoothly, got body marked, visited the porta potty, walked down to the lake with Ang and Larry.

As everyone who knows me knows, I'm a terribly uncompetitive swimmer and for that reason, I have a love-hate relationship with the swim. Yet, as I stood on the beach, watching the other triathletes go through their pre-race rituals, I had the feeling of having been in hibernation the past couple of years. There is an “edge” that comes with training to be competitive that I have been fortunate enough to have experienced. But it was gone now. Such was my mindset waiting for my leg of the relay.

Ang was pretty quick out of the water and, before I had much time to think more negative thoughts, I found myself running my yellow Cervelo out of transition and across the mount line. Getting out of the park seemed a slow process. There were speed bumps to cross, a number of turns, and gravel at the corners. I clumsily navigated my Tri bike through these obstacles and eventually reached the open road where I settled into my aerobars and tried to find my rhythm.

Two or three riders passed me as we headed north along a rather rough road towards the 5k corner. I let them go, still trying to find a rhythm. Turning east, the road still rough, I started to reel in a few slower riders and kept the ones who had passed me earlier in my sight. I couldn't find my rhythm and was missing that “edge” I spoke of earlier so my goal was to just try and stay with the other riders. We turned south, still on rough road, down the long hill and up the other side, turned east again, still rough road, and finally reached smooth road at about the 10k mark.

From 10k to 20k, the road ran straight north along smooth, unbroken pavement. I found my rhythm. A couple riders passed me but they weren't really going anywhere. I stayed with them and we passed more riders. I glanced down at my power meter occasionally to see where I was at power wise. It seemed that 265 watts was uncomfortably comfortable so I more or less tried to stick with that. The speed hovered somewhere around 37-38 kph but, as it seemed we were riding into a slight head wind, I was confident that would be faster on the return trip.

A few kilometeres before the turnaround point, the lead riders started to ride by going the opposite direction. I noticed the lead bike in particular looked so relaxed on his bike that it caused me to relax a little and that seemed to help. At this point, I wasn't racing anybody so much as trying to stick with the flow of riders ahead of me. The turnaround came and I stood on my pedals so as not to get gapped too much from those I was pacing. Nevertheless, a gap seemed to have opened up. I had been able to stay with the rider ahead of me, maintaining more than the minimum number of bike lengths, but I hadn't noticed that he had slipped off the back of the stream of riders ahead of him. To make matters worse, that tail wind that I was anticipating ended up being a bothersome cross wind I had to ride against. I dug a little deeper, passed the rider ahead of me and bridged the gap to the group down the road. But it took me pretty much the 10km of smooth road to do this.

Turning west, again onto the rough road, I didn't make any further headway against any of the riders ahead of me. Similarly, heading north down and then up the long hill, I didn't gain any ground. But once we turned east again towards the 35k mark, I passed a couple of riders, turned south again and caught and passed a couple more. I was really starting to find my rhythm now and, glancing down at my power tap, noticed I was maintaining somewhere around 285 watts. Typical that I start to come into my rhythm more than an hour into my ride. At the Rideau Lakes tour, the weekend before, I felt at my strongest towards the end of the second 180k ride. So clearly the endurance power is there, just not the time trial speed. So maybe I just need to do more speed work and time trials. Or maybe I'm just getting too old for this kind of stuff. Or maybe a bit of both.

And then I was back weaving my way through the gravelly turns and speed bumps, heading towards the dismount line. I raced back through transition, racked the bike, and turned my chip over to Larry.

I found out from some of the other relay runners, who were waiting for the return of their cyclists, that one other relay runner had gone off ahead of Larry so he had some work to do to gain first place for us. But we had our ace in the hole, Larry Bradley. So it was going to be interesting.

After chatting with the other relay runners for a bit, I made my way onto the run course. I walked the run course. It was awhile before the lead runner went by, another pretty good time gap before second place went by, and a pretty good gap before the third runner went by. They started to come a bit more frequently after that but still with gaps in between, I passed the 1k/9k mark and kept walking. In total, I counted about 8 runners going the opposite direction, checking their body markings for that 'R' that signified the competition but the only 'R' I saw was Larry in the 9th position overall. I have to say, I was somewhat surprised and excited to see him so far up in the overall standings. I cheered as he went by and then headed back towards the finish line to reap my reward.

-richard

Larry - run 37:32
We spoke about entering the Guelph Lakes Olympic race as a relay quite some time ago and made it official a few weeks ago as Ang, Richard and I got organized and completed the paperwork. Just like my FMCT teammates, I was coming into this event a little tired due to the large hours of training I was able to accomplish in the past seven days so I was a curious to see how the legs would perform over 10k. Thankfully, with the run being at the end of the triathlon, I had plenty of time to warm up and enjoy the amazing atmosphere around the event.

For the first leg of our race, Richard and I were able to watch Ang work her magic in the water. We stayed down on the beach for the first loop and cheered her on as she ran across the sand for her re-entry into the lake. We then headed back up to transition so Richard could suit up for his bike ride and I could start my nutritional intake and stretching. I wasn't long into this routine before our super swimmer entered the bike zone and passed the chip band over to Richard to send him off on his ride through the Wellington County side roads.

I figured I would now have just a little over an hour before my part so I started to prepare as I chatted to Ang about her adventures in the water. Time passed so quickly and before I knew it the leaders started to make their way back into the park. Following the elites into transition was a cyclist who surprisingly placed his bike on the other relay rack across from our spot. You could tell he put in a monster effort by the way his team was reacting so I was curious as to where they were out of the water. As I started to ask them about their positioning, I noticed Richard's yellow Cervelo coming into the dismount area on the far side of transition. The countdown was on.

Mr. Westwood had thrown down a mighty performance of his own and we were now just a little more than a minute back in second. After a slight hesitation, watching Richard rack his bike, I finally swapped the timing chip over to my ankle and sprinted out of transition. Usually, I don't get to leave T2 feeling this fresh during a regular duathlon so I got a little excited and hammered across the first rolling portion of the run.

In the first kilometre, I passed a few of the top age group triathletes but could not find my relay target in the winding park roads. I had set my watch the night before to capture the splits every km so when I got my first reading (3:27) I knew I better settle down. We were running into the wind at this point and still had a grassy section to negotiate in the middle of the run so I didn't want to blow up before reaching this point.

Shortly after passing this first marker on the road, I came to a straightaway on the course where I could finally see the lead runner in our race. He was a few hundred metres up the service road running with a couple of individual triathletes. I started thinking over a few strategies on my approach and figured it was best to continue the attack with limited knowledge of the talent of the runners behind me. If one of them posted a sub 35 minute 10k, it would probably be enough to catch me so I could not let up. As I inched closer, I was confident that the lead change would happen soon so I could then work at picking off some more of the overall leaders as they could keep me inspired to go fast. Although, they would blow the doors off me if they had not already swam and cycled!

As we hit the 3k sign, I made my way past the “Speedplay A” Runner and complimented his effort before carrying on towards the first turn around. During this tiny uphill piece, I caught a number of other triathletes but was not really motoring as quickly as I imagined. The passes were becoming tougher and tougher as I moved closer to the top ten of the overall race.

Just after 5k, the course sent us down a loose gravel trail that lead into a rough section of farm land. We were running on a soft path that was cut down about the width of a tractor. When I ran the route in 2009 (in a duathlon) we did this portion but I was expecting a right turn in the first field down to the forest. I guess they decided to change this and we were now sent out even further into a second field. I was working to stay on the tractor tire marks and keeping an eye out for other racers coming down the trail as it was a free for all for positioning.

Finally, I got to the back of the second field and saw that we were heading towards a clear cut in the forest. It seemed like this new section was running longer than the older course and I was starting to wonder how deep we would be sent into the bush. Thankfully, the turnaround popped up just a few feet into the trees and I could now visualize the finish of my run.

With my splits getting slower during this cross country adventure, and the gravely uphill just a few hundred metres ahead, I pushed as hard as possible to keep my tempo up. I eventually made my way back onto the tar and chip park roads and tried to force my form to resemble the track efforts I held earlier in the week.

This seemed to get me closer to my desired pace and I kept the pedal down all the way back home. After spotting Richard out on the course cheering me along, I got another boost for the final 1000 metres and arrived at the hilly section knowing the finish was very near. I used my climbing abilities to hammer up the slopes and tried to feed off some recent descending tips I have been eating up from the guys I have been running with of late. It all worked really well and I had a strong finish to hit 37:32 for my 10k.

In the end, Team Chocolate Pie Buttertart put in a very solid team effort with everyone making huge contributions to our Olympic Relay victory. Thanks to Ang and Richard for making the day so fun! I can't wait to team up for our next race, hopefully, with some more FMCT teams in the mix showing off the Falcon colours!

-Larry