Trisport Canada hosted its last race of the season on August 31st at Guelph Lake. This has become a favorite venue of mine; it’s close to home, the lake is small (so warm), the bike course is hilly (and I love the challenge of hills) and the run gently rolls through the conservation area. In the past 3 years, I have raced here 5 times, both Olympic and Sprint distances. Saturday’s race was a 750m swim, a 30km ride and a 7km run.

I hadn’t really planned on racing this time, but I hadn’t raced at all since the half-Ironman in mid-July; I was feeling ansty; I wanted one more in the books. So my registration was last minute as well as poorly thought out. I finished a long ride (85km) on Sunday, a long run (26km) on Monday and spent a fair amount of time during the week hauling old carpet and moving furniture in and out of rooms. Needless to say, my legs were tired, so tired that I decided to take off the Thursday and Friday before the race so that I could actually rest.

On Friday night, I went to bed early but thunderstorms in the area made it difficult to sleep. They finally stopped around 2:30 and, by 3:30, the dogs decided it was finally safe to go outside. Once outside, though, flashes of lightning in the distance scared both of them, and they dragged me back inside. This game of inside-outside continued for an hour, when I gave up on sleep, fed them, walked them, and showered. Then, I headed out alone for a shake-out run so that I could loosen up before Dave and I headed to Guelph.

Despite my lack of preparation and sleep, I was really happy with how the race went. I was in the second wave of the swim, and the two fastest waves were behind mine, with each wave being only 3 minutes apart. This meant that the speedy swimmers behind me were sure to catch up quickly. In open water, this can get hectic. By the time I reached about 200 metres, I paid more attention to the sounds behind me and, sure enough, it wasn’t long after when I felt the water lifting me more, a result of the waves created as dozens of swimmers swam up from behind. Soon after, I was pushed and jostled, my ankles were grabbed (so that the swimmers grabbing them could pass me), and I was knocked around by the waves created by the volume of athletes in one smaller area but, somehow, I managed to keep my focus. “Reach and pull, head forward, remember to blow….” I didn’t stop; I kept moving towards the finish, feeling powerful and confident. I was so, so proud of how I handled myself in the crowd.

I was also very happy with my ride. I was not happy, though, that I had forgotten to start my watch when I left transition. This meant that I never knew what pace I was riding; I only knew that I was riding as fast as possible and I was passing a lot of people. As I got closer to the turn-around, I saw a friend – a much stronger swimmer – heading back towards the transition area, which lit a spark in me to try to catch her before we started the run. Even when I ended up following a truck loaded with bales of hay, and even though my pace dropped to 20km/hr., I did not give up. Instead, I sighed deeply and followed the slow moving vehicle for what felt like an eternity; once it started to pick up its speed, so did I, staying with it for as long as I could. Then, I worked to maintain that same pace, hoping to make up for lost time. As luck would have it, I did catch my friend in the last kilometre. Yay!

My transition from the bike to run seemed to take forever but I managed to leave for the 7km run feeling like I had things under control. For the past several weeks, I have been training to slow down my pace and have pretty much locked in my first kilometre between 5:40 and 6:00, with my second kilometre closer to 5:30. I had decided to use this same strategy in Guelph and I did keep things feeling both controlled and relaxed. Even though my time was a bit slower than I am use to, I finished the run feeling both happy and relaxed; I ran according to the plan.