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Last week end, I had to choose between 2 triathlon races I did last year: ‘Autumn Colors Tri’ in Michigan and ‘Bulldog Triathlon’ in Ontario. I really liked both last year, but Bulldog was moved forward by one week compared to last year, and Autumn Colors by almost a month, creating conflict.

Both races seems to be usually made out of a relatively small and not very deep field of competitors. Bulldog is a really fast sprint course on flat land inside Rondeau Park while Autumn Colors is about twice the distance, and much more of a challenge with a 3 loops hilly bike course and a 9 km trail run on rolling terrain as well. Since my next big race is Ironman 70.3 Muskoka, a rolling course, it made sense to go to the Autumn Colors Triathlon for a more specific preparation.

Last year, Autumn Colors was my last triathlon race of the year and I had a great race, finishing 8th out of a small crowd of 90 competitors. Based on my improvement this year as seen in the evolution of my finishing times at the T-REX serie, I had potential to place quite well. My friend Craig had injured himself in the run last year (twisted an ankle), so we would both need to be careful on the run to not jeopardize the Muskoka race.

So at 5:50AM Sunday morning, we loaded all the equipment in the Turner’s minivan and we (me, Corinne, Craig, Tracy & baby turner) headed for the US Border. Here’s Tracy and baby turner at the race site..

SWIM - 1000m - 16:35 (Wetsuit) - RANK:10

Swim start was something new for us: a time trial start. Each swimmer was leaving one at a time, after crossing the timing mat on the beach, at 5-15 seconds interval. We were pre-sorted prior to ’swim start’ based on our expected swim times. I put myself in the ~16:20 time slot. It seemed like there was maybe a dozen swimmers in front of me in the line. Before too long, it was my time to run the mat and jump in the water!

While it was nice to not worry about congestion in the swim, the format of the time trial start made me start a little bit too excited. Before 50m, I was already on the previous swimmer’s back and passed her soon after (first picture below). I passed another swimmer or 2 on the way out towards the middle of the lake. But I started too strong and kind of ran out of steam on the return back to the beach and ended up stopping twice briefly to catch my breath. This may also be due to the fact that I seem to have allergy problems lately. So I reached the beach about 15 seconds later than expected for an average swim. Still, that’s 2:30 faster than last year. Woo hoo!

T1= 1:40, within 1 second of last year’s time. I am pretty consistent with my transitions. I would need to find a better trick to remove my wetsuit quickly if I want to shave time here. Seems like I am always struggling a bit.

BIKE - 30 km - 50:17 - RANK:1

Yeah.. That’s right: the fastest bike split of the day! The course was tough starting with a decent hill to climb out of the transition area before reaching the bike loop, but I paced it very well with almost equal splits on all 3 laps. I would not have been able to do a 4th lap at the same pace. Almost 3:30 faster than last year: I am very happy with that! This is definitely where I gained positions. So while I do not feel stronger than last year on the bike, I definitely am. Here’s the winning bike after the event…

T2= 0:38 - 3 seconds faster than last year. I did take the time to put socks on with my regular training shoes as I did not want to risk injury using my ZOOT racing shoes (sockless) in the trail run due to the lack of support.

RUN - 9.25 km - 43:15 - RANK:7

The run course is quite challenging and technical. It’s 85% trail run with rocks and stomps and a lot of rolling hills and some more abrupt hills. Sometimes, there would be sand pits in the bottom of the hills, making the footing quite slow on some sections. Still, I was expecting to have my best time improvement on the run split. It turns out I only cut ~1:30 on the run split. Cutting minutes off the run is quite hard it turns out. I may have pushed a bit too hard on the bike too, but I do not regret it.

FINAL TIME: 1:52:12 - 3rd overall (small field of 54 competitors for the Long Course event)
Almost 8 minutes faster than in 2009 and my first podium ever in a triathlon race. Cool!

>> RESULTS

Craig also improved a lot on last year’s time, and managed to stay injury-free. At the start line of Ironman70.3 Muskoka in ~10 days, he may wish he twisted his ankle again at Autumn Colors, while he has the pre-race jitters hehe! Here he is, running over water. Hard to be more excited at the starting line!!

He always comes up with crazy ideas, and this time was no exception. In addition to his traditional push-ups in the middle of the race, he actually did his bike with a cowbell in his jersey pocket and when he reached the girls (Corinne and tracy), he pulled it out and rang it before throwing it to them (note to Craig: that’s ground for disqualification at the Ironman race: abandoning equipment).

Here is our traditional finishing picture.

As usual, more pictures and larger versions in the album.

Autumn Colors Tri

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 at 12:56 pm and is filed under Sport and Races, Our news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.