Pic Spocket

Me and Craig have been anticipating the Muskoka Half Ironman for a complete year. This was our first race on our calendar for 2010. Ironman Muskoka is known as one of the harder courses on the 70.3 circuit. The bike is quite hilly and the run is also on rolling terrain. Pros like Craig Alexander and Miranda Carfrae are using this race as a tune up before the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii in October. Click this link for a YouTube video of our race day in Muskoka by the local Cogeco station. We can see me swim on there at the end (more on that later).

Because the bike course is longer (94 km in lieu of the regular 90 km) and because the course is so difficult, there was no chance for a PR on the Half Ironman distance. But I still wanted to perform well and have an agressive goal. I am already qualified for Clearwater, and therefore I could afford to take more risks. If you have read the race reports from Florida and Steelhead, you have seen that in both cases I throttled down for the last 20 kms of the bike to be on the safe side for the run. I was not planning to do that this time around… So to keep me motivated I actually went ahead and posted optimistic but realistic goals on my facebook page before the race:

• Sub 5-hour finish
• Top 8 in my Age Group
• Top 75 Overall

As mentionned, these goals were realistic, but still demanded that I do my best performance so far, a very good race execution and that everything goes really well during the race.

We drove to Huntsville on the Friday with Craig, Tracy and Baby Turner in the minivan filled with our equipment.

Huntsville is a really nice little town. We stayed at the Hidden Valley Ski Resort, which was only 1 km away from the race site on the DeerHurst Resort property, but more affordable. They lacked a bit of the “Ironman Spirit” and the rooms were just OK, but the location was hard to beat. We had the lake just at the bottom of the hill for swim practice on the Saturday (see pic below), and we could walk to the race site in less 10 minutes. Here is the view from the hotel balcony on Saturday morning with the fog hovering over the lake.

The Friday and Saturday were just awesome weather days. Cool but sunny! We went to the Ironman Expo on the Friday and took care of registration. The evening, there was the “welcome buffet” which was pretty good for a buffet. We had the chance to see the Pros from up close. It’s nice to see they have to go through the same steps we do with registrations and all. On Saturday, Craig and me did a little bit of race preparation: a small swim/bike/run session as per the coach’s instructions. We swam in the lake by our hotel. Water was really cool but awesome. I am just glad we had wetsuits!! We passed most of the afternoon sun bathing by the lake on the DeerHurst property. Cool!

RACE DAY

I actually had a pretty good and long night sleep before the race. What is nice about staying near the race site is that you can sleep longer in the morning (no 4AM wake up!) and simply walk to the transition area with your gear. So me and Craig headed out the door no earlier than 6:00AM, which was PLENTY of time. We could easily have left 45 minutes later and be OK since the race started at 8:00AM. But I like to be early in transition, take time to setup and go to the toilet 3-4 times It rained during the night, and it stopped so we could setup our gear without being rained on. Light rain came back later during the race though.

During the days before and the morning of the race, I had the same hesitation: I could not decide what to wear for the bike split because of the cool weather. I finally decided to go with arm warmers only and setup my transition area accordingly. Before too long, the girls were joining us and we were heading (LATE!) to “swim start”.

SWIM - 1900m - 31:14   > Garmin Connect

Awesome swim course. Very nice and flat lake. Cool water temperature, perfect for me to keep my cool!

I really followed my race plan here: start easy in a position wide to the left flank to avoid contacts, then build up pace. I let “natural selection” occur on the first straight line and I successfully avoided most contacts. After the first turn, I actually spotted another “red cap” from my wave, slipped behind, and enjoyed the draft for a good portion of the swim. Somehow, I lost him after the last turn to the finish gate. Here is my wave start.

The swim felt awesome. I did not swim very aggressively by choice, since I wanted to keep my energy levels for the tough bike and run course. Still, I was hoping for a 30:xx swim but went over that goal by a little bit. Still, I placed 67 out of 863 participants for the swim, that’s top 8%. And in the top 10 of my AG. I am really stoked with my swim performance this year compared to last year. You would have told me at the beginning of the year that my run would be my weakest sport at the end of the season and I would not have believed you - but it is now!!! Here I am at the, finishing my swim (forefront of each picture):

You can actually see me swim in the Cogeco video linked below. If the video is stopped at 1:54, I am in the position indicated below near the middle of the screen and closest to the camera (I was really swimming wide). At 1:56 in the video, I go with a dolphin jump and start swimming. It’s funny to see myself swimming. I felt like I was starting easy, but the stroke rate we see on the video seems quite fast… Pretty awesome though. I almost look like a “swimmer” hehe!

Here are some other pictures by Corinne at the swim:

Here’s one taken by the event photographers:

T1 - 3:56

Pretty slow time there. First step was something new for me: wetsuit strippers! Volunteers were there to help you rip off your suit. Too bad, another swimmer came out just at that moment to obstruct Corinne’s view:

But here is how it looks like:

Then we had a crazy hill to run up to reach the transition area. Somehow, the surface was hard on my bare feet and I could not run very well. I got passed by several people going up. Then, putting the arm warmers on wet arms took forever despite my practice the night before. It feels like I lost a minute just trying to put them on. And then, off to the bike we were.

BIKE - 94 km with over 1000m Elevation -  2:43:49   >Garmin Connect

Normalized Power: 264w - Not bad! My best effort so far this year for such a distance.

OMG.. the bike was tough. Makes me scared for Lake Placid next year…

Looking at my power numbers, I think I did pretty good or even “better than expected”. I did push quite hard. I saw at the mid point that I was averaging over 271w. But the last 10 km hit me REALLY hard. The hills in the last section were something and the energy tank level was starting to run low.

Over the whole course, I only got passed by a couple of guys, but I did not pass a whole lot of them either. That’s what happens when you leave in one of the first waves. I did pass a PRO women near the end of the bike.

For the last 25 km, we were a group of 4-5 playing “switcharoo”. The rolling terrain made it hard (or impossible) to stay legal as far as drafting rules goes because I would always get passed on the way up, but these guys would be coasting (well not really coasting on the crest and downhill sections were I would try to keep the same effort so I was passing everybody again. (then repeat)… Falling behind 10m at the top of each hill would have killed my momentum and strategy.

It is clear that nobody is “drafting” when climbing a hill, but I do not remember seing any provision to that effect in the rule book. Since we had a Draft Marshall on a motorcycle with us most of the time on the last 30 km, I got nervous a few times but everything went OK.

I actually got pissed at 90 km, when I just remembered the course was actually 94 km long (which I knew but had forgotten…)

My quadriceps started giving up in the last 2 km, which I thought was not looking good for the run…

It’s usually hard for Corinne to position herself to get good bike pictures since you need to be out on the course for that to happen. Corinne and Tracy went to the intersection where the run and bike course were splitting, a few kms away from transition, and she could get nice pictures from there:

T2 - 1:27

Not bad considering that when I jumped off my bike, I could barely walk let alone run. I was more “hopping” to my transition spot, and slipped in my running shoes. I actually had the greatest transition spot ever, on a straight line with the bike and run gates.

Running out of T2, I looked at my watch and saw I was at 3h20 into the race. That meant that to reach my goal of a sub 5-hour finish, I would need to run better than in Steelhead, but things did not look good: I was feeling fresh going into the run at steelhead.

RUN - 21.1 km - 1:39:15    >Garmin Connect

I was a bit scared when I started the run because my legs felt trashed. It seemed like I was starting the run in “damage control’ mode already. I had doubts I would be able to run the whole course, but headed out running at a surprisingly decent pace. After a small downhill section, we had to climb the first of many hills already. There was no really big hills, but a lot of rolling terrain.

I stopped for a pee break at one of the first opportunity I got, loosing a minute in the process. I thought my sub-5hr goal was now really out and thought that my new goal would by sub 5h05.

I guess my training prepared me really well because despite having trashed legs, the kilometers were passing by, and the pace was still good. I got passed a few times but I also passed a few other people. Just before the turn around, passed a PRO women, which felt pretty good. I never passed a PRO on a course before that day. 5 minutes later, the PRO woman I previously passed on the bikes flew by me. Oh well..

At 7 km, I crossed path with Dave Sharrat, my coach’s brother in law racing as a PRO. He recognized the LPC outfit I was wearing and waved me. I was surprised he was not farther up ahead. I guess he ran into some issues earlier in the race.

The whole time I had a big smile on my face, and it seemed to be surprising to the people at the aid stations because I heard them commenting about it hehe! I was just happy to be there and be racing hard.

At the turn around of this “out and back” course, chatted a bit with a Swiss guy that came from an area near Zurich, where we lived for 6 months in 2000. He was pretty far away from home!

At ~15 km of the run, I ran into a rough patch and got passed by a guy in my Age Group during that time. I tried to keep up the pace during the tougher time, but I did slow down a bit. I knew the sub 5-hour finish was still within reach afterall, but my mind gave up for a brief amount of time going up a tougher hill at 19 km, where I walked for 15 seconds. Then I resumed running. It sucks because that’s the only place I walked. At the 20 km mark, looked at my watch, saw I was running short in time to meet my goal, and started to run faster and faster. The last 500m, I was sprinting, with the crowd cheering, keeping me going. It was awesome. In the crowd, I saw Craig’s parents calling my name and I wave them on my way to the finish. But it seems like the finish line was never coming! We had to go around the complete transition area to the back side to finally reach the finish chute.

I crossed the finish line, reaching my goal VERY closely, with only 19 seconds to spare! Awesome feeling. On the other side, my coach James Loaring and Rob Tranter from theLPC were there to greet me. (Finish line capture by my coach). After a small chat, I joined Corinne and Tracy who had just missed me running down the finish chute, unfortunately.

Event Photographer’s picture:

RESULTS 

I had an awesome race, meeting all my goals. The race by numbers:

>> Official Results 

That 6th place in my Age Group was good for an automatic spot for Clearwater!!! I got my spot in Steelhead, but it was the result from a roll down process. Pretty proud of that. I am really “clearwater material” now!

>> Pictures by the official photographers ASI

CRAIG 

Craig was quite nervous in the days leading to the race, you could feel it. The problem is that he did not train for it. It’s almost like waking up one morning and thinking: “Hum… I think I’ll race a Half-Ironman today”… Of course he had done all of the small sprint triathlon races with me this summer, but with not much training in between. I think his longest bike this summer was like 30 km. Crazy! I think as the event got closer and closer, he kind of froze about how to train for it and making time to train with the new baby and all. When it got really close, he just thought it was too late to do anything. But Craig is tough and there was no doubt in my mind he would cross the finish line. It’s just that it would take a bit of time to do so.

And I was right! He did pretty good, especially since the course was so tough. He improved a lot his swim this year, making for a great first split. Here are some pictures from him racing. Look at the tongue on the bike. I think he was trying to reach powerbar crumbles in his beard hehe!  In the run, he his cheered by his nephew.

 Way to go Craig! Our traditional finishing picture. I had 1.5 hour to rest there and Craig just crossed the line. You can tell he is completely exhausted.

As usual, many more pictures and larger versions in my album.

Ironman70.3 Muskoka 2010