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This weekend is the first of my 4 most important races this year…

“Rev 3 Quassy Half Rev” which is a 70.3 miles distance (half-Ironman distance): 1.9km swim; 90km bike; 21.1km run.

This is supposed to be a pretty challenging course with a lot of climbing, which should be a good preparation for Ironman Lake Placid in July. Here is the Bike Elevation Chart below (scale is hard to read, but goes from 120m to 360m on the vertical axis). It’s hard to judge from available information, but it seems it’s about 25% more climbing than Ironman Muskoka which I did last September and found quite hard.

Nice challenge! I have received a lot of good vibes from Facebook - thanks a lot! - now is the time to go hard!

I am driving there with Pro Athlete Ryan Power from LPC. Ryan does the Olympic distance on Saturday. My race is on the Sunday. I believe that LIVE tracking will be available from REV3’s website (UPDATE: TIMING SITE IS HERE…). My wave is the first one after the pros, at 7:00 am Sunday June 5. Wish me luck!

I’ll make it short: I have the day off and it’s nice outside!!!

The good:

• Nice venue
• Very quick Transitions
• Awesome placing

The bad:

• Bad swim start
• Unachieved personal goals for bike and run

Saturday was the TRI season opening. It was our first time participating at “Island Lake Tri” organized by “Element Events”, but we knew the grounds well since it is in the same park than the T-REX serie. The bike course was very similar. There was a sprint distance and an Olympic distance. I did the short event because I am racing a Half-Ironman the following weekend!

SWIM ~800m in 13:24, 13th overall

The Sprint race had 2 waves: Men 0-39 | Men 40+. I was in the first wave.

I took way too much time to go to the start line and the start was actually given before I had time to reach the line!! So I started in the middle of a pack and within a minute, I was hit by an elbow in my face, knocking off my goggles. I had to stop and reset them. Then, in an attempt to go to a quieter area, went a bit left . A few minutes later, I realized I was way off course and had to correct. Bad start! Learned something here…

Then I went well for a while to reach the 2 corners of the triangular course. On the home stretch, I kind of ran out of breath and resorted to a few stops/sidestroke. Not as smooth as I was hoping for!

Here is the race venue,  swim start, me coming out of the water (notice the weed necklace!) and the busy swim course once all waves were in!

Surprisingly, I was out of the water in 6th position of my wave, which I learned through my wife screaming at me at swim exit: thanks love!  It could have been much worse considering the problems I had. Still, I was many minutes behind the leaders.

T1 in 52 seconds

Simply put, I had the fastest T1 transition of the event that day including the Olympic race participants! How cool is that! I kept it very simple:

• jump out of the wetsuit;
• Put on sunglasses and helmet;
• Grab bike and run!!!

Shoes were already clipped in pedals, and just jumped on my bike after the mount line, getting up to speed before inserting my feet in my shoes.

BIKE ~20 km in 31:56, 2nd overall (GARMIN DATA)

Course was very familiar from previous races and riding it the weekend before twice! I was hoping to hold 300+ watts on it, but I failed and ended up at ~286 watts, which is equaling a PB there.

I had the 2nd fastest bike split of the day for the sprint race. So I have to be happy with that. One guy put a minute on me there though. I need to do better than that next time!

Started the bike in 6th position, and finished it in 2nd with a decent gap in front and behind me.

T2 in 42 seconds.

Very good too, one of the fastest of the day, 7th fastest time in the Sprint race, only 7 seconds slower than the best time recorded. I practiced my transitions a few days before the race, and it payed off big time! That my friends, is free time! I owe my placing to very fast transitions because my run sucked.

Run ~5 km in 20:57, 10th overall (GARMIN DATA)

I was really hoping to do sub 20′ here, but the course was much slower than anticipated, a bit rolling and a lot of running on the grass (nothing like the T-REX course). Also, because of the huge gap in front and behind me, I lacked the motivation I needed to push really hard and slowed down in the 4th km mostly. Near the end of the loop, there was a very steep & slippery slope down and I did it on the brakes. Better be safe than sorry so close to a big race.
Crossed the finish line second, and I thought that was it! But it turns out that one of the 40+ years old got a better time than us in the following wave, pushing us back by 1 position putting me in 3rd overall. First guy must be pissed because he was beat by 9 seconds. Would these 2 guys be in the same wave, they could have battled it out hehe!

FINAL RESULTS (Official Results here)

• Total time= 1:07:49 
• Rank = 3/267 overall
• Age Group = 2/31

 A nice way to start the season!

One cool thing they had at the race: touch screens with real time results! How cool is that!

Age Group prizes: Wine bottles! Red for 1st, Pink for 2nd, White for 3rd. Pretty Original!

Craig made the trip and had a good race too. Of course, he did his signature move…

Few people from Windsor also participated and did good! Cathy Siu had no luck with 2 flats, Jeff Fabrishek finished the sprint very close behind me. Mickey Fryer placed in his age group for his first triathlon ever!

Cynthia from LPC finished her first Olympic Distance.

Sheri also from LPC killed the course despite a rough swim, looking real strong on the run.

Here is the album:

Thanks to Corinne for all the pictures and the support!!!!!

Sounds like that song from from Kanye West hehe!

I can’t believe the off-season is already coming to an end. Only one week to TRI-season opening, 2 weeks away from REV3 Quassy 70.3 and 9 weeks to my first Ironman. Despite a so-so winter with many issues, I have been posting some pretty encouraging results this spring.

The off season was off to a REALLY bad start last November when I snapped very badly my left hip flexor on my 3rd run after a 2 week break while in France for business. That kept me completely off training for about a month, and working out in “damage control mode” for 4-5 months with pretty much no intensity for bike & run, and reduced volume. So I was pretty sad about the situation since I was hoping to work hard all winter on getting faster.

WEIGHT

I have a couple of hilly race this summer, so I wanted to work on reducing my weight without loss of performance. I have been racing at mostly 164-167 lbs last year. After a 20 lbs increase during the Christmas break (YIKES!) I started to work on that, losing weight progressively. I am now lighter and leaner as I ever was in the last 20 years, hovering  in the 158-160 lbs. While this definitely helps the run, I was a bit concerned it would hurt my bike power. Here is my weight graph [kg] over the last year.

SWIM

During the winter, I worked on my swim mostly by focusing on technique rather than on pure “swimming fitness” and it seemed to help a lot. I know these splits will seem pathetic for any decent swimmer, but I am pretty happy with my improvement.  In spring 2010, my “1000y hard” sets were clocking in at 15:40. In 2011, I have been posting these times going at “moderate” effort, and get the “1000y hard” in 14:40 – a full minute faster! Woo hoo!

RUN

Due to the hip flexor injury, my running training has taken a back seat all winter, but I did keep running and doing a lot of core strength exercises. When the hip flexor started to get better, I got hit with a mild case of PFS - PatelloFemoral Syndrome. It translates as a fair amount of knee pain on the right side at the beginning of each run. It seems it is caused by a muscle imbalance, on which I am working on. I am still plagued with that issue…

So I was not expecting to improve much on the run this spring. I was pleasantly surprised of doing a few PB on 2 races this spring!
- Half Marathon in crazy wind conditions at the “Southern Footprint Marathon“  1:27:31, a full minute faster than 13.1 Detroit last fall when I was at the top of my fitness, preparing for Clearwater. And I could have done it a bit faster. Since I thought my fitness was not there, I started conservatively.

- I took down my 10 KM PB from 40:16 done in the spring last year, to 38:50 at the “Loaring Under The Sun” run. Almost 1.5′ off a 10k! I gave all I had on the course that day though hehe!

So I was pleasantly surprised to see my run improve so much despite the injuries and the moderate training. Weight loss surely helped!

CYCLING

I was afraid to lose some here, because of the ~7 lbs difference with last year. So I was feeling a bit of pressure when I set to do a fitness test last week, which mostly consists of a 20′ all out effort on the trainer, recording power data. We call this a CP20 test (CP = Critical power). You can approximate your FTP (Functional Treshold Power) as being 95% of the CP20. FTP is the power one can maintain for 1 hour, a good indicator for the type of events I do.

In spring 2010, I posted a CP 20 of 288 watts at 165.5 lbs, which translates to 276 w FTP and 3.7 w/kg in power-to-weight ratio.

Last week, I posted a CP 20 of 316 watts at 158.5 lbs, which translates to 300 w FTP and 4.2 w/kg in power-to-weight ratio, a full 13.5% improvement!!  It also means I have reached one of my 2011 Goals of reaching 300w FTP. Woo hoo!

OUTLOOK

So it seems I have the tools to do well this season, but there’s a few shadows…While the Hip Flexor is mostly under control but still shows signs sometimes, the biggest concern right now is the PFS issue on the right knee. It does not seem to improve and that may become a show stopper especially as I will need to increase volume for IMLP.

Off to the races next week!

Last month, we went to the “Athletica Fashionista” diner, sport expo & fashion show in Windsor. We had a few “LPC” tables for our training team and we happened to have the Biz X journalist and photographer with us. They took a picture of our table and next thing you know, we are in the May edition of the Biz X Magazine, also available online.

Breanne Loaring, Charlotte loaring (wife and sister of the coach, respectively) and Ryan Power from LPC also have their moment of “fame”.

This was a nice evening: good food, losts of friends, lots of sport gear and a new bike concept reveal: the Tortola Roundtail, invented by Lou Tortola from Windsor. The bike is getting a lot of press, as a google search shows!

That’s pretty funny… A week and a half ago, I went to a running race on the Sunday morning while Corinne went to do a 10k walk for the MS fundation with our dog Newton. Our friend Craig happened to find a picture on the website of the local newspaper, the Windsor Star, showing the events of the weekend caught on camera. Of course, the 10k MS walk was part of that gallery. The least we can say is that Newton got caught in a pretty bad position hehe!

Look in the bottom left corner.. Our now “famous” dog cleaning his private area hehe! Larger version is available by clicking on the image. Here is the link to the Windsor Star Gallery in question:

WEEKEND WINDSOR IN PICTURE (and you have to select the last picture of the set).

Nice…