Here’s our group at packet pickup and expo on the Saturday afternoon…

This Detroit race was my first Half Marathon, done in 2009. I did 1:35:05 at the time. Last year, I did it in 1:28:35. My PB on this distance date from this spring though, with a 1:27:31. With all the training I have logged for Ironman Training, I was hoping to shave another minute to that time.

Something was new this year: Corinne was racing it too! She could not train very much for the distance, but she was decided to tackle the distance and take this challenge.

We crossed the border very early at 5am to avoid traffic and the problems I had 2 years ago where I barely made it to the start line in time. So we had to kill time in the cars before heading out to race start…

 The temperature was ideal for running, around 7 deg. C - but quite windy. The usual “garbage bag” trick helps staying warm and protected from the wind before race start… you just have to ditch the bag right before the gun goes.

 This year, I was in Corral “A” which means I was in the first group going out. I saw many people I knew in my corral start, and I did not see the time pass before it was time to go. Coach James was also racing this year (I guess I should say “running” rather than “racing” since he did not train much at all this year). Before too long, we were off!

 Coach James ran with me up to the bridge, which was nice. The first km I ran deliberately slow - but I over did it at 4:15/km. Still, better than starting too fast and then bugging out later. I was holding my pace pretty good according to Mr Garmin: I wanted to hold between 4:00 and 4:05/km average or faster for a nice PR. The bridge went fast, then we were running in Canada. Here I am, on Riverside Dr (Thanks Syd for the picture!).

I had my “Malden Park Runners” singlet, so I was cheered a lot by the crowd in Canada. Nice! It helped holding that painful pace. And the MPR group had a cheering station near the tunnel which was awesome. Did a row of “high fives” on my way. Reaching the entrance of the tunnel, my average pace was at 4:02.. pretty happy with that, considering the conditions and the wind blowing!

My Garmin took a crap again in the tunnel… In 2009, all my data and average pace got screwed up at that point because I had the foot pod, and when the watch got the GPS signal back after the tunnel, it added the distance twice…. In 2010, I left the Foot Pod at home, and it seemed to work correctly. So this year I did the same, but this time the portion I ran in the tunnel without GPS signal was just lost completely, never added when the watch got the GPS signal back. Grrrr! Different software versions I guess. So I switch my view to the “lap data” screen and started to monitor my average lap pace (I have the auto-lap feature set at 1km). So I am not sure at what pace I ran the tunnel, but I know I was running on pace afterwards. The second part of the tunnel is always a tough time because of the temperature difference and the hill coming out of it. It did not seem as painful as the last years though.

After a loop in Detroit, I was making the final turn to the finish line, pushing as hard as I could at that point.

 I crossed the finish line pretty happy with my run.. I however did not like what I saw on my watch: I thought I was on pace to finish in 1:26:xx or even 1:25:xx, but  the clock showed 1:27:26. A PB by 5 ridiculous seconds. At least, it is a PB. Also, it is still 1 minute faster than last year on the same course. That time gives me a pretty good ranking though, with a top 50 in 8000 participants.

After chatting with friends in the finish chute - freezing - I made it to the car to get warm clothes and wait for Corinne! Here’s a picture of me waiting taken by Charlotte while she was walking to the finish line - she was injured earlier this year, so she decided to still do the half marathon, running a portion and then walking the other portion, taking picture and documenting the race “through the eyes of a runner”. Usually, it’s the spectators taking pictures of the runners.. hehe!

A little bit later, Corinne passed by me, running to the finish line. I screamed her name but she never saw me. I am very proud of her for finishing the race! The longest run she logged in training was 5 km, so this was quite the challenge. We were lucky enough to meet very quickly by luck after her finish.

I could tell she was really in pain though, as it took everything to walk back in direction of the car. In the process, we ran into our group! Awesome!

Congratulations to Tracy for also finishing her first Half Marathon distance, and big shot out to Craig for finishing his second full Marathon with almost a PR by 1 hour at 3h50.. woo hoo!

The day after the race, I was surprised to find a picture of Corinne in the official online gallery of the Detroit Free Press newspaper (picture #44 from this link):

A few more pictures are in my photo album:

Detroit Free Press Half Marathon 2011

On a diferent topic, my website was quite unstable lately and barely working… but I think I found the problem and it should be more stable now

In the last days of August, we went to France to see Corinne’s family. She had not been in France to visit her family in over 3 years, 4 years for me. Soon after landing in Paris Saturday for our connection after an overnight flight, goodies were waiting for us to taste! Within 15′ on the ground, my mouth was full… hehe

We also had to try the famous “Macarons” from “La Durée”… Very tasty, but not necessarily worth their crazy price (couple Euros a piece if I remember correctly).

After our second flight, we landed in Lyon, before driving our rental car to Grenoble, where Corinne’s mother lives. The city is at the bottom of a bowl surrounded by mountains. Corinne was so very happy to see her familiar mountains when we got close. So much a change of scenery for her, when we move in the southern part of Canada, where everything is FLAT!

I was afraid training in France would be difficult as I did not want to burden Corinne with that, but opportunities presented naturally. The day after our arrival, the weather was just gorgeous and Corinne mother’s proposed that we go to “Les Bois Français”, and area with 5 artificial lakes dedicated to different activities, one of which was made as a beach and swim location. We arrived at lunch time, and had amazing Prosciutto Salads on the patio.

You know you are in Europe when you encounter these type of toilets… better work on your aim!!

The lake was perfect for swim training: about 120y on the narrow side, and 300y on the long side. Not many people were venturing outside the buoy line, and pretty much all of the people outside would cross the lake on the narrow side. I put my swim cap, swim goggle, and tackled the lake crossings on the long side. In addition to 2 short crossings, I did 6 crossings on the long side for a total of 1800y. Not bad for an unexpected open water swim practice!

Here is a picture of one of the other lakes, showing a perfect reflection on this beautiful day.

The Sunday evening, we met with Helen, a good friend of Corinne, for nice diner.

Monday, we took the road for the Alps, to go visit Corinne’s sister, Fred and the kids. This would be a surprise for the kids as our visit to France was kept “secret”. Few pictures of the drive to the Savoie area…

The kids changed so much that I barely recognized them (I did not see them in over 4 years… amazing how fast they grow!!!). Corinne has 2 nieces and one nephew: Deborah, Wynona & David. Wynona seemed quite happy to see us..

The light emitted by the setting sun just makes the whole area beautiful..

Tuesday morning, I eloped on my rental bike for pretty much the nicest ride I have ever done: Col du Petit St- Bernard before crossing in Italy. I have made a detailed post with many pictures about this ride. (LINK : “Epic Riding in France #1 : Little Saint Bernard Pass“)

As soon as I got back, took a shower, changed, and the whole team jumped in the cars to go the same route I just did with the intention to go have a late lunch in Italy, in the village of La Thuile, a big ski station in the winter. Pretty area!

The plan was to eat at “La Grotta” restaurant, but we arrived 10 min too late: the kitchen had just closed (near 2 pm). That really sucked because it looked AWESOME! I felt bad a bit because I did come back from my ride a bit later that I said I would…

Still, we had a very nice lunch on the terrace of that nice hotel, just by river.

Walked a bit though town…

And got desserts (I had TWO! Ice cream AND cake hehe!) from one of the local bakery. Mioum.. We ate our sweets outside.

Of course, on the way back, we stopped at the border between France and Italy to take many pictures. This time around, I had the big camera, so I could take better pictures than I could when I was on my bike ride with the pocket camera.

Wednesday morning, we went for a walk in Bourg St-Maurice’s nature park just at the bottom of the hill from Corinne’s sister house. Kids had fun on the rotating swing.

The afternoon, we all went to Val D’Isere where Carole (Corinne’s sister) works to try the new swimming and recreation complex OXYGEN they just built there. Again, nice opportunity to log some training while having fun and staying with the family during our vacation. They had a nice 25m lap pool, a lazy river, a gym, hot tub, sauna, steam room, cold showers, etc. It’s very upscale. The French National Swimming team was actually in town, doing a training camp at that place. I am just happy I came out of the lap pool before they arrived.

The car trip to Val let me evaluate the route that I would use the following day for my bike ride. It was not recommended because traffic is much higher in this area, there’s a bunch of dark tunnels and cars are driving fast. But after driving it, I thought it would be OK if I had a tail light on my bike. So I bough one when we were back in town.

We closed the day with an amazing meal typical of the area: Cheese Fondue! You dip bread chunks in a special mix of melted cheese, white wine and garlic. Awesome. Pretty heavy meal though!! Hehe!

Thursday morning, I did my second EPIC bike ride: Val d’Isere and Col de l’Iseran. Again, I made a long post about this ride with many pictures.. (Link : “Epic Riding in France #2 : “Col de l’Iseran” Pass“)

I came back late once again from my ride, just in time to have lunch with everybody and sign for Deborah’ birthday!

In late afternoon, Corinne and me left using treacherous but beautiful mountain roads for the next stop on our trip: the area of Chamonix Mont Blanc. The road was SUPERB, even if scary at times: small narrow roads on the flank of mountains, many of which are not even wide enough for 2 cars to cross. Lots of sharp blind turns, crazy descents and climbs. The pictures below are from the wide opened areas we also encountered.

Saw some goats on our way…

Cows and nice landscapes…

In Chamonix, we met Corinne’s mother and her boyfriend in the evening, just in time for a nice meal outdoor. MORE CHEESE! Look at this… This is out meal for two: Raclette. A Huge piece of smelly cheese in a special rotating fixture so that you can bring it really close to a heating element, before swiveling back to scrape the melted cheese onto baked potatoes and delicatessen meats. Very typical from the area.

To be honest, we were saturated and feeling pretty heavy afterwards from all the recent rich meals.

Rather than staying in your typical hotel, Corinne found us online a very charming room in a small cottage (kind of a bed and breakfast place): CHALET SUOMI. The room was all pine wood.

The view from the windows and the balcony was even better: it gave on the Month Blanc. Here it is, a bit before sunset, then a bit after sunrise the following morning.

Chamonix is a SUPERB little town, right by the “Massif du Mont Blanc“, a mountain range of the western Alps. Mont Blanc is the highest summit of the Alps, sitting at 4810m, with eternal snow on the top. To see it from up close, we can go up to the “Aiguille du Midi” using 2 cable cars, up to 3842m of elevation. After a big breakfast on Friday morning, we headed to town to go up there.

The second cable car you take looks kind of scary…. 2867m long, 1470 m of elevation gain, BUT NO PYLONS between the start and end point!!!! You really hope that cable does not break!

Up there, the view is STUNNING. I took hundreds of pictures.

For the adventure lovers, you can go up on your own hiking/climbing. We saw many alpinists out there.

An ice tunnel took you to one of the hiking path…

The place was perfect for portraits with nice backgrounds.

Friday afternoon, we got back down to Chamonix, and just took a nice walk downtown. Beautiful area.

We drove back to Grenoble in the evening, and passed our last day in France meeting with friends that we have not seen in a LONG time! We had an awesome time with them as usual.

Many pictures in the online album. Here are the ‘general pictures’ and ‘chamonix/Mt Blanc’ albums…

France 2011: Misc.	Chamonix Mt Blanc

Upon my arrival on the race site, worries quickly vanished though. Air temperature was a bit chilly, but the sun was getting out and it did not feel really bad. Also, the water temperature increased a couple of degrees during the weekend and the water was very inviting under the warm morning light: the river was very calm, mirror-like.

I was wondering if I would see people from Windsor-Essex there, but it seems a lot of the local athletes have closed their season already and/or shifted their focus to running for the fall races. It was nice to run into Mary Minutella (”Tri Like Mary“) that also crossed the border for the race. I was surprised to see her, knowing she did a 70.3 the weekend before. Turns out she does not want the season to end either hehe!

This race is on the same site as the 3D Motor City Triathlon which is in early June, so I knew the site (Belle Isle Island, between USA and CANADA on the Detroit River) from racing on it in 2010. Swim and Bike course were pretty much identical, but the run course was new.

Corinne unfortunately could not come. Not only I would have no pictures, but I would miss her support. Ironically, the only other Tri race she missed (I think), was Motor City at the same location.

For this race, you need to take a bit of time to make sure you set up your transitions properly, because there are 2: the swim site is in a different spot than the bike-to-run transition & Finish chute. So you have to make sure you have the correct equipment in each spot. T1 requires a bit more time as you need to make sure you put your swim equipment in a bag before leaving T1: race organizers later bring back your stuff to the finish area.

SWIM 1500m in 21:15, 8th overall

This is the fastest course I have been on. No, I do not think it was short…. And no, I did not start swimming like an Olympian haha! But the “out section” is close to the beach, protected from the current by the Marina. Once at the Marina, you venture out before making a turn back in West Direction, with a nice TAIL CURRENT. Pretty amazing to see at what speed the ground was moving under us in that section.

I had a very good swim, mostly because I started way right of the crowd. I actually enjoyed the cool water temperature with the wetsuit. I had a small moment after 200m where I was a bit out of breath, but the water was shallow allowing me a few dolphin jump to recompose myself and the resume my swim with a good rhythm. Before I long, I was on the beach. I was 8th overall out of the water, 1:45 behind the leader, not bad!

T1 in 1:07
Fastest transition of the race. Enough said…

Bike 36.5 km in 54:31 @ 40 km/h, 3rd overall
 290 Watts Normalized Power

The bike course on Belle-Isle is always fast, but is faster with a wind coming from the WEST. Unfortunately, the wind was in the opposite direction which means that we had a headwind on the part of the island with less wind protection. That also meant that the tailwind would not be as effective on the other side because of trees. Still, I was able to hold 36-37 km/h against the wind, and a nice 44-45 km/h speed on the other side. The bike course is a 4 loop affair, but comes a bit short from the official Olympic Distance.

In June 2010, I did the course with a Norm Power of 260 Watts. This time around, I pushed 290 Watts. I went pretty hard, but I was kind of alone without a sense of where the leaders were. If I would have been closer, I might have been a able to dig deeper and be closer to 300W.

On my last lap, I caught up with TREX buddy Shawn, with who I have a friendly competition. We are always battling on the bike together and finish within 1 or 2 positions. He was just back from the World Sprint Tri Champ in Beijing, so it was awesome to run into him. It actually gave me a second wind.

I thought I might have the fastest bike split, but looking at the results, I was 3rd over the ~100 participants. Eric Fernando, who I beat at the Tecumseh Tri had an awesome race, and he biked like a madman posting the fastest time. Pretty impressive knowing he did Ironman Muskoka (70.3) the weekend before.

T2 in 0:49
Top 5 times, within seconds of the fastest time so I was pretty efficient with my transitions.

RUN 10.125 km in 40:59, 13th overall

There was a bit of uncertainty before tackling the run. I have been battling with some pain (I hesitate to call them injuries) lately, and I ran very little and only slowly for many weeks now. So I was quite happy to see in the first kilometers that I was flying at a pretty good pace, very close to 4:03 min/km – much faster than last year (ran at an average of 4:16 pace at MotorCity Tri 2010).

I had no idea of my position since the Sprint Tri folks were already on the course when I got there. So when I finished the first loop and passed the MC booth, I was very happy to hear him say “Here’s Thierry Guertin from Windsor Canada, looking strong and currently running in 3rd position” – Whoo Hoo!! That gave me the boost I needed to push hard on the second loop too. I was able to hold my position and gain back 2 minutes on Eric Fernando in 2nd position, but he was still too far for me to be a menace.

After a last hard push, I crossed the finish line, very satisfied with my race.

Total Time: 1:58:39, about 12’ faster than last year on a similar course.
Rank= 3 / 100  PODIUM! Woo Hoo!

>Bike DATA
>Run DATA

>RESULTS

The race course differed slightly from an Olympic Distance. Here are my estimations based on my pace for each sport:

• Bike was short by 5:30
• Swim was fast by 2:15 ( tail current)
• Run was long by 0:30

So that would estimate my current OLY TRI time in 2:05:52 on a fast course.

3D always has a bunch of nice door prizes including wetsuits, which is pretty nice! I stayed for the beginning of the award ceremony to get my Trophy (my first!). 

I had to skip out shortly after though, as I needed to go back home, shower, and cross back the border to fly out to Germany for business. Big Sunday!

Thursday morning, I hit the road even earlier than Tuesday after a night of complete heavy rain fall. I was lucky: it stopped early in the morning. I started a bit after 8 am, with very little day light due to the mountains and the cloud cover. There was a lot of fog in the air.

Still, the road was beautiful even in mixed weather conditions. I had to be careful though because the road was still wet and I had an early warning. I had to go down to town before turning in the direction of Val d’Isere and in one of the switchbacks, I actually locked the rear wheel sending me in a small drifting motion just because I put a bit much pressure on the break. That woke me up… and made me more cautious for the rest of the ride regarding the use of the brakes.

Before long, I was done with the descent and started tackling the climbing part of the ride. That would be another ‘climb for half the ride, descent for half the ride’ type route once again. While I was impressed by the continuous climbing of Tuesday, it was worse this time with the average grade being higher (6-11% almost non-stop) and my bike did not seem to be geared for a spinner like me. So I used a LOT of the bigger gear. I also had to resort to a standing climb position for most of the first half of the ride.

Soon, I was hitting the smaller tunnels and ‘avalanche shelters’.

There was a sign a bit before Tignes giving timing of the Tour de France riders for the ‘Climb of Tignes’. They also had the now familiar kilometer-markers for the various climbs. Nice.

I started the timer, but it turns out the route I was following was not the same. They had to turn at the dam, and I did not. A bit later, I was at the Tignes Dam. The original village of Tignes is actually now in the bottom of the water, in the valley. They flooded it when they built the dam. The area is superb and the water has that blue-green color.

I stopped there and made several more pictures. Then I was off the Val d’Isere, the ski resort that sits at 1850m. Just before arriving though, there was a couple of longer tunnels, one as long as 800m without any lights in it. I really wish I had a headlight because I was feeling a bit uneasy in pitch black. I could not even see the road for craks or pot holes. But everything went OK and I arrived in Val soon after. Very nice village. At that point, I already had about 1000m of elevation gain done.

They had the pure water from the mountain flowing in fountains near the road, pretty useful to fill water bottles.

Then I was off to the Col, still 15-20km away. A bit out of the village, I passed near this awesome field in a hill, full of sheep. Then, I crossed this beautiful stream before hitting the serious climbing section, back to switchbaks turns on the side of an abrupt cliff.

I told the family I would be back around noon, and to make that happen I had to turn around at 10h45 max to make it. When the time came, I was still 10km away from the summit. I thought it would be stupid to go all that way and turn around so close to the top, so I continued, knowing that I could be in trouble. Lucky enough, they all understood. In the middle of that climb, I could see Val d’Isere already very small in the bottom of the valley.

The last 2 km were particularly tough. Temperature was colder and I do not know if it’s fatigue or the oxygen in the air getting rare at this altitude, but I started breathing pretty hard under the effort. Just when I was about to reach the top and feel proud of myself, I see this group of girl teenagers climbing in roller-skis (skis with wheels for summer training) about to reach the same summit?! Turns out it was the French Junior Cross Country Ski Team or something training in altitude. Their coach was waiting on the top.
Still, an awesome feeling to reach the top.

I got cold on the top of the pass, even after I put back all the layers I had with me. It was now time to hit the descent. To be honest, I was really not big in my shoes.. a bit scared actually, descending. The route was very technical with crazy curves flanked by a cliff, bike accelerating naturally due to the slope and I had to be careful on how I modulated the brakes to avoid locking the wheels on the humid asphalt. Not helping matters, I got so cold at speed that I started shivering with my whole body and teeth chattering (really!). Not easy to negotiate the technical route in this condition! When I got back to the outskirt of Val d’Isere, I actually went in a trash can to find a newspaper that I used under my jacket as an additional layer for the rest of the descent. It actually worked great to cut the wind and retain body heat.

I stopped one last time at the Dam of Tignes to take a few pictures under the better light.

Then it was time to enjoy the more gentle downhill route back to my home base.

Click the link below to see the map and all the data recorded during the ride.

Total elevation gain for the ride: over 2200m.

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

Corinne’s sister lives in Seez, in the Alps, just above Bourg Saint Maurice. Some awesome cycling routes are over there, several of which were featured in the recent editions of the famous ‘Tour de France’.

They are very kind and they had organized a road bike for me from one of their co-workers, but the shifting was not working very well it seemed, so I ended up going down to town to rent a road bike. I was lucky to find a very good deal: a Colnago Extreme built in top of the line Shimano Dura-Ace. A superb climbing machine for 19 euros a day. Cool! I took it for 3 days, which would allow me to log in 2 long rides.

On the Tuesday morning, I left early while (almost) everybody was still sleeping and tackled the ‘Little Saint Bernard pass’ based on suggestions from Corinne’s sister and her boyfriend. This route is not very busy, so it was deemed ‘safer’ than some of the other options. Weather was nice: cool and sunny.

Instructions were simple : go down the hill in front of the house, when you get to the intersection, you make a left and then you go up, up… up…. Up……..UP. Turns out they were not kidding. After a 1’ crazy descent on the brakes (they live in the middle of a 13% grade hill), I made that left turn and right there I was in a non-stop standing climb situation. So much for warm-up… within minutes, my heart rate was through the roof. I had to tone it down a notch if I wanted to last.  I was really not expecting a 26 km continuous climb at 4-7% grade with switchbacks/hairpin turns.

Before too long, the view was AMAZING. Here is Bourg Saint Maurice below in the far distance.

My ride:

And more I climbed, the better the landscape views…

What was nice is that they had these mile marker every km, showing you the distance left to the top, and the current grade of the hill.

Reaching the top of the pass was just awesome and rewarding. At the highest spot of the route, it’s the border between France and Italy. I stopped there to take a bunch of pictures.

Also asked a tourist to take a photo of me there

My ride started at an altitude of roughly 1000m above sea level, and peaked at 2188m. My Garmin Edge 500 showed an elevation gain of 1400m.

I saw a few of cyclists near the top, which was nice to have some kind of company. Unexpected for a week day.

At the top of the climb, I had only 26 km to the trip computer, so I decided to cross in Italy and go down for another 4 km at least so that the ride would finish at 60km total. The route goes down to LaThuile, a very well known ski station in Italy. The descent on the Italian side was pretty steep so I turned around as planned without extra at that restaurant:

This lake was on the italian side…

The descent in Italy seemed much steeper than the French side, so after the turn-around my work was cut out for me to climb back to the top. Good thing it was only 4 km! After reaching the top, ‘careful’ high speed descent was in order. I was more cautious than not, to be on the safe side. So I used the brakes a lot. My bike skills for going downhill and negotiating the switchbacks on an unknown route with various road hazards and car traffic is limited at this time, and it looked like going off the road on the cliff side could be quite fatal hehe!

That’s the thing I found with riding over there: either you are working hard (climbing) or not hard enough (going downhill). So the return trip felt a bit too easy to be qualified as training, but it was a LOAD of fun!!!

Here’s the elevation chart. Pretty simple graph….

I made it back to the base not too late after my declared return time. Here I am, post ride:

Click on the link below to see the ride data as recorded by my Edge 500.

Full album with 1000 pixels versions available below.

I never thought I would see these letters beside my name, or at least not without a good reason. I wish I could say it was planned like this, or that my running injury was flaring up, but truth is, I just gave up and did not want to feel the pain of the run after passing the whole day worrying about my decision to race despite the nagging injury.

Had a really bad swim, 2009 all over again, lots of sections of “side strokes”, coming out of the water out of breath and exhausted about 15th of my wave.

Beginning of the bike was real rough, power numbers not anywhere near where they should have been, and heart rate much higher than I have ever seen on wheels. The whole time I was just thinking I did not want to run, the mind finding a 1000 reasons why I shold not run, the injury and potential effect on my second half of the season being the obvious one. Jumped off the bike in 2nd overall position, did my transition, ran for 100m and just gave up - walked to the timing tent to surrender  my chip

Good thing is that I had a hard swim and bike training session in race situation, and I did not aggravate my injury.

Bad thing is that I feel like a failure, fearing that I do not have the drive or will anymore.

Supposed to race Sunday, and I feel like I should do it.

I need to rebound quickly otherwise I’ll be weeks feeling like shit.

On the other hand, last year I finished 5th in the Age Group race (where I belong) but only 1:13 behind the winner. I KNOW I am faster than I was last year by more than that (assuming I feel good and have a good race) so winning the Age Group race was not impossible. But it depends who shows up on that day…

Craig was supposed to do the race, but when I showed up at his house to pick him up at 6h30 am, he got out to tell me he could not come: food poisoning and he had a rough night and still felt really bad to say the least. Bummer Hope he feels better now.

I got to the site early, while they were putting the rack together in transition. That allowed me to be the first bike racked and find a good position for quick transitions (many people were there before me, but no racks to put the bikes on hehe!).

It’s cool to see most triathletes from the area coming to this event. Many that are not racing come anyway just to cheer their friends. Good to catch up with everybody.

IMLP situation repeats: too warm and wetsuits will not be allowed. Another bummer. And OAT does not allow speedsuits. So I had to go change race suit as the one I was wearing had a top 1-2 sizes too large: comfortable for bike and run but acts like a parachute in the swim.

C orinne showed up not long before race start, so we just had time to meet briefly before I had to be in the water for warmup and setup. Corinne took MANY pictures of the race – you have no idea… more than 750 pictures – but I only posted a few of the pictures where I am in my album here. I got in trouble in the past for “stealing her pictures” so I am going to let her post them on FaceBook hehe!

I am usually nervous at the start of any race swim regardless of the distance, but after that IM Mass Start swim 2 weeks ago – in which I survived – my level of stress here from a scale of 0 to 10 was “-1” hehe! They even split the “Age Group Triathlon” race in 2 waves, which I think was un-necessary since we were barely 120 people doing it. I was in the “Silver Caps” wave.

Race started and we were off for a 800m swim. The lake is pretty shallow for a section of the course, so there was a good 100m of “dolphin diving” at the start and end of the course. I focused on gliding and avoiding spending too much energy in these sections. My swim was great (much better than last year) and I stayed focused the whole time. Some swell going against the wind at the end of the course, but nothing really bad.

Came out of the water in the first 6-7 people of my wave in 14:16, not too bad. That’s 2 seconds faster than last year, but who knows if the course was the same length and also last year I was wearing a wetsuit which makes me quite a bit faster. So I definitely swam better for sure. lots of people were walking the end of the course in the’try-a-Tri’ race.

The bike went really well. I hammered the whole time, paying attention to power numbers and fighting the whole time with what would be the Age Group Race winner. Averaged 287 watts of power compared to the 268 watts from last year. I covered the 31+ km in 47:17 (including both transitions) at 40.9 km/h average. That’s 2:15 faster than last year. Corinne took awesome pics once again! Thanks!

I came out of the second transition running in second place of the Age Group race. But before long the guy I fought with on the bike passed me as if I was stopped, despite having a decent running speed. Bummer. But soon after, I passed the guy that was first off the bike, so I got back in 2nd position.

Pushed hard for the whole run. I knew that my coach’s friend Nissim (former ITU World Cup racer) was not far behind me and that I had a target on my back. He did not train much in the last years but these guys are machines and very competitive. I was able to hold him back till the last 300m to go, where he passed me. Rather than fight, I tend to crumble when that happens on the run. I REALLY need to work on that and fight back more aggressively. Here’s Nissim (in black) not too far behind me, catching me up.

That put me in 3rd position where I finished. I was just hoping that nobody from the other wave (the younger guys) did a better time, but my position held. I ran the 6.25 km course in 25:22, a full minute faster than last year. Run improvements are coming in small doses…

Final time was 1:26:54, more than 3’ faster than last year. Great!

Here’s me and Nissim at the awards ceremony. What a nice guy! I finished 3rd overall, 2nd in my Age Group.

>>>  RESULTS

>>> GPS/POWER DATA:  BIKE | RUN

Here is the comparison of my times over the last 3 years on the same course. Nice to see I am still progressing. Hard work pays off.

I slightly aggravated the pain I have behind the left knee near the calf though following the race, and I hope it will be OK. I am scheduled to race Wednesday next week at the season closing of the T-REX serie in Michigan.

At the Tecumseh Triathlon there was also an Elite Division race going on with prize money, so it attracts a lot of FAST racers. Last year, the winning ELITE time was more than 14’ faster than me. This year, it was by 9’. I am going in the right direction.

After the race, LPC Athlete Carey invited many of us to his house for a BBQ. We had a good time there, hitting the pool and eating too much of the food we should not eat hehe! Good times with great people!

Tecumseh Tri

Update: It seems the results have been ajusted. Nissim would have went by mistake in the previous wave (5′ early). Being the most honest guy around, he contacted race officials to have the results modified to reflect this unfortunate error. So I finished 2nd overall in the non-Elite race.

Before getting in the race report itself, I wanted to mention how much I enjoyed this race. In the months prior to the race, I met several people that were multiple Ironman finishers that told me that IMLP was their favorite race ever. While I thought it looked like a very nice race, I thought these people were exaggerating. After all, I heard people talking a lot of good about IM70.3 Muskoka, and while I thought it was a good race, I did not think it stood out that much.

But now I know what they meant. This was really an awesome venue and experience and it will be hard to find something even close to it. I mentioned it in my previous post: the area is superb, the course is awesome and varied, people are the nicest ever and the Ironman spirit lives strong there. The race was very well put on, and there were 3000 volunteers for ~2500 participants. You felt like a rock star for a day. So I can only say good things about this race. Highly recommend it. There are some rumors that this race may disappear, and I really hope it’s not the case because I would not mind doing it again in a couple of years.

———–

SATURDAY

In my previous report, I forgot to mention that after Saturday’s morning 10’ swim on the course, we actually stumbled upon a guy giving a speech on the beach to a fairly large group of people. Turns out it was Patrick McCrann one of the 2 coaches from Endurance Nation. Endurance Nation is a pretty big group and I remember looking into them when looking for a program or a coach in 2009. They do things a bit differently and it seems to work for a lot of people at least on the short term. We missed the beginning but we sat through the speech. It was pretty good as there was a lot of information on race execution and particularities of the IMLP course. I knew most of this stuff, but it was nice to hear it again just before race day. Turns out it would help me overcome some issues I would encounter on race day.

Race within your BOX. The BOX is “everything you can control”. Anything outside the box, don’t dwell on it. You can’t control it so if you obsess about anything outside your box, you are in for a very long day. A good portion of the speech is about race pacing and how the race only starts at mile 18 of the run.He was recording himself and put the speech on YouTube. The first part is about IM race execution in general. If you have some time, I recommend it! You can find it HERE. He’s a pretty good speaker too, with some humor thrown in there. Parts 2 to 4 relate a bit more to the IMLP course itself. (part2, part3, part4). He was racing too, and finished 5th in my Age Group in 9h56.

———–

RACE DAY

For some reason, it took me longer than usual to fall asleep Saturday night. The BIG day was finally arriving… We woke up a bit before 4am from the sound of people in the room above us starting to get going. I stayed in bed till 4h20. Then I proceeded with my pre-race routine of shaving, getting dressed, applying sunscreen, etc. I had my usual endurance race breakfast: toasted bagel with PB, a banana, a shake of Ensure (meal replacement) and a pill of caffeine this time. I did not want to drink Pepsi and risk getting bloated in the swim. And going out without caffeine would surely not be a good idea. Then it was time to pack everything needed (nutrition and computer for the bike) and head to the race site.

Our hotel was not too far from the race site, but far enough that you do not want to walk that far (and these hills) on race morning. So we drove to one of the race parking lots and used a shuttle to get to transition.

Downtown was crazy with movement already. First step: body marking.

Then it was time to head in transition, put the bottles, nutrition, and computer on the bike ready to go. Checked the air pressure in the tires, starting gear, make sure brakes were not rubbing, all ready to go. Quick bathroom stop, but no go for #2 unfortunately.

Before too long, I heard the disturbing news: water temperature was 0.9 degrees above threshold at 77 deg F. That meant we were in the “gray zone” regarding the wear of wetsuits: wetsuits can be worn but if doing so you are not eligible to Age Group Awards or Kona Slots. Now that really sucked. Tragedy! Wetsuits ALWAYS have been allowed in the history of this race. Nobody expected this as a possibility. I was kind of torn in making a decision here. That gray zone deal is BAD: either allow everybody to wear the suit, or ban it completely. Quick glance around shows that MOST people are deciding to go with the suit. Bad outlook… While being a contender for Kona Slot on my first IM was very unlikely, I felt like using the suit would be kind of cheating a bit. Also, if I did have the race of my life, finishing in the first 10 positions of my very competitive AG was not impossible.

So I kind of decide to leave the suit in transition and start heading to the beach, questioning this decision on my way out. I see Corinne on my way to the beach, ask what she thinks, mention why I am still considering using the suit (first IM, crowded swim with slower suited swimmer, even mention there is a greater risk of losing my watch).

See, the suit makes you float. Provides safety. Also, it makes you much faster and/or makes you spend less energy. The problem with a mixed field is that by going without a suit I now had a bunch of normally-slower-wetsuit-swimmers that would be the same speed as me, making for a much more crowded swim.

But Corinne agrees with my first decision and tells me I should go without the suit. I decide to not let that bother me too much: after all it’s outside “My BOX” and I can’t control the temperature of the lake hehe!

I decided to swim with my tri top, which is not ideal as it slows me down (it’s one size too large too for comfort during the long race, so it adds drag in the water). I had my Garmin 310XT on my wrist – I did all my races with it since the beginning of times. I REALLY should have left it in transition.

Dropped my Special Need Bags and went to the beach where I ran into David Orchard, also from the Windsor Area. I asked him if he was using the wetsuit and he chuckled saying he would not go without to save his life. That brought some doubts back in my mind, knowing he was a much stronger & faster swimmer than I was *glup!*. I talked to him later and he said he had a crazy FAST swim (57’) and that he had clear water after the start. That would prove to be quite different from my experience….

A look around the beach shows MANY more wetsuits than not. Turns out that only 1 person out of 5 chose to go without wetsuit according to the final results). That means 80% of people suited up.

Still, held my decision. I would have liked to hit the toilet before going in the water, but there was only 7 or 8 of them for 2500 people at the beach. The lines were so long, I could not make out the start of the line. So I had to forget about that idea…

15’ before start, I entered the water, went towards Corinne and my parents to say high while warming up then headed to my chosen start spot: far off the right side of the course. Without wetsuit, I went to the point where I could touch the ground, about 3-4 people behind the start line. Gun went off for the Pros, which meant we were coming up 10’ later. Water may have been too warm for wetsuit, but I was freezing my butt of waiting for the start. I was actually shaking at the end.

SWIM

Then Mike Riley sent us on our way: “HAVE THE BEST DAY OF YOUR LIFE!!!” and the gun went off. CRAZYNESS! Within 5 seconds, I was hit twice on my left arm, I look, and I see my bare wrist… WHAAAT??! Garmin 310XT GPS watch enroute to the bottom of the lake. It did not last 5 seconds. No times to dwell on this as hundreds of people are behind ready to swim over me. So I had to start going in the craziness that a mass start is. Contacts everywhere, getting hit and bumped from all directions for a couple of minutes. My mind is racing about the implications of losing my GPS watch for the race. I do not panic on the way out on the course, but I am really not comfortable. I bump into people at the front; people are bumping into me from the sides and back. I lift my head trying to find a quieter place to navigate to, but it’s the same everywhere around. So I just kept going.

Here are some links to YOUTUBE videos of the swim start. Pretty Crazy… I was at the extreme right of the start line.

SWIM START VIDEOS (YouTube)
video 1 (from the back)
Video 2 (from the pier)
Video 3 (from my side)

Thinking about the watch helped disconnect a bit from the situation. I did not panic about this either (remembering “THE BOX” of things I can’t control). The watch is lost. What can I do about this? While swimming, I realize that for the bike I am good: I have the bike computer which also connects to the power meter. I had redundancy there. The problem is for the run, where all my training is based on pace. Then I remember that my bike computer is also GPS based. If the battery lasts long enough, I just need to put it in my tri suit pocket at the end of the bike, and I will get time, distance, heart rate and speed for the run. With the backup plan in place, my thoughts went back to swimming, which I knew was not going too well. The first turn was CRAZY! I kept wide the whole swim course so I most likely swam much longer than the official 3.8 km.

I swear I clearly remember thinking I would get nightmares about that swim.

Before the race, I was hoping for a 1h02 to 1h06 swim split (I was under 30’ at REV3 for 1.9km). Without wetsuit, I guess I would have liked 1h05 to 1h10.

When I got out of the water at the end of the 1st loop, I look at the race clock and I see 44:xx. I was devastated for a few seconds. What? I was looking at a 1h26 swim split? I knew things were NOT going well, but not THAT bad! I catched my breath staying in motion, waived my family while re-entering the water for another go. See in the 3rd picture below how close people are to me even if the field is less crowded (I am at the end of the arrow).

I was hoping for less traffic, but it did not feel that way as I was surrounded by swimmers the whole way. I tried to focus better on my form and catch some feet on the return to shore. After the last turn, missing bathroom stop caught up with me and some of the return was not quite comfortable as I suddenly needed to go pretty bad (#2 of course).

Out of the water… I am not bright, quite shaken by the swim, and you can see it in the pictures. But I was alive and happy this leg was done! I started to make my way to transition, navigating around people on their butts getting their wetsuits stripped by the volunteers.

I was quite ways out when I started wondering about my swim time, turned around trying to peek at the clock now far back, and thought I saw 1:09:xx. Huh? Not great but not as bad as I feared. Turns out the first time I look, they had the PRO clock running which had an extra 10’ (they left at 6h50 am, we left at 7h00).

SWIM SPLIT: 3.8 km in 1:09:08 (1:49 pace) > that did not impress the coach to say the least hehe!

That put me in 537th position overall (out of 2500+), 98th in my Age Group. Not a great start.

———–

TRANSITION 1 – 6:16

My budget for both transitions was 7’ based on analysis from last year’s results so I was longer than I planned for here. We do have a lot of ground to cover out of the swim. Also, I do not run very fast bare feet. Somehow, I need to improve on that for next year. Here’s the path from the beach to the transition area.

Once I reached the transition area, I quickly found my T1 bag (I had put green tape on my bag to spot it quickly) and headed to the change tent. I did not sit, I just put on my sunglasses, put on my helmet, grabbed my shoes and started running towards the bike. But stopping to the toilet first was not optional following the end of the swim: I had to address the situation. So I lost a couple of minutes there explaining the long T1 time despite a simple transition.

Still, even with that relatively slow transition I gained 83 positions overall and 17 positions in my Age Group in T1 alone. That speaks for itself! So I started the bike in 454th position overall.

I ran with my shoes in my hand (can’t run with bike shoes, and it hurts my knee), grabbed my bike, ran way past the mount line, put my bike on the fence while I put the shoes on and then hopped on my bike.

———–

BIKE – 180 km

Overall the bike went pretty well. I may have gone a very slightly bit too hard in first hour, but that’s debatable. I slowed down a very little bit in the second loop, but not much and it was mostly intentional.

Because of the swim situation, the first 15 km of the bike were really crowded, but I quickly passed hundreds of people – literally.

I did not think the bike course was hard at all, quite the contrary. The Kensington Park training rides did their job. The course was simply AWESOME and weather was perfect to enjoy it. T The descent to Keene was quite impressive, where I got around 75 km/h without pushing too hard. Can’t say I am too comfortable riding down in curves at these speeds on a 19 lbs bike… but it went well.

Race Director scared us a bit about the road condition at the briefing, but it was not too crowded by the time I got there, and with the road closed to cars, plenty of space to pick a good line. Due to the nature of the course (lots of climbing sections), I did not have big issues with back pain like I had sometimes in training.

After the long “out-and-back” on the first loop, I stopped at the top of the hill for ~2 minutes to inspect my front wheel which started to crack very loudly when putting the weight on the front end – and with the speeds we were getting in the descents, I did not want to risk ignoring this. I could not find anything by visual inspection, so I resumed. I lost 1 minute in the process according to my Garmin. It was annoying to see all the people I passed before, again. Amazing how many positions you can lose in a minute.

Got the nutrition plan going – with a few mishaps: rear pockets on LPC tri top are not too reliable so I happened to lose 2 bars during the ride, which I temporarily placed there to negotiate turns or technical sections. No sweat though, I just replaced with course-provided nutrition.

No issues in the long climb back to town: as Computrainer simulations showed, the grade is small for the most part. It was amazing to see the crowd support at the “Papa Bear” steeper climb back to town. It was great to see Corinne and my family at that spot. High Fives were in order

Supporters and entertainment took many forms during the race, between a person playing pipes in a curve somewhere, the dancing bananas, and the multiple funny speedo-wearing dudes

I flew by the special needs bag area since I did not need anything. I was still impressed to see that by the time I got there, a volunteer was holding MY bag in the air: I could have grabbed it while rolling if needed.Here’s how the area looked like. Then my mother and her husband Pierre, not far from the “Papa Bear” hill to cheer me out.

I was not too bummed to have to start the second loop (as I was afraid I would) and got on my way. I was much closer to the front of the race by then, so very little traffic on the second loop. I was almost alone on my descent to Keene.

I managed to re-lube my private areas while rolling (don’t try this at home hehe!) in an area with no spectators and only one bike a bit behind me. This worked for a while, but a while later, I decided to stop for my 2nd bathroom stop (had to pee and could not bring myself to do it on bike) and re-lube correctly. I lost 3 minutes there according to Garmin. That would be my last bathroom stop of the day (only 2 in total) so I can’t complain too much. But still, if I would be competing at the pointy end of my Age Group, these stops are REALLY doing damage…

To give you an idea of how much support we got from the volunteers, here’s a good example. When I stopped at the aid station for the toilet stop, I just threw my bike on the rack beside it and went in, did not see anybody around. When I get out of there, I was actually surprised by what I saw: a volunteer was holding my bike, ready to go, pointing in the right direction and asking me if I needed anything to eat or drink before resuming.

Not too long after that, I ran into somebody that did not have my inhibitions. I was coming up on him, and I saw him taking a quick glance behind before I noticed liquid coming out from everywhere. I had to swerve left at the last minute to avoid the shower (yeah.. pee!) not nice. At least I avoided it all.

After 160 km, then I started to find the bike tougher and was looking forward to get off it. That’s where all the climbing comes back too, not helping matters. But before too long, I was hitting Papa Bear hill again with the crowd support. Just after, we are in town, cheering crowds screaming, many turns to negotiate, starting to think about what needs to happen in transition to keep things moving…

Again, kudos to Corinne for taking all these great pictures. Here’s one from the event photog:

I hop off my bike at the dismount line, give the bike to a volunteer and head off to the bags and change tents.

BIKE SPLIT: 180 km in 5:25:47 at 33.2 km/h average. Not too bad since it includes 4 minutes stopped. That was the 78th fastest bike split of the day, but here the goal is not to be the fastest… you need to be able to run a marathon afterwards. It does you no good to post the fastest bike time if you have to walk half of the run segment.

I passed 355 people on the bike leg, so I got off my bike in 99th position overall. In my Age Group, gained 54 places putting me off the bike in 27th position.

If you are into data, my race weight was about 159 lbs and my Normalized Power for the bike ride was 226 watts for the complete ride (235w and 217 w for loops 1 and 2) which was right on target. Variability Index was at 1.05, also right on target. Complete GPS and power data is available here: http://tpks.ws/QFyZ

———–

TRANSITION 2 – 2:47

Not too bad - this included putting lube cream between 2 problematic toes on right foot and putting socks. This was worth it since I came out of the race without even a single blister (and I always have some in my long runs even when I cream up!) However this brings my total combined transition time at 9’, two minutes over budget.Seems like I lost 2 positions overall in T2 but gained another one in my Age Group, starting the run in 26th position.

———–

RUN 42.2 km

Now… Did anybody notice something missing in the report of the end of my bike segment? That’s right… no mention about removing the GPS Garmin Edge 500 from the bike and putting it in my pocket. Too long of a day, too much action near the end of the bike course, and by the time I realized I forgot that, I was running out of transition. I am the guy looking at his watch every other minute when running. I constantly look at my pace, compare it to my goal times and adjust as needed. At the end of races, the data is what’s kicking my butt to up the effort to meet my goals.Here I am, starting my first marathon ever - inside an Ironman race nonetheless- and I have no clue about what time it is or what pace I am running. When I saw Corinne, I stopped to hug her briefly and told her “I have no idea what speed I am running at! I have no watch!”. Here I am starting the run, in full LPC outfit including run cap.

After one mile, I asked a spectator what time it was to get an idea of overall timing. At least, since we all started at 7:00 am, easy to figure out the race time.

Not knowing my speed, and after hearing the “Endurance Nation” speech the day before, I slowed my run more than I thought I needed to be more cautious. I tried to think of a pace I could hold all day. I asked the time a few times as I was going along, either from competitors or spectators, but no way to compute pace reliably. The run course was really not crowded on my first lap and I was moving pretty well.

Without my watch, I also decided right away to power walk the first aid stations and make sure to hydrate well, eat some calories, cool myself properly (it was starting to get hot under the sun) then run before the end of the aid station. Kept running outside aid stations, but I stopped at each aid station. In retrospect, while it was a safe thing to do, it was not a good idea. More on that later…Here I am, putting ice cubes in my mouth in one of those aid stations.

I got a bad feeling early as I noticed the course kept going mostly downhill for the first leg out. That meant a lot of climbing on the way back! It seemed like the turnaround was never coming…

On my return, asked a guy with a Garmin that caught me but running at the same speed at the time what kind of pace we were doing. He said ~8:00 mile >> I was right on target at that moment. I was happy with that.

I ran uphill back to town, making sure to bring the effort down when going up. I saw my family and Corinne and it was nice to get this support. It gave me an energy boost every time. Here I am attacking the uphill to town.

Corinne told me that Essex competitor David Orchard was roughly 4’ before me which surprised me. I did not know he was such a strong cyclist! Here’s David Orchard, a bit ahead of me at this time.He really had a great race going too.

First loop ended, I was still feeling good, and also knowing it was mostly downhill for the next bit. Saw my family and Corinne again, and I told them I was still feeling pretty good at the half mark. Corinne told me Dave was now at around 2’ ahead. I guess he was hitting a rough patch because that meant I gained a lot of ground in only a couple of kilometers. Still feeling decently good below passed the halfway point…

Sure enough, not 5 minutes later, I saw him about 100m in front of me. That distance stayed constant for a while as we were walking (aid stations) and running the same bits. But about 1 km later, I passed him, gave him a word wishing him luck. I did not know then, but I was about to hit “my wall” soon after.

Not long after, around the 17 mile marker, things got much rougher and I started to walk longer at the aid stations. Before too long, I was walking (with purpose though) any kind of uphill terrain regardless of the grade. I would resume running on flats and downhills. I had to think and focus on reaching the next aid station.. then the next mile marker, etc. to keep moving. Dave caught up then and we stayed together for a while, encouraging each other to keep moving and run when possible together. We sometimes briefly split but only to get back together a bit later. I bugged him at numerous occasions about what time it was and if we were on pace to do sub 11 hours, which became an obsession now knowing that I would not be anywhere I originally wanted to be, time wise.

I somehow fell behind him powerwalking the bigger hill downtown about 4 km from the end: he was walking faster than me up the hill. I guess he felt better and could run the rest afterwards because he managed to put 3’ on me before the finish line which was not so far anymore (I walked a few more times very briefly).

Now why did I walk so much? I really wish I had the GPS data to analyze things out. I have no idea if I started the run too fast or not. While I met my target power on the bike, was my target a bit too high? I was at 74% FTP which is much higher than the usual 60-70% recommendation. Was my run volume a bit on the low side in training, barely above 40km/week due to injuries? Or was it mostly a question of mental strength? Probably a combination of all these.

When I think about it, I never felt as bad as I did in Orlando last year at my first 70.3. Only a few times some muscles in the inside of the leg (Hip Flexor?) gave up and forced me to walk a few steps before resuming.

I think mental strength was a biggie here. See, walking all the aid stations may have helped avoiding getting out too hard. On the other hand when things started to get real tough around mile 17, your body and your mind knows too well the relief that walking brings. And you walked so many times already (17 to be exact), what’s one more time? See, that’s an evil loop. Before you know, “walking the aid stations” becomes walking a bit before, during and after the aid stations.

Anyway… back to the race, I had to go one last time up the side of the lake before turning around back to town for the last 2 km. Again, asked the time to a few spectators on my way up, still worried about the 11h mark hehe!

I really never thought I could be emotional about finishing this race – after all, it’s like any other races, just a bit longer (and that’s what it is really) – but being so close to the finish line I started to think about how far I’ve come since being a couch potato, losing 70 lbs and about all the sacrifices both me and Corinne made leading to this day. And here I was, a few minutes from the finish line of an Ironman race. When I let these thought happen, I have to say that I shivered a few times and my eyes were about to get wet…

Kept going to the last intersection where you have to go left for another loop (NOOOO!) or right for the finish line (YEESSS!) Felt good to go right this time!

I entered the Olympic Oval and the crowd was huge and vocal. I sensed somebody coming up behind me running fast, and my first impulse was to accelerate to avoid giving a position. Turns out it was a girl. After accelerating for a bit, I decided to slow down (quite a bit actually) to enjoy my finish and get a decent finish picture. I was nowhere near the pointy end of the field anyway and there was no point in fighting her and getting a messy finishing picture.

RUN SPLIT: Run 42.2 km in 3:57:46 at an average pace of 5:38/km, giving up 60 spots overall and 18 in my division. I am quite far off the mark from my expectations of a 3h30 run split, but all things considered, it’s not too bad of a first time. Not sure if I would have done better with my GPS watch, but I am pretty sure I would have. I like reaching my goals and seeing them slip away in real-time would have kicked my butt more I am sure.

———–

FINISH LINE

I passed the line with the smile(well.. I meant it to be a smile but it may look like a rictus) arms up in victory I saw Corinne, my mother and Pierre on the other side and waved them. I FREAKING DID IT!

TOTAL TIME = 10:41:42
Position Overall = 161 /2500+
Position Age Group = 44 /302

Volunteers stayed with me for a while, making sure I was OK.

When I walked toward Corinne past the finish line, emotions took the better of me again. I hugged her tight and let everything go.

Album…

Ironman Lake Placid 2011

We broke the trip to Lake Placid in 2 segments starting Wednesday evening, to minimize the trip related fatigue to a minimum and allow us to take care of race registration on the Thursday while it would still be quiet.

According to Google, the shortest drive was through Canada using mostly the 401. But we know this route too well from driving to Quebec and it’s boring! So we decided to go through the US, crossing the border near Buffalo and going through Rochester (where we slept) and Syracuse before heading North East in the Adirondack Park. This was a good decision and after entering the park, the drive was just very cool.

This plan made us arrive in Lake Placid early in the afternoon on Thursday. The town has a rich sport related history and you could REALLY feel it. The town was home to the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics.

The people over there were the nicest ever. During our whole stay, we felt welcome everywhere. So many locals wished me luck before the race, I could not count them. In every store, they had the Ironman Lake Placid poster up. They REALLY had what I would call the “Ironman Spirit”. It’s quite something because you have to realize that the Ironman week end takes over the whole area. It would be understandable that some locals would be bothered (and make you feel it) by all the lost tourists blocking circulation, all the bikes on the road making getting around difficult, etc. But everywhere I only saw a positive attitude. I can’t say I’ve seen this at every race I’ve been. It’s really in a class apart.

The town is beautiful, and actually bigger than I was expecting. Countless shops, restaurants, etc. Lots of charm. We also ate very well in this area, which surprised us. I had asked for some pointers from people I know that have done this race in the past and they gave us many helpful tips and restaurants recommendations that we put to use during our stay. Thanks so much! You know who you are… So in short, in case you missed my point, we L-O-V-E-D the place hehe! The atmosphere was unreal.

Back to our daily activities, shortly after arriving in town we parked downtown and headed to race registration. Nothing special here, felt like a lot of 70.3 registration processes. We were glad we could get it done early, as we had virtually no wait at all. I would imagine it was quite busier on the Friday. The Ironman store was also quiet. I tried to not buy too much, knowing that the interesting stuff (labeled “FINISHER” would come out after the race). They had that big M-DOT t-shirt with the names of all participants (including mine!) Also, you do not want to jinx yourself, being my first Ironman attempt.

Back to town, me and Corinne enjoyed a nice meal outside with view on Mirror Lake at the Dancing Bears.

Friday morning, I had a bit of training to do: a swim on the course, a short 30’ bike followed by a short run. Just trying to keep the legs fresh. The swim course is permanently marked on Mirror Lake. It a super nice place to swim and the water is almost always very calm as it is protected by the surrounding trees. Corinne took the occasion to do a small brick workout too! Our hotel was surrounded by hills though, so I think she thought it was a bit tough for a first training session in months.

My parents joined us that afternoon to complete my support crew After another supper on the terrace at Dancing Bears, we headed to the Ironman Athlete Briefing. Sounded like a lot of other race briefings, but I am glad we went. We learned that the water temperature was borderline for wetsuits and that the call would happen on race morning (*gulp*) – That race has never been a non-wetsuit race and nobody expected this to happen. The temperatures were supposed to cool down quite a bit overnight, so nobody got excited yet.

The race director also warned us greatly about the conditions of the road especially in the critical area of the high speed descents to Keene. He was really apologetic and reading between the lines, it sounded quite scary…. I heard several murmurs in the crowd following that bit. Turns out that would not be a problem since once part of the road would be closed to cars on race day, there was plenty of space to find a line with a good surface (for me anyway).

After splitting ways with my parents staying quite a bit outside of town, we got back to the hotel and I started the “dance” of running around in the hotel room trying to get everything organized to the equipment check in planned for Saturday. Ironman requires you to put everything in color coded bags for your transitions and you must check them in 1 day before the race. I had stuff everywhere in the room, 2-3 check lists prepared in the weeks and days leading to the race, etc. I think next time I need to pack my luggage already with the transitions bags prepared to make things smother on-site hehe!

Dennis gave me the trick of double-bagging everything in case it rained overnight (bags are staying outside and they do not close well). That would prove to be a GREAT advice.

Saturday morning, a quick 10’ swim on the course, then a SUPER breakfast at Chair 6 with my parents. Yummy! Then I proceeded with the Bike and Equipment check in to get this out of the way quickly.

As seen above, there was not many bags when I went because I went early. But here is a panoramic picture of the transition area at the end of the day. This is how 2500 bikes looks like haha! Click on it to open a 2400 pixels wide version in a new window. (you  may have to click once more on the image in the new window to see it in full resolution, then use the sliders to pan)

We then started to drive the bike course. The idea was to see what I was in for. I think my mother got a bit impressed: she did not necessarily realized how long a 90 km loop really is hehe! After 15-20 km, she was asking if we were coming up on their hotel yet, which was at the end of the loop right before climbing back to town (70 km into the loop) hehe! The descents to Keene were impressive: long winding slopes with curves in some hairy sections. In Keene, we stopped for lunch. My pulled pork sandwich wa great and the pecan pie very tasty!!!

We kept driving the course up till Whiteface Mountain where we stopped again. We took the cable car to the top for a fantastic view of the area including Lake Placid. Very cool!

Here are 2 panoramic pictures view from the top. Again, click on it to open a 2400 pixel wide version in a new window. Too bad the first one does not make justice to the view: it is a bit squished from the stiching process (the wood fence you see on both ends is actually the same straigth fence…). (you may have to click once more on the image in the new window to see it in full resolution, then use the sliders to pan)

We were back into Lake Placid at the end of the afternoon. The bike course was impressive, but I had a good idea before from riding it on the computrainer in the winter with “Real Course Video” so I was not too scared by the drive.

The challenge was now to find activities to pass time nicely without putting additional stress on my legs, being just hours away from my big race. Can’t go wrong with Ice Cream! Haha! The we reserved 2 small electric boats to navigate on Mirror Lake. We had quite a bit of fun there. My parents got stock on a rock getting too close to shore, so we made quite a bit of fun of them. It was nice to see the swim course from the end.

Quite a relaxing time on the calm lake. But then things got sketchy when our battery pretty much ran out of juice hehe! The return to shore was PAINFULLY slow and we had to hand-paddle a bit to not go over our rental time allocation haha!

Following the adventure, we hit one of the local “Ironman Pasta Buffet” before going back to the hotel for the final race preparation and trying (yes, I said ‘trying’) to sleep before the big dance…

Race Report to follow soon!!!! More than 100 pictures and larger versions in the album below.

Lake Placid 2011

I usually like to make either time predictions or goals for positions, but the truth is that even if I have some numbers in mind, that race is so long and so many things can happen during that long day, that it does not make much sense to do so. Things can go REALLY south in the marathon at the end of the day. They say the Ironman Marathon is where many dreams are shattered…

As a friend (Josh) told me recently: any mistake is exponential in Ironman.

So anyway… we are 1 week away from Ironman Lake Placid, and even though I try not to think about it too much (to keep stress levels low), I know my mind is there because I have been waking up every night this week in the middle of the nights, dreaming (when it’s not nightmares) about the race hehe!

Of course, one of the main sources of my doubts is the swim! It’s funny because it’s the shortest section of the race, yet this is the one causing the most stress to athletes in general.

If you can imagine: 2700 athletes mass swim start, also called the “washing machine”. Me, that tend to panic under heavy contact… I’ll have my plate full!!  hehe! One way to avoid the commotion is to stay back and let people go for a few minutes before starting, which is what many people do… But I want to try to do a good time. So that’s not a solution. Here’s a few pictures found online of the Lake Placid Swim start. Scary…

My plan will be to start from the extreme right of the start line, not start too strong, keep my cool knowing that there will be some bumps. The course is a very long out-and back that we do twice. So I will just slowly bank left back to the shorter path to make the turn. Hopefully by then, things will have thinned out a bit. Sub 1:05 or 1:06 swim would be awesome, 1:10 would be OK, but whatever happens, I will stay positive: the swim is only a fraction of the day. Mission is just to get out of there in one piece without having spent too much of my stamina.

Hilly bike course is also sometimes a source of doubt even if it is my stength. The problem is to know how much too push: not enough and I am loosing time…. Too hard and you can expect to crumble in the run. At least, I have a powermeter and solid data from previous rides and races to help me figuring out a good effort target. My current target (~225-230 watts Average Power w/o zeros) is kind of aggressive - much higher than typical recommendations at ~75% FTP) but I will listen to my body and will not hesitate to shut it down if it does not feel right. Nutrition on the bike is critical: I must take between 1700 and 1800 calories while rolling.

I’d rather not think too hard about the run hehe! Never ran a marathon, and now I am set to start one after ~1 hour of hard swimming and 5-6 hours of hard biking hehe! Fun times ahead. My longest run to date is 30 km, done a couple of weeks ago. My plan is to not walk anything and just run it all. We’ll see what happens…. I am aware I may end up walking half of it if things do not go my way. I remember how I felt at the end of my first half Ironman (70.3) in Florida last year - hopefully it does not get that bad or that could be a VERY long day.

I started to read some race reports from previous years - sometimes you learn valuable information on the course or race logistics that way - but quickly stopped as this just fueled my doubts. Too many stories of people getting mauled in the swim, or crumbling in the run.

Finally, some symptoms of a cold are lingering right now, but I hope it will clear out quickly now that I am entering in full training taper.

All that being said, I have many reasons to be positive:

> I have full confidence in my training plan

> I had a very good season start

> Usually, I execute pretty well on race day if I can keep my cool in the swim.

> My best swims have been in long races (70.3)

> I had a very good race at REV3 Quassy in Connecticut on a similar course last month

> I did all the training without too many compromises. I had a few long open water swims, several bike rides between 145 and 190 km including two 170 km rides in hilly Kensington Park and 4 run sesions between 25 and 30 km recently. Also, I run pretty good off the bike this year.

> Despite my original feeling that we skimped on run training & volume (not much above 40 km/week, like last year) because of injuries (or signs), my coach seems to think we did pretty good. He is really convinced the key here is the bike training.

I will then focus on the positive till race day. Even if things do not go as planned, I have to remember it’s the first one and that the ultimate goal is to finish and learn something. I have 2 more chances at it in the coming months

Wish me luck!