What a difference 6 days makes.  Unlike last Monday’s DU in Waterloo, the weather was perfect today in Caledon, as warm temperatures, low winds, and sunny skies make for ideal racing conditions.

The race would start at 8am, which was great considering it was going to be scorching hot later in the afternoon.  I’ve done this race 4x before, the last time being in 2005, and is always one of my favorites because it is close to home, no traffic, a small field of about 30 competitors yet still competitive with several elite athletes racing.  In this yrs version, those elite athletes were C3’s powerhouse of Andrew Yorke, Sean Bechtel, Dave Sharratt, Steve Hewick and Tyler Lord.

The distance is 5k out-and-back run, 5x 3k looped bike(15k), a little technical, and the same 5k run after.  Definitely a run-focus duathlon.

1st run- race started conservative although Yorke went out in front  and no one responded.  I waited about 10sec and decided to chase a bit and close the gap.  I came within a few meters, but didn’t want to risk blowing up so I backed off.  The first half of the run is more downhill than up, so at the turnaround, I was 7:49, 11sec back of Yorke, and about 10sec in front of the other chasers.  Yorke kept pulling away, and I just tried to stay relaxed.  I came into transition in 16:43, over 30sec back, with Sharratt just 8seconds behind me.

Transition- just like in the previous race, I had trouble with my chin strap and Sharratt ended up mounting onto his bike 1sec in front of me.  I really have to improve those transition skills and not give up time so easily like that.

Bike- again, the bike isn’t my strong point this year given how few miles I’ve been able to ride, and it shows although today I felt better than last week.  For the second race in a row, I see Sharratt slowly power away and disappear into the distance.  Luckily that doesn’t happen to me in the triathlon since he’s a faster swimmer than me and gone before I’m in T1.  Before the end of lap 1, Bechtel blew by me with authority.  The next few laps I tried to sustain a good pace and minimize time lost.  Hewick was the next to pass me at the end of lap 3, although after falling behind 50m tohim I was able to reduce that gap a bit and pretty much equal his pace for the remaining 2 laps.  While all this was happening, the leaders Yorke, Sharratt, and Bechtel build up a lead of over 2min by the end of the bike. 

2nd Run- Hewick and I started the run pretty much side by side.  The legs felt ok, although the left calf was on the verge of a major cramp so I backed off and tried to stay as relaxed as possible.  Maybe I relaxed a little too much since I was only at 8:51 at the turnaround.  At this point, I saw the 3 leaders pass going by and they were just too far ahead for me to attack a podium position.  But I build up a 20second lead on Hewick so I just focused on maintaining 4th place.  That is exactly where I finished, running 17:37  for the second run.  Not exactly as fast as I thought I’d be able to run, but at least I negative split that run, unlike the first.  My total time of 1:02:20 was still about 2:20 faster than when I last did this race 3years ago, so as long as I’m improving I shouldn’t be too down.

That being said, the bike definitely needs to improve.  My next race will be Worlds in Vancouver on June 7th.  Rather than doing a longer taper, I think this next week can still serve as a bit of a bike week before starting to back off.  Besides if I do a really long taper now, I probably am jeopardizing my FISU University Championships race in Turkey just 3weeks after Vancouver.