Muskoka Chase

This was my first time doing this race and second time doing a long course triathlon.  The swim was 2km, bike 56km, run 15km.  Race morning….Up at 5am had some breakfast and out the door at 5:30.  We knew it takes about 45 min to get there and we wanted to get there early to have time for the 101 things to take care of.  When we did get there, it was already very busy…. I got into transition and to my surprise I had pole position.  My bike was parked right across from the bike in and out sign…  now there was no chance of getting lost in Transition.  Time was moving fast now and before I realized it, I had to get down to the water… no warm up today… it was going to have to be in the water once the horn went.  I made it to the start with about 4min to spare…. jumped in and moved my arms around a bunch to try and get the blood going.  When the horn did go, I was off… I was really excited about my new wetsuit and looking forward to a good swim.  About a couple min in I got really “burpy”  almost every stroke was with a burp but thankfully no “chuck”.  I made my way around and came to the end at 38min.  It wasn’t the 36 I was hoping for but it wasn’t bad…The bike was controlled… I was planning 200 watts +/- I was feeling really good dropping to the easy ring for the tough hills (not doing anything silly) and my nutrition was going perfectly every 15min a little power bar piece.  I even went through my two bottles and probably could have used more with the heat…  Coming towards the end of the bike I popped a gel and was feeling great.  I finished the bike at 1:49 – avg 30km/phThe run was sort of a different story… I put my old HR strap on for the bike because my SRM reads the original coded polar and not the new WIND ones.  So when the run started, I switched transmitters thinking that the new watch would just start working… It didn’t… so I didn’t have HR for the run.  I think for Lake Placid, I’ll ride the bike with my new Heart Strap… and that way I won’t risk any issues for the run.  It was probably a good things since I wanted to run hard get as close to 5min/km as possible to shoot for 1:15.  Since I was blind I started taking a lap time every Km to at least get an idea of how I was doing.  Pace was good, I remember why I didn’t like those Ediscs – chewable eload disc, because I didn’t have enough water with me… I liked the feeling of being free of a water belt, however, it wasn’t good to get a little bit every km as I really had no gage of how much I was drinking.  I did like the gels stuffed in a bottle with a little water, I just have to remember when my next gel time was because I got confused a little… I finished the run at 1:19.  I was pleased!  Dave told me for Lake Placid, just don’t walk… even going so slow running is still fast then a fast walk…  I that’s what I did, I ran the whole way and was proud of that….I came across the finish at 3:52 and change and was really happy to see Dave waiting there to congratulate me, getting me to stuff ice on my achilles as soon as possible.  I was so happy for Lisa, winning the females race.  All told a great experience…  and was really happy with my results today.