A cool documentary.

Fall is cyclocross racing season.  I am not at all an accomplished cyclocross racer, but it sure is fun.  Here are some highlights of the “Drank Night” race in Calgary.  Cyclocross racing is even more of an adrenaline rush when it is raced in the dark. This one was held at the Canada Olympic Park, host of some of the 1988 winter Olympic events.  That is the bobsleigh track in the background.  Luckily, no snow yet.  Note the costumes.

A few weeks ago I got a call from someone who had a “friend” coming to town for a few days and was looking for a group to swim with.  The “friend” was labelled as an ex-Olympian who is thinking about doing an ironman with a goal time of approximately 50 minutes for the swim.

At first I assumed assumed that “Olympian” meant swimmer, but after some thought I realized that a 50 minute ironman swim would be slow for a former Olympian swimmer, but fast for anyone else.  It then hit me who it was, and that explained why the purposely vague description.  When a time and place was decided as to when and where the swim workout would be, I was lucky enough to get a special invite to the swim with the Calgary Masters.  The opportunity gave me goose bumps.

Lance showed up right before the workout began.  My initial thought was, “he’s not as tall as he looks on camera.”  The folks at Calgary Masters were very good because although they were very excited to have a 7 time Tour de France swim with them, they allowed Lance to get into the water quite quickly and get a swim workout in.

It is well known that Lance began his athletic career as a swimmer, then triathlete before his cycling career took off.  Lance was a legitimate top pro-triathlete at a very young age.  Still though, I wasn’t expecting him to swim as fast as he did.  We did a total of 3,100m, with the main set being 15x100m on 1:40, 25m pool (meaning we started a new 100m every 1:40).  Approximately half of the intervals were to be “fast”, and half were “easy.”  It soon became evident that Lance is quite the swimmer as he was doing his “fast” intervals at approximately 1:02, and his easy intervals on approximately 1:11.  I was fortunate to be swimming in the same lane as Lance, and I can honestly say that everyone brought up their game that day as we were all excited to be swimming with Lance.

Lance came to the swim workout and was was very polite.  It came across as though he was very much appreciating the fact that he could get in a workout within his busy travel and work schedule.  He listened to the coaches.  He did what the group was doing and didn’t try to change it.  He swam very fast.  After the workout he posed for photos with people and signed some autographs.  He really was a class act.

I am a huge cycling fan.  I’ve read many of the books  for and against Lance.  I admit that I had already formed an opinion about an individual that is truly bigger than the sport, long before I had met him.  Those who follow the sport have also likely formed an opinion as to what cycling was like over the past 20 years.   This was the first time that I’ve ever had the opportunity to workout with someone who is truly bigger than sport.  I was very impressed how Lance just tried to fit in.

2011 was the 8th time I’ve raced Ironman Canada.  Over the years, I’ve had pretty steady results; 2010 5th, 2009 7th, 2008 6th, 2007 6th, 2006 4th, 2005 7th & 2004 22nd.  I knew I was fit coming into the race but my health was questionable.  I was actually lighter for this race than I had ever been for any ironman but was definitely lacking the quality run training that I was used to.

Swim:

Like always, the pros started 15 minutes before the age-groupers.  I think I was ligned up beside Jordan Rapp and Paul Tichelaar at the start line.  The cannon went off and there wasn’t too much banging of bodies.  I put my head down and made sure to go out hard for the first 500m.  Unlike some previous swims this year, I found myself on some good feet and by ~1,000m I was surprised at how easy the swim felt.  By the time that we got to the first turn the pace of our group had slowed.  We were going slow enough that I could recognize some of the folks I was swimming with and I knew that I was in a good group.  Other than the annoyance of some folks continually tapping at your feet, the swim was very uneventful.  This was likely the easiest ironman swim that I’ve ever done, likely because of the fact that I’ve improved my swimming over the winter (thanks Bart and Kronos tri club) and the fact that we were in a large group.  I exited the water beside Scott Curry and we wished each other well.  My swim time was 53:48.  Everyone’s swim times seemed a little slow this year.

Bike:

I passed a few guys before the climb up McLean Creek, trying to keep things under control and not going out too hard.  We had a tail wind down to Osoyoos, so the first 65k were pretty quick.  Really, I don’t have much to say about the bike.  It was pretty lonely in the fact that I didn’t see that many other racers.  I found the stretch over the rollers and to the start of the out-and-back difficult because it was windy.  I picked it up a little when we started the Yellow Lake climb.  My normalized power was 262 Watts.  That was down from last year (272 W last year) but my Watts/kg were about the same 3.5 W/kg (meaning I was lighter this year).  Bike time was 4:50.  My hip was hurting me on the bike but I had been very good with my nutrition and hydration, so my energy levels were very good coming off the bike.

T2:

I stopped to use the porta-pottie, so I was a little slow going through T2.  My stomach was feeling good though and it wasn’t an issue.

Run:

I ran well for the first 12 miles but by then I started a walk/run routine due to pain in my hip.  I think I was as high as 7^th at one point but I was not doing well.  The pain was getting worse and by about mile 15 it was bad enough that I felt like I was going to topple over.  With around 7 miles to go I had had enough with the pain and started a slow walk home, by that point I had fallen to 9th spot.  It was a hot day but I think because I started walking so early, I never really experienced that much heat.  I wanted to finish but I didn’t want to cripple myself.  I was 1:32 going the half and ended up with a 4:21 run/walk time.  The thought of dropping out was never really a consideration as I knew I could walk it in.

Reconsideration:

I knew the run was likely going to be my downfall this year.  For a while I was hoping that I could hold it together but in the end my body wasn’t able. My mileage wasn’t too bad this year, but I was really lacking on intensity (because I just could not do any) and also when my hip flared up, I find it just too painful to run.  My last long run of the year had meant to of been a 34km run but ended up being 17k out and a bus ride home.  Although I had a lot of time and money invested with chiro & physio, I wasn’t able to shake my injury.  This was likely a downfall of being self-coached.  A coach would have likely told me that I should  fix this injury in complete in the winter.  In hindsight, it would have been better to have taken a month completely off in February.

I saw my doctor on Weds and I’m now on a wait list to see an “expert.”  I’ve been told it is a 4 to 6 week wait.  Unfortunately my hip/sciatic feels worse than it did before the race but I am still optimistic for a quick recovery if I focus on the little details of repair.  I think the major issue is to get the inflammation down as I’ve already improved my hip strength and flexibility.

Thanks to all the friends and family who cheered me on.  I had a long enough walk during the race to get over feeling sorry for myself.  I am disappointed with the outcome of my race but I know in the grand scheme of things this is not a big deal and there are far greater challenges in life.  If I’d never experienced the friendships that I’ve made through sport, that would have been a tragedy. I’m looking forward to getting healthy and taking on whatever my next challenge is.

Again, thanks for all the great volunteers that make Ironman Canada such a great event.  Thanks to all the friends and family who cheered me on.

It was a nice Mother’s Day weekend in Calgary.

Saturday morning I helped out in a Kids-of-Steel triathlon clinic.  We were teaching kids safe bike handling skills.  We had approximately 30 kids from age 12 to 16 out learning how to do some crazy tricks.  It is great to see so many young kids excited about triathlon, and not afraid to crash.

Sunday morning was the annual Mother’s Day Run in Calgary.  This year with over 16,000 runners between the 5 and 10k!  We were a little lazy putting a video together from this years event, so here is our last year’s video that my wife Kelly put together.