Friday, June 10, 2011

Milton and the final big training days!

Milton Triathlon Race Report
Jun 5, 2011

The next race on my schedule was a local one, the Milton sprint triathlon.  As this was near the end of my last big training week before Ironman, it was more of a training race - go hard on heavy and tired legs!  So sometime late Saturday afternoon I headed back to the city with the Bialkowski family and then to Milton on Sunday for the race.  I really wasn't sure what to expect and how my legs/body were going to react to a hard effort on a big volume week.


The swim went ok.  Not my greatest swim and I actually did not really enjoy it much.  When my wave started I decided to go hard right away and see if I can stay in front of the pack somehow.  I am never good at swim starts, I always start slow and then start passing people midway through the swim.  Since this swim was just 750m I decided to try to go hard right off the bat and see if I can hold it.  The start went well as I was out in front with a few swimmers in front of me.  But then the swim just got dirty!  This was just as rough as some of the huge mass swim starts I've done.  I got clobbered on the head, ankles pulled, and even got a two-handed shove by a backstroker as I was passing her.  Funny, the more I do tris, the more I am disliking the swim even though it is my strongest discipline.  I just am not liking the contact part of it.  I need to get over this soon though as it is part of the sport.  My swim time was 13:09 which was a 1:46min/km pace.  Not that great for me but actually my fastest swim time at Milton.  Got through T1 and off on the bike.



The bike also went well.  I really wanted to average over 30km/hr on this course and I did.  I did the 30km ride in 57:53, my fastest on this course to date.  On the results page it reads that I averaged 31.1kph but my garmin read the course short at 29.09km so I averaged 30.3kph.  The sixth line hill went well but I forgot about all the rollers after that.  I last did this race in 2009 and I've done the sprint three times, however, I obviously blocked parts of the race from my mind! Lol!  After the rollers I really started hammering the bike as I really wanted an under 1hr ride.  My average heart rate was 157bpm and cadence was 81rpm.  I hit a top speed of 65.4kph going down the 6th line hill.  My legs were not feeling too bad at this point.  Though I really felt the lactic acid at times going up some of the hills.  Thanks to Morgan for letting me borrow her aerohelmet as I did not have mine with me when I went to Parry Sound.



Now for the run.  The plan was to run at a good effort until the turnaround and then run hard home!  Boy, was this a hard run course and I completely forgot about that!  The heat was also a bit of a factor.  You start off running up a short steep hill, onto some trails, then a bit on the road, back onto some more cross country trails through Halton Falls (aka HILLS) before coming back home.  I basically just started running hard and hope that I could hold the pace.  I was breathing quite heavily and even had other racers look behind as I was approaching them because I was breathing so loud!  I was actually wheezing again.  But I pushed on and pretty much gave it all that I had.  Tried to drop the pace on the return trip home and was running out of gas in the last 500m or so.  I could feel that I was slowing down.  My legs were done.  But with so many people cheering for me I pushed to the end.  I did the 7.5km run in 41:52 for a 5:35min/km pace.  Average heart rate was over 170bpm. 


Finish time was 1:55:22.  9min faster than in 2009 and 7min faster than my best time at this race.  I was pleased with this.  Although I did not place well at all in my age group.  Either it was a fast day or the other girls were just really fast this year.  I only placed 13 out of 20.  When asked if I would have been able to go faster if I was chased by a bear - I probably could have gone faster on the bike but the bear would have eaten me alive on the run.  I do not think I could have ran any faster.  But who knows! Lol!

I ended up returning back to Parry Sound for two more days of training since I was still off from work.  On the Monday I did a 1:06 open water swim which felt great!  Then after I switched my race wheels back to my training ones on Limey I headed out for a ride.  I was just going to go out easy to get some more mileage in my legs but my legs surprisingly did not feel tired (which is why the bear question came about) and I pushed the ride a bit.  I rode a hilly 95km with a total elevation gain of 3123ft.  My average HR was 165bpm.  I decided to venture out on a new route and headed towards Rosseau.  Another ride with great scenery and hills.  However, at about 60km into the ride my legs then started to feel it and were getting tired.  The race finally caught up to me!

Rosseau River
 Tuesday was going to be my last big training day!  Started the day off early in the morning with a run interval workout at the same field as last week.  We did a strength type of workout since we just raced on the weekend.  Now my legs were really feeling the effects of the training and the race.  I was struggling in the warm up!!!  But I did the whole workout which involved 8x600m with As and Bs in between albeit a little on the slow side!  Then I refueled and headed out for a 120km (5hr) bike ride.  I did the same loop as I did last week for my long ride but just did it three times.  Almost ran into a couple of deers on my last loop but no harm was done.  I tried to push hard and keep my HR up but my legs had a different plan.  The effort was still there!  I believe my HR average was around the 140bpm range.  Then after the ride I quickly changed, refueled and headed out for a long run.  I managed to run just under 20km trying to hold a 6:30min/km or better.  I was good until about 14km when I completely fell apart.  My pace then dramatically dropped and I managed to average about a 6:40min/km.  I even stopped to walk for a bit but I felt like I was going to hurl so I started running again!  I completed it and felt just awful when I was done.  Although I was happy that I did it!  8hr training day accomplished!  Now....TAPER!!!!!!!  Hope I am ready for France though!  I am severely doubting whether I am ready! 

Oh...and just for fun, I got some bling!  Well, bling for Limey!  Check this out!  A split skewer close to Limey's new colour!  I just had to!  It's a nice added touch! Lol!!!!


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