Guelph Lake and more

Boy...have I been a delinquent in the blogging department lately.  I blame my work schedule for this and then trying to squeeze in all my training sessions.  I have been managing to log about 16-19 hours of training a week on top of working a full time job plus overtime shifts.  However, I think this is taking its toll on me a bit as I struggled through some training sessions last week.  I did take a couple of easier days and then managed to knock off a pretty decent 30km run yesterday.  In between my night shifts to boot, night 4 and 5.  Plus, it was my fastest 30km training run to date! Yay!  I also am up to 150km on the bike, did that last week in the heat and humidity.  My garmin measured a high temperature of 39C! Yikes!  So I am pretty happy with where my training is at now.  My left foot with the plantar fasciitis is also pretty happy! ;)  I ran pretty much pain-free!  It hurt some afterwards but the treatment is working!  Now I just have to deal with my right hamstring which is not so happy.  It's been hurting since Oceanside and I have been getting treatment for it as well.  Hopefully it will sort itself out soon.

A couple of weeks ago I raced in my third tri of the season at Guelph Lake.  On Jun 17th, Father's Day, my dad and I spent the day together as I raced the Olympic distance event.  I went into this race wanting to do really well and post a strong bike split.

There were threatening thunderstorms that morning with the risk of the swim being cancelled.  Surprisingly, the swim was not cancelled despite the sounds of thunder.  I had a pretty strong swim and felt great in the water until about the half way point when my left shoulder was hurting me quite a bit.  I could not muster strength from the left shoulder and not quite sure what happened.  It was useless but I still swam strong and got out of the water in just over 25min.  I clocked in at 26:24 by the time I ran up the hill and crossed the timing mats.  This got me 4th out of the water in my age group.

I started the bike feeling pretty good and I wanted to ride hard.  The wind made it a bit tricky though so even though I felt like I was hammering the bike, the wind slowed me down a bit.  I just tried to focus on strong pedal strokes.  But then about a third of the way into the bike I felt a rubbing sensation and heard a weird noise coming from the bike.  I was looking around to try to figure out what it was.  I looked down, tried to look behind, under my saddle and could not figure it out.  Then I started to wonder if I had flatted.  However, I did not lose control of the bike on the downhills so I figured that was not the case.  Maybe there was a slow leak?!  Well I continued on and just tried to stay strong.  I came back to T2 and noticed there were only 2-3 other bikes on my age group rack!  Woohoo! Really!?  Was happy with that and my friend also came in from the bike right after me and made up quite a bit of time on me.  After the race I found the source of the noise...my rear brake pad was rubbing against my wheel! Argh!  Rookie mistake!  I thought I had checked my wheels but maybe it got knocked a bit and shifted just enough to rub my back wheel!  Not sure how much time I lost from that mistake!  Bike time was 1:17:49 for 40km, averaged 30.8kph, just a bit slower than last year.

I started the run shoulder to shoulder with my friend!  She has improved quite a lot over the past couple of years and was definitely kicking my butt out there!  I tried to run with a quick cadence and see how long I could hold onto that!  We played cat and mouse for a bit.  She definitely helped me push myself out there.  But my hamstring was really unhappy with me and I could not push it as much as I wanted to.  A couple of times I felt defeated as she had passed me and I could not make up the gap anymore but I made sure she was within eye shot of me.  I ran the 10km in 53:40 which was just a bit faster than last year and I believe my fastest 10km in an Olympic distance tri.  My friend finished just 20sec ahead of me!  Props to you!  You were awesome and helped me stay honest and push myself.

Total time was 2:40:50....a new PB for a full Olympic triathlon and three minutes faster than last year.  I was 10th in my age group and 26th female overall.  Boy these girls are fast.  Even though I have improved in my running these girls are still whooping my butt.  Lol!  It was a fun day to spend with my dad though and I think he had fun too! ;)

This coming weekend I am off to Tupper Lake, NY to race the Tinman half ironman.  I have pretty high goals for this race and I hope I can pull them off!