Smith Falls Race Report and Other Stuff

Its been a few weeks since I last blogged so I thought I'd better give a little update.

On Sunday I was in the Smith Falls Classic Triathlon, a sprint tri with a 500m swim, 26km bike and a 5km run. This is Canada's oldest triathlon in its 29th year. Last year I did this as my very first tri, and I did the try-a tri and I won. Smith falls is home to a Hershey's chocolate factory and the winners in each group received a 5lb bag of chocolate. Other than my kids being born and meeting my wife, getting 5lbs of chocolate for winning was one of the happiest moments of my life. Smith Falls is a nice course, fairly flat bike with a nice 5km run portion.

I'll start my excuse right now before I get in too deep. On Tuesday I was doing a brick workout and had my bike on the trainer to do some overgear work and as soon as I went out on the run my knee started to hurt. It was in a spot that I hadn't had trouble with before so I kept on and thought it was more of a cramp than anything. About 3km out I had to stop and couldn't run at all, walking was tough and a 3km run isn't that far, but walking it with a sore leg seems like a marathon. I took it easy the next couple of days and things got better, so much that I did an 80km ride on Saturday and had no problems. I was already registered for the tri and didn't want to miss out on my shirt so I headed up to Smith Falls, alone, as my son had his championship ball hockey game at the same time in the morning, which they won! OK, back to me, I did a little pre-race warm-up run with a co-worker and everything felt great, no worries. I had an OK swim, about what I was capable of doing and a decent transition and got on the bike and gave it all I could. My HR was in the 150's and I was going about 25-26 MPH on the flats. I kept this up until we hit a corner and hit a pretty good head wind, it was all I could do to push 20mph. About 20km into the bike I felt a little discomfort in my knee but not enough to slow me down. I had passed a few people in my age group so I knew that I had made up some time on the better swimmers, but I wasn't sure of my time as I have lost my watch and was going "naked". My bike computer has a HR monitor so this was the only time that I knew what my bpm's were. As soon as I got off the bike at transition I knew that something was wrong. I decided to try and run anyways to see if was the same problem as before or just something else. I got about 2km in of poor running before it really got bad. I stopped and tried to rub my knee but that didn't help so I knew I was done. I tried to walk but that hurt even more than running and I knew I had another 3km to get back to transition so I did a kind of run/limp/hobble back to the end. My fitness was excellent and I was ready to lay it out there to see how fast I could run after giving my best on the bike so it was very disappointing to have this happen but the best part was having people cheering for you to just hold on and finish. The cheers of "You can do it", "It's just a little farther", "You're doing great, just keep going" were starting to drive me nuts. I was running like a person in a three legged race, but with no partner. I appreciate their enthusiasm but at this point I was not in the mood, my knee hurt really bad and I knew I shouldn't have run so I was a little pissy. I did finish with a time of 1:19:01 and good for 6th place in my age group. I couldn't believe that I still finished fairly well. Coming into T2 I was right beside the guy who finished 2nd in our age group and was still able to hold on to 6th. I knew I had a good bike split but I still thought that the good swimmers were still ahead of me so I really wanted to run hard and try to catch them. This wasn't possible but it wasn't until about 3-4 km in that I began to get passed by other guys in my group. I still finished the run in 25:54 when I thought I would be around 30 min so apparently I hobble pretty quick. When I checked the results and realized that I was racing for second, that perked me up a bit. I know that if I could have run properly I would have been on the podium. The winner in our age group would have kicked my butt even if I had my best day, but I would have been happy with second. Oh well, I did get the shirt though.

I went to therapy on Monday and found out it is a problem with my knee cap and it moves around a bit too much. I hobbled in and after 20 min of rehab and laser treatment I was able to put pressure on my leg and walk out almost normal. Its still sore, but way better than it was. I'm going to take it easy for a bit to make sure it's completely healed before trying anything too strenuous.

This leads me into the Online voting for the 2 spots at Lake Placid. I wasn't one of the two chosen, Ccongratulations to James an Mary Lou!! I must admit that I am a bit relieved that I don't have to train like a madman for the next 4 weeks to get ready for an Ironman. I know I could have done it, but I also know that I need to let this knee problem work itself out and it might not have been pretty. Both James and Mary Lou will do great and hopefully I will get to go down and watch. I've heard that its a good to watch one before actually doing one. Thanks to everyone who sent in a vote for me, it is greatly appreciated!

Well thats about it.

Cheers,
Scott

Post Race Funk

Here it is 3 weeks since the Florida 1/2 Ironman and I'm just getting back into the swing of things. Getting out of vacation and training mode and back into real life was a big letdown. I could easily be a kept man and stay at home, one problem though, I need money. Triathlon is not a cheap hobby and its taken its toll on my finances. We might have to flip a coin to see which child gets to go to university.

I really struggled with my workouts, especially keeping my focus. Coming into racing season and not knowing whether I'm going to do Lake Placid or not doesn't help either. I need something in front of me to keep me motivated, like a carrot in front of a donkey. I would really like to do Lake Placid mainly because I don't want to wait for Arizona. November is a long time away and I would rather go hard for the next few weeks, finish the race, and then take a break for August, then decide whether to do Arizona or not. If I don't get a spot then I think I will scale back on the longer workouts and do a bunch of sprint tri's in the summer. Voting ends on June 15, so there is still time to "VOTE SHARPE".

Here's my update,

Swim
Nothing new, just plugging away.

Bike
Did a 5 hour ride on Saturday on a windy day, so half of it was fun......the part where the wind was at my back.

Run
Had some good runs, and one really bad one. The bad one involved me walking 2 miles to get home. I tell everyone about the importance of proper nutrition, but I apparently forgot to tell myself.

That's basically it. Its been a very busy couple of weeks as the boys are now into soccer season, plus Alexander has ball hockey and Karate. Throw training on top of that and it all adds up to a lack of sleep, for everyone. Summer is finally here as well and so is the humidity. As cold as it gets in the winter, its almost as bad in the summer. I'm not sure what I dislike more, the intense cold or the heat with high humidity. In the summer you can only remove so much before it becomes offensive, and triathletes hover on that line.

One last note, my dedication hit a new level this last weekend as we had neighbours over on Friday night and one of them brought a big bucket filled with alcoholic beverages on ice. I stared for awhile but didn't have any, a true Ironman!

Cheers and stay cool,
Scott