Belwood Triathlon

Its been a busy month for triathlon and I’ve been loving every minute of it.  Fresh off the Toronto Triathlon Festival, the next race on my schedule was the Belwood Triathlon, a 750m swim, 30km bike, 7.5km run course at the Belwood Conservation area (near Guelph, ON) on July 19, part of the MultiSport Canada Triathlon Series: http://www.multisportcanada.com/belwood/    
For those interested, you can find a visual and descriptive outline of the course on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8PKVUzmy9M which is neat to watch. 

This course is longer than the usual sprint courses, with extra mileage on the bike and run sections, similar to the Binbrook course I did earlier in the season.  However, this time I wanted to perform much better on the run than I did in Binbrook.  I think the pressure coming off a poor performance really helps me to work harder and up the ante on race day, because I had a great race at Belwood, much better than Binbrook.  I swam 16:05, biked 1:06:33, ran 35:47, with transitions of 1:49 and 0:44, respectively.  Finishing with an overall time of 2:00:55, placing 4th in my age group!  These are my fastest swim, run and transition times thus far, which I’m really pleased with.  

I really enjoyed the run on this course, as it was a trail winding through the forest, as opposed to running on the open road, which I find less than inspiring.  The softer trail surface also aided in the decision to leave the compression socks at home, which helped save time in transition for a stronger finish.  Sure, my shins were a little sore the next day, but some ice and massage helped with that, while I basked in my pleasant memory of a solid performance.  I think I might stop wearing them at tri-races altogether now, and just wear them in training. Every second counts in a race!

After reviewing the official race stats for the top 3 ladies in my age group, I was right up there with them in all race elements, except for their bike times.  In fact, it was the difference in the cycling time that ended up being the total lead #3 had over me in the end.  Essentially, my cycling is what kept me off the podium.  And that’s starting to gnaw at me now, being the competitor that I am.  

Over the last few events, I feel like my cycling has plateaued. My time hasn’t much improved, so I’m going to focus my efforts on the cycling component before my next race in August.  I know that with continued training and hard work in this area I’ll find myself on that elusive podium soon enough. As the Recharge with Milk race sponsor encourages, I know I'm fast, but I will keep getting faster!