The next race on my schedule was held on July 11 at the Belwood Lake Conservation Area.
MSC Belwood Triathlon http://www.multisportcanada.com/belwood/
This is a race I had a really great performance at last year, with an overall time of 2:00:55. And I was looking forward to racing it again, hoping to finally complete a sub 2hr race in this distance category – 750m swim, 30km bike, 7.5km run.
The weather was a beautiful – sunny and a little humid, but the 8:30am start time meant that we got going before the real heat of the day hit so it wasn’t so bad. The swim was in Belwood Lake, with the local Ospreys soaring overhead. The water temp was quite warm, probably close to 20C, but most triathletes chose to swim in their wetsuits still, typically for the speed advantage. I paced 2:13/100m in this swim, taking a total of 16:38 for the 750m swim. Not my fastest swim time this year, but being such a short portion of the race I felt I had plenty of opportunity to make up for the slight time deficit.
Unfortunately, this would not come to be, as I encountered some mechanical problems on my bike. The bike portion started out OK, but after the first 5km I began to notice a dragging resistance on the bike. I wasn’t sure what it was, I tried to listen for the sound to isolate where the problem was, fiddle with the brakes to make sure they weren’t catching. As it turned out, my rear tire wasn’t quite sitting properly, and was rubbing on the frame. It got progressively worse on the course. I ended up fighting the bike the entire ride and couldn’t properly fix the tire until after the race ended. This resulted in my worst bike ride at a triathlon, ever. I barely paced 21km/h on this course, taking a pitiful 1:25:27 to finish the 30km, which was significantly slower than my past performances.
After the atrocious bike ride, I was eager to make up time on the run, which is my strongest discipline. Fueled by the knowledge that I was now in last place in my age group, I gave the run everything I had left. Pausing briefly, to have a couple gulps of HEED on the 7.5km run, I began speeding down the Elora-Cataract trail. I really enjoyed the run here last year, it was shaded, woody and a softer gravel trail. I posted a really good run here last year and I was determined to go even faster this year, and I did. I set a blistering pace of 4:29/km (almost as fast as my Yonge St 10km pace of 4:27/km) and began passing other runners who were beginning to fade at this point in the race. I began scanning other runners for the age group marking on the calf muscle and felt a slight sense of relief as I began to pass some other late runners in my age group.
I managed to pass 4 other runners in the last few km of the run, safely rising out of what would have been my ‘last place of shame‘, into 11th place. Amazingly, I posted the fastest race time of all the women in my age group (33:42), even faster than the woman who won our group (35:49). Apparently, I need to tap into this fear of failure in order to bang out my best triathlon run times. At least I can be proud of this run performance.
I learned a hard lesson at Belwood this year. I will have to pay closer attention to my bike maintenance in the future, and will be double checking my bike before every race from now on. I’m obviously disappointed in my overall race performance (with a finishing time of 2:19:03), but will take away the value of the lesson learned, and of course, my great run time.
I’m already looking forward to MSC Bala Falls Triathlon (July 26) as an opportunity to redeem myself on the bike course and place myself back up on the leader board with no less than a top ten finish.
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