70.3 World Championship, Mont-Tremblant, Canada

I raced in my third WC race this past weekend - this time for the 70.3 distance. And similar to the other WC races, I went into the race burnt out, overworked, overstressed, and recently injured. However, that may have worked in my favor since it meant I actually had a realistic race plan with no ridiculous time goals and overall put much less pressure on myself.

Mike and I flew from Austin to Montreal on Thursday and my parents picked us up from the airport. We drove the 80ish miles up to Mont-Tremblant on very green, tree-lined highways. I was initially inspired to do this race by Jesse Thomas's race report of the non-WC race back in June. He described it as Canadian Disneyland, and upon arrival, I could see where he got that from. The village itself quite resembles the Magic Kingdom; there were even cartoon characters walking around. I did not think I would get a slot to the race back at BSLT but once I did, I figured the WC was the best reason to travel the distance to race here. And it would be more fun than doing a full ironman, and maybe I needed some redemption for DNF-ing at IM Canada back in 2010.

Clock tower that was part of our hotel.

The two days before the race were spent checking out the village, eating, doing some prerace workouts, eating, and standing in line. This race definitely had the most, and slowest, lines of any of the WTC races I've done. It's my only negative comment about the race and locale, but unfortunately the theme prevailed throughout most of the weekend. Athlete check-in had a line, bike check-in had a line, transition would have had a line if I hadn't gotten there when it opened, getting race results after the race had a line, and then bike check-out even had a line (thank you to the nice French gentleman from Singapore who let me cut in line).

Friday morning I went for a swim at the lake. The water was the clearest I've been in in awhile and also the coolest. But, in my new full-sleeved Roka wetsuit it was pretty much perfect. It's my first suit that I don't feel a huge air gap around my stomach. Coming out of the lake I ran into some of the Moxie Multisport crew who were getting ready for a swim.

Due to the forecasted rain for Saturday morning, I moved my usual prerace ride to Friday afternoon. This turned out to be a smart move because as soon as my Garmin turned on and sync-ed to my Powertap, it flashed a low battery sign. We couldn't find any conclusive information on how long that meant the device would keep working, but luckily Mike was able to find the specific battery at one of the local grocery stores and fixed the power meter.

My powermeter fixing boy.

Saturday morning I went for a short run and then checked my bike and gear bags in. I was a bit confused because it's usually Ironmans that are only that formal, so part of my brain was wondering if I was doing a full the following day instead of just a half.

Race morning was chilly, but sunny. A cold front had blown in with the rain so it was somewhere in the 40s in the morning. I had bought a beanie the previous night to keep myself warm, which I think was a smart idea. Mike walked with me out to transition and I found someone to pump up my tires and then put my nutrition and Garmin on my bike. First time I remembered everything at one go, usually I'm so scatterbrained I have to go back multiple times. We then headed back to the hotel to sit inside for about 45 minutes before heading to the beach.

Great seeing Brad at the race - note the beanie. 

The pros went off at 8am. There was a fighter jet and fireworks. No floating car, but still impressive. My wave went at 8:44. I lined up in the back of my wave (F18-29) per usual on the beach. The swim was mostly uneventful except for some girl who kept swimming into me. At one point I thought I had a strained pec muscle from one time she swam into me, but it turned out to be a false alarm.

Swim time was 31:47 in my awesome Roka wetsuit, 4 seconds shy of my best half-IM swim ever at Marble Falls earlier this year. My goal had been under 33 so I was definitely happy here. Especially since at no point did I ever feel I was swimming hard (note: I think this was the theme of the day).

T1 was 7:10. It involved running quite a ways in bare feet on carpeted asphalt. It also involved putting on full fingered gloves, wool socks, and a long-sleeved jersey. Did I really need everything? I'm not entirely sure but I really don't like feeling cold.

Bike was 3:02:28, almost 5 minutes faster than Best Bike Split had predicted. I had simulated a power plan based on 80% of my FTP and rode as close to it as I think I possibly could. It definitely helped that we had downloaded the power file and loaded it into PeriPedal so I could simulate it on the Kickr. I realized after I probably could have ridden harder since I didn't feel anywhere near tired when I finished the bike. But, what with my lopsided training and the back half of the course being the hilliest, I had decided to plan conservatively and since I was actually executing a plan, that's how I ended up riding. I also managed to stick to my nutrition plan with regular sips of First Endurance Liquid Shot and EFS. I clearly drank enough as I peed midway through on a downhill.

The course itself was really nice - hilly, road conditions much better than anything here in Austin, and not terribly windy. There were tons of draft packs but I rode my own race and did my best to ignore them.

T2 was 2:50. Nothing too exciting.

Run was 1:42:07. Had to pee coming out of transition so I stopped at the beginning. The run was two laps with lots of hills. Each lap finished with an extremely steep portion up through the pedestrian village. The day before the race I had been strategizing with Mike and decided the best plan was to power walk the hill. The second time up, within half a mile to the finish, I thought my butt was going to cramp.

Similar to Kona, you know you're slow when the first lap was extremely packed with people and then the second lap was pretty sparse. It's like when you're running out to the Energy Lab and tons of people are coming back towards you (heading back to the finish line in town) so that by the time you're coming out of the Energy Lab you are pretty much on your own. My target pace for this was 8 min/miles so again, beat that. But also again, pretty sure I could have run harder.

Finish time was 5:26:22 which was got 63rd in my age group. It's a freaking fast age group. A girl pipped me at the very downhill into the finish line but that's okay. I was just glad to be finishing after all the ups and downs of the past few months. My stretch goal had been 5:30 so I was happy enough with it. I think I need to believe in myself more - I know I could have gone harder but I didn't have faith in my abilities and was scared to push more.

Caramel apple crepe after the race. The beginning of off-season!

Overall I was impressed with the race Mont-Tremblant put on. It's a gorgeous location and all the locals seemed supportive of the race. I am very grateful that Mike came along and my parents sponsored our trip. Also thanks to Roka for their great stuff (wetsuits and swimskins), MRI for the Beta Charge I've been using this year, Swiftwick socks for the best training socks, all the other great sponsors of Moxie Multisport, and of course Atomic Athlete.

My parents who have so far come to all full ironmans and all world championship races.

Time for off-season! I will try to blog regularly - I have a bunch of different analogies I've been thinking about recently comparing triathlon to other things that I will attempt to put into posts along with 2015 goals.