This is part 2 of 2. I assume that you've read part 1, fittingly named How I Completed My First Triathlon, Part 1.
Biking
I started to ride my mountain bike around the neighbourhood casually, then I started riding my bike in the morning about once a week. My biking route along the ocean and around the UBC campus was about 20 kms with a freaking long hill about 1/3 of the way in.
I went for one training ride with a friend who was on his road bike. Then I bought a road bike. It makes all the difference in the world. Imagine competing in a road race with an SUV and you have a fair comparison of what it's like to make time on a mountain bike.
When I raced I found the bike sprint distance - 20 kms - to be about right for me. The course was real flat, winding through strawberry, blueberry and blackberry fields, and I felt good. On a couple of occasions the huge agricultural sprinklers spinning in the fields overshot onto the road and sprayed us as we passed. That felt real good.
I passed a lot of people on the bike and moderated my speed pretty well. On the straights I rode hard and through the corners I recovered. I carried too much speed into one corner and visited the gravel shoulder and a bit of grass on the wide turn that followed. I found it helped to identify good riders and to try to keep up with them, though without drafting.
About 2 or 3 minutes from the end of the bike I kicked up into a higher gear and kept peddling at the same rate. I wanted to do some recovery before the transition and the run. I also took in some watered down sports drink at this stage and held myself back from pushing too hard.
Transitions
I don't think I have too much to offer anyone in terms of advice in the transitions. My transitions didn't seem bad to me but over and over I ended up passing the same people I had already passed on the previous stage. So they beat me through the transitions. So my transitions were lousy.
One of the hardest things in the transitions is just finding your setup, especially from the swim to the bike for the sprint distance since lots of the bikes are in the transition zone still (the Olympic distance competitors were still out on the swim). I imagine for my next triathlon where I do the Olympic distance it'll be the opposite: from swim to bike will be pretty clear but from bike to run will be crowded.
However it ends up I recommend practicing the transitions. I didn't do this, I heard I should have done this and I should have. Strip off your wetsuit (turn it inside out, get the ankles clear, drape it over the bar holding your bike so you can find it on the way back). Decide what you're going to wear at each stage of the race and lay it out in order. Minimize the changes of clothes. Practice getting into your socks (if you wear socks), which for me was the hardest part since my feet were wet. Practice doing up your shoes how you like them for running, or get one of those keen cinchers for the laces. Train with what you're going to wear.
Then on race day, I found it helpful to repeatedly walk the course from the exit of the swim to my station in the transition zone so I got used to how far it was, what I should look for. Make yourself a marker for your station: a coloured helmet, flag, bandanna, etc.
Nutrition
I'm no whiz then it comes to nutrition, but here's what I find. Try to avoid eating out. Eat the things you make yourself, that way you know what went into them. Make food from basic ingredients as much as possible. Eat lean meats, fish and protein sources. Eat lots of fruit. When you're hungry, eat. When you're full, stop eating. Eat slowly so you allow your body to tell you that it's full. It's basic Canada Food Guide stuff.
Drink a helluva lot of water. I find it best if I drink it slowly through the day so I avoid the peaks and valleys of hydration and running to the bathroom. If you've worked hard exercising, get some water and some salts at the next meal. I ate pretty much what I felt like and what I wanted to while training. The big change for me was cutting out alcohol for 6 weeks and then really drinking sparingly. I grew devoted to the soda and lime at bars and events. Cutting out the booze made a big difference for me.
Preparation
I wanted to find out as much about the course as I could, so I went out to the course on the day before the race to get a feel for what I would face on race day. This made imagining my day easier. It also let me walk around and get comfortable, to see where I would be swimming, biking and running, to feel the temperature of the water. And I had my bike and helmet check done so I wouldn't have to worry about it on race day.
On race day I arrived pretty early, but not too early to have too much time to think about the race. I checked in and started to set up my transition station. I talked to some of the other competitors and we laughed a little. Once I had my station pretty close to set up I found a shaded place to stretch out. I did a big stretch with lots of active stretching, compound joint stretches and some light work to engage the muscles and start them working.
Steve King's website Triathlon Tips is a great resource for learning and thinking about triathlons.
Training the Mind
Before running my first triathlon I thought a lot about triathlons. I read about triathlons, I daydreamed about triathlons, I talked about triathlons. Just ask the Duck. Some nights we would be talking and triathlons was all I had to contribute to the conversation. For me, this worked well. I have to obsess about something a little bit and distract myself from it at the same time to not get too uptight about it.
In the final few weeks leading up to Go Time (July 24th) many aspects of my life revolved around training. It took up a large part of my attention, time and energy. (This partially explains the diminished Up in Ontario blog posting.) Some days were comfortable and some days I struggled. A few times every week I had doubts about my preparedness. I'd start out a swim and feel strained and wonder if I could do the full distance. Running a simple, flat 5 kms hurt, nevermind doing it after a swim and bike.
Looking back I realize that I just had to push through that and stay focused. But at the time it felt really discouraging. My body resisted changing and habits I'd grown accustomed to intruded on the things I knew I had to be doing to be prepared.
If I learned anything it's that you have to know when to push yourself through the walls and when to back off and rest. This is simple to say and hard to do and at its heart what the whole competition is about. On race day you just have to trust yourself and your training and enjoy the energy and community of the day. It's a wonderful thing to be able to swim and bike and run. Love it!
Closing Results
So there you go, a full rundown of how I completed my first triathlon. For the record, it was a a sprint distance triathlon, which is 750 meters swim, 20 km bike and 5 km run. Split times: 14:27 (swim-16th), 42:02 (bike-15th-17.7mph average speed), 23:03 (run-9th-7:26/mile pace). Total time: 1:19:32 (14th). The winning time was 1:09:11, about 10 minutes ahead of me. If you're interested, check out the full sprint Abbotsford Triathlon results.
From a work friend, for a worthy cause:
Three years ago I lost my fourteen year-old nephew Jeffrey to leukemia, after a twelve-year, off-and-on battle with the disease. A fund was set up in his name to provide assistance to families with children who are facing the same battle.Despite the challenges he always faced, there was nothing he liked more than a good laugh (Austin Powers was a favourite), so a fundraising event like this is only fitting.
On September 8, 2005, join emcee Paul Breau as he hosts an evening of comedy at the Cotton Club. Paul - a successful comedian who has toured all over Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. - has lined up an impressive roster of talent for the evening:
Jeffrey Yu - In a very short time Jeffrey has become one of Vancouver's finest comedians. He was runner-up in Vancouver's Comic Competition and has traveled to the Maritimes to represent Vancouver at the Halifax Comedy Festival. He has also written for CBC's 'This Hour has 22 Minutes'.
Simon King - His high energy stream of consciousness comedy and wild impressions have quickly become the trademark of this young comic’s almost atomic performances.
Graham Clark - Graham first stepped on stage as a comedian in Calgary at age 15. After several years break, he started again in Vancouver. Since then he has been dubbed “The hardest working lazy comic” in Vancouver by the Georgia Straight, participated in the Homegrown Comedy Competition at Just For Laughs and won the Vancouver “Last Comic Standing” competition.
The show takes place at 8:00 pm at the Cotton Club Grill Restaurant, 1833 Anderson Street, near the entrance to Granville Island. Tickets are only $15. For those interested in tax receipts, I will collect name and address information at the door.
You can get your tickets from the following people:
Trish Wetterberg – 604-669-6006
Sanam Bakhtiar – 604-202-1665
Alison MacDonald – 604-506-4508
Elaine Bell – 604-874-9119
Paul Breau – 604-874-7459Please forward this on to your friends and colleagues (and their friends and colleagues….)
Thank you so much for your support!
As reported on the CBC.ca website today, the mayor of Kenora is making noise about leaving Ontario and joining Manitoba: Ontario city wants to secede, join Manitoba.
I'm interested in this story since my novel, Up in Ontario, is set in both provinces and the loyalties and separation of city and country play a key role in the plot development. I grew up in Winnipeg and we spent summers out in Kenora. Apart from some nuances of law, notably the drinking age (18 in Manitoba, 19 in Ontario), gas taxes, fishing restrictions, police force (RCMP in Manitoba, OPP in Ontario) and hours of operation for shops, I found very little difference between the two provinces. Except that Winnipeg was the centre of Manitoba provincial life and Kenora didn't exist in Ontario provincial life. Travelling from Winnipeg to Kenora required you to cross the provincial border, which acted most prominently as a bathroom break and passing opportunity where the highway widened to 4 lanes from 2.
Of course the downside to this move would be that the locals of Kenora wouldn't be able to call the tourists from Winnipeg 'Tobans anymore, since they'd all be 'Tobans. Perhaps they'd just be called Them Richies.
Courtesy of the ever-reliable Google Alerts I just stumbled across a mention of my Canadian novel, Up in Ontario, in the Kenora Daily Miner and News.
The Miner, as everyone in Kenora calls the paper, acts as the voice of the town as its sole paper. My great grandfather worked there many years ago as the editor, which, now that I recall, turns out to be the reason the family moved to Kenora in the first place. Gramp, as I called him, edited the sports section of The Mail and Empire, the paper that went on to merge with The Globe to become to Globe and Mail, and received a job offer to become the editor of The Kenora Miner when Kenora was a goldrush boomtown in the 1930s.
So I felt flattered to receive the following mention from managing editor Lloyd Mack in the July 20th issue:
Another Turnstone Press publication, and coincidentally another author’s first novel, Up In Ontario by James Sherrett, was a summer read in 2004 which got set aside because of honest-to-goodness required reading and other demands of the job and life.I’ve gone back to it because this fiction novel is in large part set on Lake of the Woods and Sherrett paid particular attention to getting the historical details correct about locations like Smith Camps and Kenora. It also deserved a second -- and complete read -- because of the preciseness and completeness he uses to describe the outdoor life of Gilbert Dubois, a hunter and fisherman on the Lake of the Woods.
Of course most of the article centres on Harry Potter, but who cares about the superstitions of a teenager when you can experience the power of stories re-imagining the places you love.