NYC Tri- How to Lose a Race in 20 Seconds

The NYC triathlon is one of the most iconic triathlons in the USA and attracts 4000 competitors every year. On Friday I drove down to the city that never sleeps and was graciously allowed to stay at the apartment of Erik Reitinger.

Pre-race

The race starts at 5:50am which meant getting up at 3am and driving from Brooklyn to the race site (even at that time of morning there is traffic). Because we had to carry our transition and post-race stuff with us in the clear plastic bags provided, I soft-pedalled the mile to transition, and that was my bike warm-up. Even without carrying the stuff I don’t think I could have done a bike warm-up though, as it’s NYC and there is literally nowhere to ride. I did a short run warm-up, and swim warm-ups were not allowed. So at 5:45am I was as ready as I could be, but left much to be desired.

Swim

I’m sure we’ve all heard “you can’t win the race on the swim, but you can lose it.” I always thought this really referred to going out way too hard and then not being able to bike and run well. However, I found there is another way to do it too. The swim is a straight shot down the Hudson River, swimming with the current. This allows for very fast swim times, but you have to know how to play the game. We were lined up based on our bib numbers, and since I had a higher number I was on the left side (close to the side of the river). I didn’t think this would be an issue as presumably everyone would swim straight forward. Key words, I didn’t think. The gun went off, we dove in- my goggles didn’t come off (yay!) I do a couple dolphin kicks and come up to the surface. WHAM! Someone punches me in the back of the head. They didn’t stop there as they kept hitting me. I tried to move over to the right to get away, but then the person on that side was repeatedly trying to grab my shoulder and pull me back. So I’m being attacked from both sides, and although this would in the past have left me in extreme panic mode, my only thought was WTF! 

I extricated myself from the situation by jumping over to the left side of the person who seemed to want to beat me to death. By this time however, a lead group had already formed and created a gap, which I was in no way able to close. I ended up swimming solo and made the mistake of not moving over to the right side (towards the middle of the river) where the current was strongest. It’s a big river, and this would have made a huge difference to my swim time, but as it was, I came out of the water 2+ minutes behind those in front of me.

T1

It’s a good thing we don’t really need skin on the bottom of our feet as it was a 600m run on asphalt from the swim exit to transition. Ouch.

Bike

If I had been able to get out of the water with those ahead of me, this would unequivocally been a very different race. Those in front of me were in small groups, and this not only offers a mental advantage, but due to the stagger rule used in the U.S. there is a small but significant drafting effect that occurs when riding with others. Alas, I was in no-man’s-land, so rode solo the whole way. I didn’t pass anyone and no-one passed me.

Run

The run course went through Central Park, which was pretty cool, and offered a fairly challenging route of large rolling hills. Although I wasn’t exactly blazingly fast on the run, this is the first time this year that I wasn’t slowing down significantly on the uphills. I didn’t have the extra gear to go faster, but I feel I probably could have done another 5-10km at that pace. Again, I was in no-man’s-land and did not catch anyone or get caught.

So while not the result I was looking for, I learned a lot at this race and it will only make me better in the future. Thanks to everyone who is supporting me:    Nineteen, Louis Garneau, Blade Carbon Wheels,Skechers, C3, MultisportCanada, and Kristen Pawlick from Wishbone Athletics.

Challenge St. Andrews

After the race in Philadelphia last weekend I headed straight to New Brunswick and stayed with my teammate Reid Burrows parents, who live just north of Saint John. Awesome people (also triathletes and had awesome races on Sunday) and it helped me to get used to the time change (although only one hour, my body did not like getting up an hour earlier in the mornings).

Benny

Sadie

On Thursday I headed to Saint Andrews, a lovely little town surrounded by water, and stayed with my awesome homestay family, the Scouten’s. I don’t have pictures of them, but they had two dogs, so I have pictures of them of course J

This allowed for a relaxing, unstressful week leading into the race. It would literally have been impossible for me to get lost in town, and I was only 150m from the transition area and the Algonquin Resort, so I could walk to any of the pre-race functions. I was feeling great leading into the race, and it was fantastic to have a large group of people from C3 there as well.

Although I never expect to sleep well the night before a race, this is probably the worst sleep I have ever had. I doubt I even got three hours of sleep, due to many little things (like the fact that it doesn’t get dark until well after 10pm, 4^th of July fireworks, and a drunk person in the middle of the night yelling for half an hour about who knows what). Regardless, I got up at 4am and got ready to race.

**if you have read the race report on Slowtwitch or triathlete.com they are wildly inaccurate. This is a better report of what actually happened

Swim

The swim is situated in a cove that is protected from the ocean, so the water was very calm, but still chilly enough to require wetsuits. This was awesome, because the buoyancy offered by the salt water and wetsuits makes for good times, in both sense of the term. The men were off at 7am, and the women at 7:03. The initial plan was to get onto Jillian Petersen’s feet, as she is a great swimmer. Since I have an absence of ability to sprint, I went out as hard as I could, and found myself right beside her (I was shocked to say the least). She made the quick decision to jump onto my feet so I found myself leading the swim. Since I hate being behind people, regardless of what I am doing, I quite enjoyed this, even though I knew she was saving a lot more energy by drafting off me. I had no idea where the other women were, so I put in a couple of little surges in the first half of the swim in case they were drafting off Jillian. (and having read Melanie’s race report it would appear that it worked. #fistpump) Coming around the last turn buoy Jillian pulled out around me and got out of the water 2 seconds ahead of me. The other women were well back. We got our hiking gear on and climbed the mountain up to T1.

up up up we go to T1

Bike

I had felt a little flat in my warmup and was hoping that would go away in the race. Unfortunately that was not the case, and just didn’t have that extra ‘pop’ in the legs that I would want on race day. Not that I felt bad, but I don’t show up to races to have an average day. Alas, there is nothing that can be done in these situations, so I just kept riding the best I could. Melanie was chasing hard, and caught me just after the half way point. At some point I pulled away from Jillian and got to T2 a couple minutes ahead of her and a couple minutes behind Melanie.  The bike course was very beautiful, and decently challenging as there were no flat sections (literally), just rolling hills the whole way.

Run

Heading out onto the run I wasn’t feeling too bad and put my mind towards catching Melanie. Angela had told me that the run course was ‘deceptively challenging’ which would be a very accurate description. A two lap course, it starts out with a long gradual downhill, some flatter sections with a few small ups and downs, and then you come back, and get to climb up the long hill (which seems never ending when you’re doing it). Over the first lap Melanie put about 10-20 seconds into me, so the plan of catching her wasn’t working, and I was very aware that Jillian could be running faster than I was. The splits I got during the second lap indicated that I was starting to gain time on Melanie, but not enough to catch her, and I could see at the turn-around that Jillian was gaining on me. Barrie told me how far back she was, but it didn’t matter as I couldn’t go any faster, if she caught me there would be nothing I could do about it. Very aware of my terrible hill climbing abilities I was pushing any slight downhill and trying to not slow on the up hills as I headed back to the finish line. I had that 2km hill to climb to the finish line, so needed as much time as I could get before I hit that. One of the Challenge guys was riding up the hill to the finish line as I was heading into the last kilometer. “She’s catching you, you’d better not let up on the gas,” he said. ‘oh shit,’ I thought.

Coming to the top of the hill Melanie was in the penalty tent, fuming like a caged lion. This meant I was now in first place, but I just had a gut feeling that this was not going to stick. Although I crossed the finish line in first (Jillian was only 20ish seconds behind), I quickly learned that Melanie had a 5 minute penalty for racking her bike about 30cm to the side of where it should have been. I can’t believe that anyone would think that should deserve a 5 minute penalty, and indeed, the decision was made to make it a 30 second penalty, meaning Melanie won, I was second, and Jillian was third. (the results sheet made the adjustment on her swim time, which is why the race report constructed by someone who wasn’t there is inaccurate).

suffered some serious battle wounds on the run.
largest blister i have ever seen

It felt awesome to get on the podium for the first time as a pro, but certainly could not have done it without the support of others. Thanks again to Nineteen, Louis Garneau, Blade Carbon Wheels, Skechers, C3, MultisportCanada, and Kristen Pawlick from Wishbone Athletics.

TriRock Philadelphia

Saturday didn’t really start off on the right foot as my 45min bike ride turned into a 2hr extravaganza (25min of which was spent at a YMCA trying to figure out where I was and how I was going to get back).

I asked THREE different people for directions and each time this was the result

Despite being confident that there would be no swim on Sunday I went to a pool anyways to do the usual pre-race day stuff. Someone in Philadelphia is doing things right as I was able to go to a 50m outdoor pool for FREE (although the cleanliness of the water may have been a little suspect…).

After the race briefing in the afternoon I once again got lost as some of the roads I needed to be on were closed. This led me to driving around what the locals called “the hood” for 40min, at which time I was completely and utterly stressed out and one of the locals convinced a police officer to drive with me following him back to a point I could recognize.  Perhaps not the best day to have before a race, but I was feeling ready to go and calmed myself down before heading to bed.

As the race was to start at 6:30am I didn’t leave a lot of wiggle room in the morning, thinking it most important to grab as much sleep as I could. I had directions to the race site, so what could go wrong? Well, in keeping with the theme of the previous day, I got lost on the way to the race site as well, costing me another 10min (and another chat with a police officer as to where the heck I was). I got to the race site at 5:30, which was cutting things tight as we had to warm up on our bikes before getting to transition, which was to close at 6:15. I did a quick warm up on the bike, but was already freaking out a little due to my unintended detour and the ticking clock, so my heart rate was already pretty high and didn’t take much for me to feel like I was ready to go. I still had to put the stickers on my bike as I hadn’t gone out to do it the night before in the torrential downpours. It was still raining so the stickers didn’t want to stick, so what should have taken 30seconds took a couple of minutes. “Tick tock tick tock” is all I was thinking. I rode down to transition (about 900m) and again, something I did not factor in was 3000+ athletes needing to get body marked, rather than the normal 300. I racked my bike and was out for a run warm-up at 6:05. 10min til transition closes. As I’m jogging along I realize that the new race suit I got on Thursday has sleeves, and I need to go get re-marked on my arms so the numbers would be visible. At this point I was just telling myself to calm down and things would be okay. I was feeling great on the warm-up and it took no effort to get up to a good speed. Time to race.

Swim- 0min0sec - yup, just that fast ;)

It was cancelled due to unsafe waters- not sure whether it was floating trees or something sinister in the waters. This meant a time-trial start on the bike.

Bike- 1hr5min

I was third to go off on the bike and felt awesome. I caught the person who left in front of me after about 4-5km, and could see Alicia Kaye in the distance at certain points on the course, who neither seemed to be getting closer or further away. After just over one lap Alicia had gained only 5 seconds or so. Unfortunately it would appear that I slowed down over the second lap, as her bike split was 50 seconds faster than mine, and the person who left 40 seconds after me ended up catching me. In hindsight I may have been thinking too much about the run on the second lap of the bike and riding slightly more conservatively. A rookie mistake as I know that it is important to always focus on the task at hand. The bike course was a lot of fun, very technical, which offered a definite advantage to those who had done the course before, but with all the twists and turns it keeps it interesting and might be my favourite bike course yet.

Run-39:30 L

I don’t know what to say about this. I am very unhappy with it. The course was perfectly suited to me (flat flat flat), yet I couldn’t execute. I ran as hard as I could but my feet felt like they were falling flat on the ground and I just couldn’t get into that higher gear. I wasn’t expecting this as my training would indicate that I should be running low-mid 38min off the bike. I have no excuses and no reasons for it, I was just slow. I ended up 6^th out of about 25 women, which left me one spot out of the prize money (highly unfortunate as it is getting to that point where student loans have to be paid back L ). This race was far more competitive than last year, likely due to the lack of Olympic distance pro races (the person who came 3^rd last year was 10^th this year), which hopefully means that the race will remain as a pro race. It really was a fantastic course and I would definitely race there again. 

Thanks once again Kristen Pawlick at Wishbone Athletics, C3, Nineteen, Louis Garneau, and Skechers. I wouldn't be able to do this without the support of everyone who is helping me and cheering me on, it really means a lot! Next up is Challenge St. Andrew's this weekend!