All Settled in Kona - D-7...!

So we (the family and my parents) arrived at the Kona Coast Resort shortly after midnight and checked into our two bedroom villa. We had driven down to Edmonton yesterday morning/afternoon, taken WestJet from Edmonton to Vancouver where we met up with my parents. We then travelled together from Vancouver to Kailua-Kona on WestJet. The plan is to be in Kona for two weeks this year so that we have some down time as a family after the race. I’ll do my best to post a daily blog like last year through to race day.

The ladies and kids enjoying dinner in Vancouver airport.

This morning everyone woke-up remarkably early considering that most hadn’t snoozed much on the airplane. I guess that’s expected considered we moved a few more time zones (4 for us, and 6 for my parents) west. All things considered everyone was in a good mood this morning. We took the opportunity to go out for breakfast and we elected to try out Bongo Ben’s Island Café (on Ali’i Drive facing out towards the swim start).  The service was good and the food was great. Everyone enjoyed their breakfast and we also managed to watch part of the Ho’Ala Swim – this year they had the swim course setup on the Saturday before and people could race the swim course as a practice. I had contemplated signing up but given the fact we were getting in so late I decided against it. 

The Maley clan enjoying breakfast at Bongo Ben's Island Cafe.

The rest of the morning we went grocery shopping to stock the pantry and then I managed to sneak in a 50min shake-out run before lunch. It was both hot and humid. What was supposed to be a shake-out run turned into a 12km Ironman race pace run. Clearly, the legs were fired up and ready to run and the effort felt easy. 

After lunch, I managed to catch-up on some sleep. I closed off the afternoon with a light shake-out swim. My swimming has been non-existent in the last few weeks as the pool in Cold Lake is closed and the lake is a bit too chilly at this time of the year. Despite my lack of swimming, the shake-out felt good though the water was choppy and I had to fight a strong current heading back into shore. The swim in the 5-10ft water was very scenic as most of the area was reef. It brought back lots of memories of snorkelling on Papua New Guinea as a kid growing up.

Klara and James enjoyed the water while I swam.

Reflections on the Army Run

The Army Run in Ottawa is probably the fastest growing race in Canada. This year there were 22,000 participants between the 5km and Half-Marathon.  It was an opportunity to represent the Canadian Armed Forces, visit family in Ottawa, and connect with friends.  It’s a great race as Canada comes out in force to support the Cdn Army but really the Cdn Armed Forces in general.

I was coming off a solid week and change of building for Kona with 570kms of biking put in over the last week and a bit. I knew I was not in top running shape coming into the race. I have been fighting a chest cold for about four weeks so I knew a PB was most definitely not in the cards for the day.  The chest cold coupled with some serious bike mileage was sure to have wrecked some havoc to my body.

Today's Support Crew: Pre-race with Dad, Mom, and my oldest sister Kelly

I flew into Ottawa on Friday and then did race package pick-up on Saturday morning. I expected there to be at least a little line-up but there were none. Great! The expo was well not much of an expo at all. It was actually quite disappointing when you compare it to the expo at the Ottawa Race Weekend. 

Sunday morning I was up early for breakfast and then retired for another hour. Dad, Mom, Kelly, and I headed downtown at 0730hrs (for a 0900hrs start time) and were shocked by the number of 5km participants still getting downtown (the 5km race started at 0800hrs). I lined up in the blue coral right at the front. I wanted to get out front fast and then quickly settle into a pace. My rationale for getting out front was to get away from any crowds, test the legs and lungs, and then settle into my own race. When the Howitzer went off it was a bolt out of the starting line up Elgin and onto Wellington St. As soon as I was up and onto Wellington street I backed off the pace and started settling into my pace. It took me about 2kms to settle in a bit and let a few of the faster runners pass.  Normally I would attack and try and go with them but I knew today was not that day.

Me leading the charge off the line. The lead lasted for all of maybe 500m before Dave and Nick went flying by!

My right quad had been really tight on Saturday’s interval run (2 x 3kms at HMP) so I was anxious to see if that would start to tighten up. And of course that is exactly what started to happen…it would continue to tighten up even more as the kms ticked by. I felt a little restricted in my breathing, the legs felt fatigued, and the right quad tight, so I knew it was going to be a bit of a battle to stay engaged. I enjoyed passing the “Soldier On” personnel and passing along my words of encouragement. It’s great to see our injured soldiers (“Soldier On”) out and physically battling through their injuries. I just felt fortunate that I could run and share such a great experience with these amazing folks. One individual in particular deserves recognition and that’s MCpl Chris Downey.  The Ottawa citizen did up a great article the other day on Chris. As if the battles Chris has gone through are not enough Chris elected to run the ½ Marathon on Sunday while dragging a tire with him. This is one tough guy. 

So who really cares about my race. This race was not about me, but rather the fine folks that serve our country on a daily basis. I am just privileged to serve alongside many of them. I stayed pretty consistent for pace for the majority of the race and was thankful that Jason Dunkerley (a visually impaired athlete )  and his guide passed me at around the 10km mark. I paced off him for the next 7km and then finally closed the gap and opened my own in the last few kilometers of the race. I was pretty spent after the race. Legs are even more sore and tired now. Happy to have put a 1:18:15 in the books but it’s always a bit of a hard pill to swallow knowing that you didn’t do as well as you could have. I just have to keep reminding myself that this was a “fun” race. A good tempo run with 10,000 of my friends. The focus is Kona.   

Post Race with Jason and his guide. Congrats to Jason on a fantastic first 1/2 Marthon Race.

Not bad for a training race. 12^th Overall and 1^st in the M30-34.

Big Congrats to Dave Lacombe and Alex Boule on their 2nd and 3rd place overall finishes in the race. Two first class CAF athletes.

IM 70.3 World Championship Race Report

Sometimes it’s just not your day. I’ll be the first to admit that the focus of the season was never Las Vegas. Kona was and still remains the focus. The purpose of racing the IM 70.3 WC was simply as a tune-up race in preparation for Kona. But, who doesn’t want to show up to a World Championship and do well? So I probably came in with higher expectations than I should have. I’m much better at the Ironman distance compared to the 70.3 distance or at least that is my opinion. So enough about my ramblings, here is what happened.

Claudia and I flew into Las Vegas on Thursday night (well it was actually Friday morning thanks to a  ~2hr delay in Vancouver…there was lightning within the vicinity of the airport so the ground crew couldn’t operate).  I did athlete check-in Friday morning and then we spent a couple hours in the afternoon at Lake Mead National Park. We both went for a swim and then I attempted to bike. After about 15 minutes of riding and a second flat on my disc, that was the end of my workout. A generous couple from Argentina graciously drove me back to the swim area. Friday night we attended the athlete welcome dinner. The food was great, the entertainment very good, but the speeches part was long, boring and not very informative.

Saturday morning we headed out to Lake Las Vegas for the practice swim and then I did a bike and short run. We spent the morning back at Grandview and then headed out in the afternoon to do bike and gear check-in.

Race morning started early. I was up at 0330hrs for breakfast (Panera bagel, a couple eggs, coffee, and a glass of orange juice). We headed to Lake Las Vegas for the race start and quickly realized it was going to be a very wet affair. 

The race started at 0630 (Pro Men) and my wave was the 8^th wave at 0704hrs. I haven’t managed to get a lot of swimming in these last couple weeks so I wasn’t quite sure how that would work out. With 188 men in the M30-34 wave, I thought the start might be a little congested, but it actually spread out very nicely though I was in and out of contact for most of the swim. What didn’t help matters is we started to pass athletes from earlier waves. Overall not a bad non-wetsuit swim at 33:44 but it’d be nice to get that down to 30 or less.

On to the bike. Well, first through transition, which was effectively a mud pit thanks to all the rain. The ramp up and out of transition was congested… surely they could have made it wider. I was happy to be on the bike and starting to put out solid power numbers when suddenly I had no power and a clicking noise from my chain. I ignored the power and tried to figure out what was happening. After a couple minutes I stopped and thankfully it was only the magnet for my power meter. It was attached to the chain and the rear derailleur. I pulled it off and voila the noise disappeared. Ok, so no power or cadence for the ride…great. Actually I wasn’t too worried. I figured I would ride at a moderate intensity (or what I thought my HIM intensity is) for the first half and then pick it up for second half. The roads were wet and it continued to rain, but thankfully due to the warm weather the wet ride was not cold. (Clearly, I wasn’t in Canada – when it rains at a triathlon in Canada you freeze.) Nothing too exciting happened on the bike and I was able to pick the pace up after about 20miles though it probably dropped off for the last 5-6miles. I was happy to be off the bike in 2:36:40, but a little disappointed. I was expecting a time split closer to 2:30 as the elevation gain was similar to St George. 

On the Run (photo credit: Martin Lacasse)

 

And then the run. The run course is a 3 loop course and essentially you are either going up or going down – there isn’t anything flat about it. Going in I figured I should be able to run a low 1:2X. Coming off the bike I felt pretty good and the legs felt strong. However, I felt flat. The first couple kilometers are downhill and felt very easy. However, as soon as I started the uphill portion of the first loop I realized it was going to be tough. To race well I think you really need to be mentally engaged and be able to push yourself into the hurt locker – you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. I was just mentally not there today. I tried, and despite the best encouragement from my wife I couldn’t run like I normally do. A 1:26:04 on this run course is not bad, but clearly not at my normal standard.

I was a bit disappointed with a 4:43:57, though this is a tough course and in my opinion definitely harder than St George. I was hoping to finish in a similar time to St George (just below 4:30) but that was clearly not in the cards. I was 47/188 in the M30-34 and 241 overall (out of ~2100 athletes including professionals).

Canadian Armed Forces Triathlon Championship 2013 (Gatineau, QC)

So once again I found myself racing an Olympic distance triathlon. As I have said repeatedly before it is not my race of choice, but given that this was the CAF Championship I wanted to race just to test myself against some of the best in the CAF. I have to be honest, I am actually starting to like the distance a little more…you don’t feel trashed afterwards and you are practically back to normal the next day.

I travelled with Alida Stockermans from CFB Cold Lake on Thursday departing at 0600hrs and arriving in Ottawa shortly after 1800hrs. My Dad picked me up at the airport as I prefer staying at my parents then Ottawa University. Settled in Thursday night and put my Argon 18 E-118 back together without incident.

Friday morning I did a light 1km swim at the Nepean Sportsplex and then spent the rest of the morning helped my Dad, a general contractor – Master’s Touch Enterprises, with a condo he was working on. Before lunch I did a light ride and run with a few intervals to get the legs firing. In the evening I went to Ottawa University to attend the mandatory CAF athlete dinner and briefing. It was a good evening meeting old friends and also getting to know a few more. This is probably the best part of any of the CAF Championships, you get to meet old friends and catch up a bit.

Saturday morning came too quickly. I am not sure how much sleep I actually got as I tossed and turned for most of the night. I got up at 0430hrs and had eggs, toast with jam, a banana, and of course a cup of coffee. My parents and I headed to Lac Leamy at 0530hrs and arrived there shortly before 0600hrs. I setup transition, got body marked, picked up my timing chip and then hung out with my parents until the start of the race.

Swim

This year the CAF athletes raced with our civilian counterparts so there was ~140 athletes in the male Olympic wave. The start was fast, but the field quickly spread out. I went out pretty hard and at the first yellow buoy I was able to find a pair of feet. I was able to hold those feet for the remainder of the first and the second lap. I knew I would be back a couple minutes of the leaders coming out of the swim, but was hoping to minimize my losses. I was happy to see 23:25 on my watch as I exited the water (official time 23:45 though the timing chip was at the entrance to transition). I was happy with that considering it was a non-wetsuit swim...though I still need to improve to be somewhat competitive.

Bike

Traversing the 4 x 90 degree turns!

A quick transition and then it was onto the bike. My PM had been intermittent and seeing as this was only an Olympic distance I had planned to race by feel. The bike course is an almost pancake flat 8 x 5km loop course however the difficultly of the course is increase by 5 x ninety degree turns and 1 x one-hundred and eighty degree turn on each loop. It’s definitely not my favourite course as it’s really difficult to get into a groove. The plan was to aim for a 1hr split or 7:30/lap. The first lap was a 7:45 and then after that the laps were fairly consistent at ~7:30-7:35. As I entered the technical section before transition my Garmin Edge 500 beeped indicating I had been riding for 1hr. As I came off the bike I knew I had biked just over the hr (actual was ~1:00:30…sportstats.ca shows 1:02:46, but that includes both transitions). The irony is that despite my PM not working all week it decided to work on race day (NP 250W, Avg 240W).

Transition 2

Run

Heading out for another loop.

My legs felt heavy at the start of the run, but knowing that I was 5^th in the CAF and 8^th OA was motivation enough to keep pushing. I knew Martin (about 3 minutes up on me), Alex, and Dave would be hard to catch but I figured I’d just go as hard as I could.  I was aiming for sub 36min on the run..comparable to what I had done in Edm two weeks earlier. As the run was 4 x 2.5kms it was easy to gauge where you were relative to the other athletes. I was clawing back a little time on Martin,  staying consistent with Alex, while Dave was moving ahead slightly. I didn’t know all the CAF athletes but was pretty confident that if I ran a sub 36 none of the other guys could reel me in. I was happy to see 2:02:XX on the clock as I approached the line. Final time was 2:02:17 with a 35:48 run split. 

Finally done. Dave Lacombe and Alex Boulé talking at the finish.

Very happy with my results: 5^th OA, 4^th in the CAF, and 1^st M30-34. 

M30-34 podium...2nd and 3rd place decided not to show!

The CAF National Triathlon Championships are a great venue to test yourself against the other CAF athletes in Canada however I’d like to see CAF put our best up against the best in Canada. I’d like to see CAF move our race to correspond with the Cdn Age Group Championships. 

Thanks to Mom and Dad for putting me up and feeding me so well!