my race notes from 70.3 Muskoka Sep 13/2009

70.3 Muskoka race notes
September 13th 2009
Weather conditions ; perfect

Overall time 5:34:37 better than last year by 8 mins.
44/175 in my age category (45-49) 309/1335 overall
On the bike I was 31/175 my cat.

Dinner night before was lasagna, salad & coffee (1). Drank water & pepsi.
Breakfast one yogurt, one banana, 2 coffee.
I’ll assume my weight prior to race was 168-169 lbs.

Left McBrae Maple Cabins at 6:15am. Just right amount of time for warm up swim & putting gear together. Felt good after warm up swim.

Swim:
Time was 41 minutes 48 seconds for a 2:06 pace My tough goal was to do it in 39 minutes. I’m ok with the result. There is still lots of room for improvement.
I was right at front for the horn start. Swam conservatively & for the most part swam fairly straight. I frequently was sighting to ensure I was keeping a good straight line. For most of the distance it was very congested about 300 in my wave. About 4 mins before our start I snapped my swim goggles strap. Tied together in a knot. Let the wetsuit strippers do their thing ; good decision.


Bike:
94 km in 2 hrs 52 minutes 30 seconds. My goal was 2 hrs 53 min. avg sp was 32.7 kph
Very happy with my bike. When you race with people who travel at a good pace it makes you try harder too. This is very true in the run. I went out pretty easy for first 2 to 3 km. Wasn’t trying to be a sprinter. The last 5km I found to be a strain. Honestly don’t remember all the hills at the end and my quads were burning. My two rule principal, maximize your free speed (going down hill). Just fly. Two, put it in the easy chain ring & pedal comfortably up the hills.

Run:
Embarrassed. I blew it. Took me 1 hr 53 minutes, that’s a 5:21 pace. I should have been 4:21 pace. I went pretty good on the bike, and the hills on the run just got the better of me. My footwear choice was wrong. I wore my Zoots which is good for 10km & under, I thought I could squeeze 21km without too much burning sensation. Should have used my Adidas Supernovas.

T1 I was faster than I thought and planned 4:16 vs plan of 4:30
T2 I was longer than planned. Took 3 minutes when I allowed for 2 minutes. I had to pee and had been holding off on the bike for some time.