Tonight was the volunteer BBQ for the volunteers of today’s race as well as for the volunteer bike coaches for the women’s beginner triathlon group. My training buddies came to pick me up to go and asked if I had checked the results. I was a little hesitant to look at the results even though I had been refreshing the Saskatoon Triathlon Club’s results page throughout the day. I asked them if I had done badly and they said that I hadn’t. Sure enough I didn’t do “that” badly. I got 6th out of 17 in the 20-29 category, which really isn’t bad at all.

What surprised me the most was my crappy swim time. 500m in 10:41 is BRUTAL for me. Three days ago I did the same distance in less than 9 minutes. That means that I was almost 2 minutes slower. TWO MINUTES!?! I was shocked and a little appalled at that. I will never really know why, but I have a feeling it has to do with the warmer pool and feeling crowded. Also, I didn’t once think about my pull or my form or anything. I think it was because I felt really rushed. I kind of want to do the swim over again. Oh well, I guess it will have to wait until next year.

What surprised me the second most was my run time. 5km in 26 minutes! WOW. If I had kept that pace, I could do 10km in 53 minutes. For me, that is very fast. I definitely did not feel that fast. I’m sure my second lap was faster than my first by a lot, but maybe not. Apparently I had no self-awareness for this race.

At the BBQ someone said that a crappy short race before an Ironman is a good sign because it means that you have trained correctly for the long-distance. Hopefully this is true and in three weeks time I will be completely ready for Ironman Coeur d’Alene! Now it’s time for tapering.

This morning was Saskatoon’s and my first actual triathlon of the season. It was a spring/super-sprint race and they actually had to turn people away because it was so full. This is my first time doing this race and even though I’m training for Ironman I thought it would be fun to do a short one to get me back into the mode of racing. I haven’t done a race since last August so it was a good decision. Plus, I had heard that it was a really fun race and super chill. And indeed, it was!

The guys started in the pool first thing in the morning. I was a little annoyed at the fact that they split up the men and women, but once I got on the bike course I understood that it was for our benefit so that we could actually see where the racing was happening. I liked being on the course with just the ladies and felt encouraged by the comradery and competition.

I was in the first heat of women and we all went out hard for the first 100m. This completely slammed me. With no warm-up and my training for long-distance just did not feel good. I finally got my bearings around lap 6 (out of 10) and felt comfortable again. I lost count and they had to yell that I was done. I was thanful, but didn’t feel like it was long enough. Next time I need to practice swimming 500m (or whatever short distance it is) without a warm-up and sprinting just to see how it feels. I ended up being last out of my lane, which I am always all right with – someone has to do it, right?

I got on the bike and immediately passed some people on their mountain bikes. The route was 2/3 packed gravel and 1/3 pavement (if that), so some people opted for the mountain bike. I rocked it with my road bike and I was just fine. There were some soft corners that I slid through, but I’m good at recovering because of my mountain biking background. I ended up passing a whole bunch of people, which was kind of nice. Usually I get passed after the swim so it was a good change. I did the bike and again felt like the 10km distance was just a warm-up.

The start of the 5-km run felt pretty crummy. My legs felt tight and I didn’t feel like I had anything left. My lungs were fine, but my legs felt like lead. I noticed this week that I have definitely lost my kick lately. There has been no spark in my legs lately and that’s because of the peak training I’ve been doing. The next 3 weeks of my training will be about chilling out and getting the kick back. I probably shouldn’t have biked for 3 hours yesterday, but training is training. So I didn’t have a kick left, but I went as hard as I could anyway. I got passed more times than I could count. It was fun, though, to see these extremely fast runners racing each other! There were some great runners out there and in a triathlon with the distances that we had, it was definitely a good thing. For me, though, where runnning is my worst sport it was a little tough. However, I finished strong and was happy with how much fun I had and that I finished in under an hour. When I got passed the finish line, I really felt like I could have done the whole thing again but much faster. I guess that is the slow-twitch muscles becoming engaged. My fast-twitch muscles have went to sleep and may never come back. I’ll have to test that out in my training at some point.

The volunteers and the organizers did a fantastic job! Also, I had some great friends who were there to cheer me on and I appreciated that they were there. It was a gorgeous day and I got to see people do their first triathlon, which is always a lot of fun. Overall, a great race that I will definitely do again!

As my training is peaking, I am acutely aware of my recovery time. Actually, I’m more aware of my legs being tired and feeling like they are not recovering. I only have two weeks left of heavy training before I *start* to taper a bit. However, I’ve had some emotional ups and downs over the past few days that I’m trying to even out. Hopefully everything starts to work together. Even though I am unemployed and training every day, I feel like I don’t have enough time to do everything that I want to do. Perhaps I’m piling on too much? Right… that fits my pattern in a T.

Today I did my last long ride with a time trial for the cycling study that I’m in. It was pretty good. However, before and after the test I had to eat some food that was definitely not vegan. It has taken its toll on my stomach and I am paying for it. It takes me back to the first time I ate pizza after I went vegan. My boyfriend-at-the-time said, “Well, that’s what you get for eating cheese!” I got no sympathy. I guess this just strengthens my commitment to veganism and avoiding foods that just don’t agree with me. I actually had to bail on my coaching commitment due to this tummy “problem.” I kind of knew that this would happen, but I did it for the study!