Author: arfenarf

A quick report before I drop off the network for what may be almost three weeks:

Mom and I have spent the past week each expressing our pre-race anxiety in our own fashion: Mom became increasingly frantic about details, hitting “refresh” on the weather every five minutes, performing exegesis upon the International Triathlon Union’s rule-book, and talking through every possible combination and permutation of race-day equipment.

I became increasingly quiet, sullen, and withdrawn, to the point of flouncing off to my room at 7:30 the night before the race.

In other words, it was 1982 all over again. 🙂

The weather in Auckland has been typical spring in a sea-bound climate: intermittent rain and westerly gales… and it became the real story leading up to the race. The day before was appalling, and my heart goes out to the Junior Men who raced in a sheeting thunderstorm.

And the wind blew.

We got good workouts in during the week – some swimming, acclimatizing to the water (very fresh, not as cold as we had feared), the bike course (somewhat hilly, not as bad as we had feared), and the run course, which was very twisty. Imagine a waterfront sidewalk on a quiet business day, with a whole bunch of international visitors in lycra standing around, rotating maps in their hands, scratching their heads. I made friends with an Aussie, a Kiwi, and a Mexican as we fumbled around the course arguing over whether we were still on it.

And the wind blew.

There were plenty of things to see and do in the pre-race days, and lots of opportunities to see Auckland. I really like this city. It is bright and energetic and has a great sense of fun and interesting architecture. Our Canadian uniforms stood out, not at all subtle. This turned out to be a very good thing, as they were also screaming indicators to the local drivers that the person wearing the maple-leaf jacket was likely to wander out into traffic, looking the wrong way like a bloody idiot.

And then, suddenly, it was race day. Mom’s start was long before mine, but I had to go check into transition and set up my little Triathlon Shrine early. I got to see her start, come out of the water, and transition onto the bike. The crowd was happy to get behind her, especially when I told them “That’s my MOM!!!” Then it was time to go kit up and get ready to race.

I saw her cross the finish line while I was corralled for our start. I cried when the announcer said, “AND HERE IS FAIRBAIRN POWERS, BRONZE MEDALLIST IN THE 70-74 AGE GROUP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP” I slugged the woman next to me: “That’s my mom!!!!” (She and about twenty of her team-mates returned the favour later during the swim.)

And the wind blew.

Swim

F45-49 were 80-strong, so we got our own wave start. We were herded onto a platform at the water’s edge, where a marshall both ordered us into place and managed to lighten the mood by telling a few jokes like “Remember. You paid to be here.” for what was probably the 40th time. We had to jump in and hold the platform until the horn. There was no warmup other than the nervous bouncing we did in the corrals.

The first leg, sheltered by the wharves, was the most aggressive punch-fest I’ve ever been in. I was swum over once, repelled a second attempt with vicious kicking, have a hint of a black eye, and found myself swearing at someone who kept unnecessarily crowding me. Really tough. Once we left the shelter, though, we had other problems. The wind was screaming across an opposing tide, which produced a heavy square chop. This left us body-surfing into a heavy current on the longest leg of the swim. I completely lost sight of the buoys for a while and drifted too far. Between that and the head current, this swim was ten minutes longer than I wanted. I was so happy to scramble out onto the platform again.

T1

Heh. Wetsuit-stripping is a much less pressing issue when you must run 325m before you even get to your bike. The 3000-bike transition zone made for a very long round trip. This was good and bad. The good part was that the loong jogs in and out of transition actually let me clear my head and get ready for the next thing. The less-good was that between the two transitions, we ran an extra mile. This bit my mom, whose knees had exactly 5k in them. I opted out of a flying mount at the last minute and took a slightly more conservative start. This is fine: I didn’t fall down, which is better than many people.

Bike

Always my strongest leg, I still kept it dialed back a bit to help with Goal #1, “Don’t die on the run.” The howling wind had a blessing: it was at our backs on most of the hills. Coming back in, I took advantage of my size and weight and hunkered deep into the bars and just held the bike down slugging into the gale. Two laps, one playing leapfrog with a 30-something woman, the next being passed by a stream of 45-something men. Great dismount, off into…

T2

Another 650m of running or thereabouts. I think I had pretty well shaken the kinks out of my legs by the time I actually found my running shoes.

Run

The run was also affected by the wind but I managed a fairly steady sub-5:00/km pace throughout. I am very pleased. Managed to eke out enough effort to gradually speed up through the run, run down a few competitors, hold off a few more, and only give up three. One of them, unfortunately was on the blue carpet at the finish, but I definitely finished empty, and besides, she was so nice afterward.

On the whole:

PW race time, credited partly to the difficult swim and partly to the huge transition zone. Regardless, I’m happy with the execution and flow of the race overall and am now looking forward to a few weeks offline backpacking and exploring the South Island.

Thanks to so many people for equipment loans, coaching, training partnership, and just plain putting up with my cranky tired self.

Time to go play.

What a weekend.  I’m kind of tired.

Saturday was Transition Practice day.  “Cool,” I thought.  “A play-workout.”  Well.  We dragged all our tri crap gear and our trainers down to the beach at Thetis and set up transition zones.  Then:  3 x ( 10′ swim, 10′ bike, 10′ run).  The second two were sans wetsuit (which was fine – the lake is benign now), but each effort was to be 5′ hard, 5′ steady.  I don’t think I was the only one of the team who was completely thrashed when that was over.  I do think we amused some park users, annoyed others.

Quote of the morning:  We’re spinning on the trainers, riding our fool heads off going nowhere, sweating freely, and Noa says, “Um, you can take the helmet off now if you want to.” Continue reading “Swim Bike Run Swim Bike Run Swim Bike Run Bike Eat Sleep Swim Run Swim”

Lesson #1:  Never, never, answer the phone when Caller ID says it’s Lister Farrar and it’s the Wednesday before a big event.

Especially when it’s a big event that takes place over a weekend that your kids are out of town and all you really had in mind was a campsite at Englishman River Falls, a good book, and a cooler full of delicious beverages.

But I’m glad I helped out.  Tripleshot and the Axel Merckx Youth Development Foundation hosted a weekend of clinics and racing for young cyclists and it was great to see the kids grow over the three days.  The first day was at Western Speedway.  (“Heh, heh, heh.  Were they learning hit-to-pass racing?” –more wiseacres than I care to count)

I couldn’t quite get past the cognitive dissonance that goes with skinny kids in Lycra zipping past billboards for the Luv Shak and Bob’s Lube Shop, but the track is a super place to learn racing skills.  Lister wouldn’t let me run the big stoplight on the start line, though.  🙁

The kids got to learn about cornering and bunch riding skills through the afternoon and then applied them to a 3k time trial.  The TT was not, as I expected, around the big track.  Instead, the organizing team set up what amounted to a cyclocross course on pavement.  It even wound out onto the parking lot and back, with lots of switchbacks.  This kept the kids on their toes.  I got to learn about CyclingBC’s one-day license rules, how to keep a straight face while telling parents that they needed to sign these three release forms, and learning how to produce start lists and results for the TT on the fly.  I also got to put on my Mom Voice when the kids went over to Thetis Lake Park for a dip and a picnic.  The Glare of Doom accompanied the Voice when I explained to the youth that jumping off the cliffs while they were on my watch and the club’s insurance policy was Right Out, so Siddown and Eat your Vegetables.  They mostly did.

Why does this not work on my own children?

Did a bunch of shopping for various picnic meals.  “Um.  Lister.  How many people for lunch?”  “What?!”  (sigh)  Took another volunteer and made the fastest run ever through Costco.  “She shops like a man,” said my partner.  I think that was a compliment.

Saturday morning, I went and rode my bike while the kids learned track cycling skills at the velodrome.  That afternoon, I pottered around the house so I could be at the track at five to start setting up for the evening racing.  At 3:50, the phone.  Lister.  “Hey, we were thinking of starting the racing at five, can you be here (half an hour away under the best possible circumstances) in ten minutes?”

Broke no really important laws, got there relatively quickly and learned about a new discipline I think I could market, called “Agile Recordkeeping.”  Because the race schedule was, um, fluid.  “Say, Bruce.  What kind of race should we run next?”  “I dunno.  What do you want to do?”  I found myself saying things like, “Hey, boys, does this race record times or place?” And the kids made it even more exciting by doing things like reseeding themselves into different racing groups as the spirit moved them.

I lurve Excel, except for a new feature I discovered, which is that it hacks fractions of a second off times that go into pivot tables under certain circumstances.  We were able to get records and results out in pretty good time, although I don’t think my printer has recovered from having race officials pulling new start sheets from it as it printed.

Sunday was street racing in the drizzle at Windsor Park, and was much the same kind of amiable chaos.

But the kids!  A bunch of learning sponges!  A bunch of sharks on wheels!  I didn’t know a 10-year-old could go that fast!  So, although I feel kind of silly for spending a weekend volunteering at a kids’ clinic my kids weren’t at, my real takeaway is that I wish they’d been able to take it all in.  The coaches and the organizers working with the kids made it all look so easy and the Axel Merckx Foundation was generous with time, prizes, and support.

Still.  Think twice if Lister calls and you had other plans.  🙂

So, my teammate and I walked over to my car to get some supplies for the youth cycling clinic we are volunteering at this weekend.  We got there and he took a step back and whistled.

“Kate,” he said.  “You have a fabulous rack.”

Too bad he was looking at the new Thule hitch-mount bike carrier.

So, guess who entered the Tri of Compassion on a flyer the day before the race, put in a really solid performance despite being tragically under-trained for the swim and the run, and then finished with a nice tidy age group win?

Nope. Not me. It was my 16-year-old, D.

Thursday evening, D says to me, he says, “Hey. I’m thinking I could do the Tri of Compassion this weekend.” I summoned my best maternal supportive self and replied,

“Are you out of your mind? I know you love to ride. I know you enjoy time trialing. But you haven’t been in a pool in over two years and I’ve never seen you run more than 50 paces, like, ever.”

“Right,” he said. “How do I register?”

Continue reading “Triathlon of Compassion 2012”

And what a geek to link.

Is it wrong that this makes me smile and smile?

Lawn Mowing Workout with my Garmin 405CX.

Well.  We share some favourite places and he goes, like, twice as fast as I do.  🙂

Hello, Breakwater.
Hello, Observatory Hill.
Hello, Saanich Commonwealth Place.
Hello, Thetis Lake.

It is so cool to have rock stars around this town, and so humbling to see him cavorting over terrain in the park that I can only traverse with crampons.

When I want to play road cyclist instead of triathlon-carbon-geek, I ride with Tripleshot Cycling, whose name arises from the quantity of espresso it takes to recover from being up and on the road for a 6AM start several days a week.

The club has a raft of scheduled rides – Tuesdays are sprints around the University.  Wednesdays are hill workouts.  Saturday and Sunday rides tend to go long and vary in their degree of stupidity.  And Fridays, the day I usually make it out, are waterfront rambles that end in a sprintfest on the mile-long circuit in Beacon Hill Park.  On a good summer day, there can be more than sixty people out, which can make for exciting moments when multiple packs going different speeds converge in the park.

With a big crowd, the group breaks into four or so packs:  The A Team; B+ and B- (or B1 and B2) (or, if you prefer, the Killer Bs and the Honey Bs), and C.  C is a no-drop group of experienced cyclists slacking off and new cyclists learning the ropes.  It’s a welcoming learning environment and the most loving thing they eventually do is cast you out.

“You can ride B now.  Yes, you.  You can do it.  Go away and don’t come back until you’ve been on at least six B rides.”

But this morning, since I’m milking my post-race recovery week for all it’s worth, I decided to amble to work on my bike instead.  Then, I decided to put on Tripleshot kit and amble in.  Then, I decided to put on Tripleshot kit and amble in right along the waterfront route they all ride, right about the time they’d go by.  It was challenging to stay in a deliberately relaxed mindset as the As pinned my ears back; B+ went by like a freight train; and B-, stopped by the side of the road discussing their racing tactics for the next bit, looked at me very suspiciously, turned away, and lowered their voices.

When I drifted into the coffee shop, A, B1, and B2 were still crushing each other in the park, but C was there, looking ever so relaxed and happy and they let me sponge a coffee.  So, there you have it.  I rode “D” this morning and had the finest outing of all of ’em.

Swim

Bike – Lap 1

Bike – Lap 2

Run

Well, mostly half-iron. This race is 1900m swim, 86.5k bike, and 20k run. (and some of us intimate with Elk Lake aren’t entirely sure about that 20, either)

I decided on this race to crown a huge winter of base building. I was confident that I could go the distance: just wasn’t so sure about going the distance at any speed at all.

At Shawnigan Lake, I learned what happens when an overenthusiastic cyclist goes out and crushes the bike. People say great things like, “hey, that was a super ride you had,” but the misery of the run after an overcooked bike doesn’t quickly fade from memory. So this thing was just a big experiment, whose primary goal (besides the usual, “finish vertical,” was to try to manage pace so I’d have a good run.

Continue reading “Victoria Triathlon (Half-Iron Distance)”