Shawnigan Lake. In May. After the most wretchedly cold spring in recent memory. Completely immersed for half an hour or thereabouts. With about 200 other people beating the hell out of you or swimming over top of you. Does this sound like a good idea yet? It’s the first major outdoor swim on the island’s race calendar and just about everyone was either really jittery or elaborately pretending not to mind the ice cubes in the slightest.
Fortunately, if you can look at things this way, Coach Noa has a sick sense of humour and had been chucking us into Thetis Lake since early May. As a result, it seemed kind of normal to stand around saying things like, “Oh, yes, it’s much better today, the blinding pain in my face gave way to numbness within only about 200 metres of swimming.”
This was my first tri of the year. I scratched from a pool-swim sprint earlier in the month because of a cold, so was interested to see what a winter of base-building would do. OK. Well, a winter of indifferent running, a complete rebuild of my swim stroke, and a whole lot of biking. I mean, a whole freaking lot of biking. I kind of really really like to ride my bike.
Now, the Transition Gods smiled on me for this race, and I got the spot at the very end of my row. I want to express special gratitude for this spot because the odds of this ever happening again are, like, zero. So, there I was, half-naked on a cool dank morning, leaning on my personal bike-rack-end-holder-thing, trying to pull on my recalcitrant wetsuit, and thinking, “I may not be a great swimmer. I may be slow on the run. But, by God, I climbed Mt Lemmon in April, I’m QOM on Munn’s Road, I am rocking the world’s Most Marvelous Road Bike, and I am going to crush this bike ride.” Continue reading “Shawnigan Lake Triathlon (Olympic) Race Report”