With a slight detour to CFS Alert!

30 November 2011 to 30 May 2012

Monday, July 23, 2007

Morden Appleman Tri


Thanks to my dear sweet hubby, who got out of bed at 5:00 am to drive me to Morden - I arrived with plenty of time to spare this morning. I must admit, it was kind of nice. That and having my very own gear sherpa was cool too!

Today's race was the one that I have been gearing up for since early May and I am proud to report that I successfully completed my race! This race consisted of a 950m swim, 30 km bike and a 10.5 km run. I decided for this race that I was going to seriously up my nutrition on the race course. I ended up having a gel about 15 minutes before the swim, one in T1, one on the bike and on the run. This may have been a bit of over kill, but I didn't want to risk bonking and it seemed to work well for me. At long last, I finally have photographic evidence of me in a wetsuit!



The swim itself went pretty well - I am by no means a fast swimmer and I am still fairly new to the whole open water thing but I did manage to swim front crawl for part of the race and I only went on my back once (due to a side stitch). My swim actually went a lot better than I thought it would. This was my longest open water swim ever - so I didn't know what to expect.

After the swim, I headed to T1 to get ready for the bike. Had my gel, some fluid, got the socks, shoes, gloves and helmet on and I was off! The bike course was an out and back down a highway. The out portion seemed like never ending rolling hills that only went up, with a headwind...luckily, the back portion was much more down hill and provided a bit of a tail wind - I had a bit of fun on the down hills. Back to transition to get ready for the run.

A quick stop, as I was not changing shoes (toe cages for the bike), grab a hat, ditch the gloves and off I go again. I have to say one thing about Tris, you are tired by the time that you get to the run - your legs are used to cycling and your head starts playing with you. I had never realized how hilly Morden is (it's only about an hour or so away from Winnipeg). The run course went from the race site, through a park area with an interesting gates setup for a really steep down hill portion (kind of like switch back gates, to stop people from riding their bikes down - more on those later) through a golf course (asphalt path) in to the residential areas of Morden. It was a very pretty course, but I wasn't paying much attention - I just wanted to see the turn around point. I had a bit of a problem getting in to a rhythm for the run during the first few kms, my legs just felt kind of dead. I had a gel at about 3 km and that seemed to help things. I managed to mostly run between aid stations (very well stocked aid stations). During the course of the run, I found out that ice is my new best friend (stuck it under my hat), as it was getting pretty hot out. I managed to make it back towards the finish line, but first I had to go up the now uphill with switch back gates - running up the hill was not an option, I could barely walk up it, that is how steep it was!

Finally, with the end in sight I had to try to fight off a rival (didn't realize that she was behind me until it was too late) DH manage to get a picture of me just before I crossed the finish line: I received my medal and I was done!

Official stats: 12/13 (age group) Total time: 3:05:35 Swim: 30:09 Bike: 1:19:11 Run: 1:16:16 I have to say that this was a great race. For $40.00, I got a technical t-shirt, race number belt, a well organized race, very well stocked aid stations (Gatorade, water, ice, GU gels, some had pretzels), a free BBQ bison burger, chips and pop at the end of the race, in addition to the usual post race food. I am definitely coming back next year!

eme