Tuesday, July 2, 2013

North Bay and Firecracker Race Reports

This past weekend I headed over to North Bay on Saturday morning for some coaching at the kids races of the North Bay triathlon weekend.  I had 8 kids from the team make the short trip over and they all did amazing like always!  After about 6 hours of being there I headed over to Josh's house who is a boy from North Bay I coach and who was racing in the adult race the next day.  Josh had just put some new pedals on his bike so for after some good pasta and chicken we headed on the bike for a little trip up the famous Lee's Rd.  After that it was a hot tub, a couple games of pool and then off to bed for an easy morning. 
Josh had a great race and finished 2nd overall among the individuals and I say that because there was also teams and I was participating as a team.  I was of course doing the swim, Charles Dumas from the Sudbury Cycling Club was the biker and Eric Leishman who just ran a 15:40 5km last night at the Firecracker was our runner.  We had a great race with all of us setting individual course records and the overall course record and finishing about 20minutes before anyone else and there were a couple things that prevented us from being even faster!  This looks good as the three of us will be teaming up again for the Beaton along with our secret weapon in the canoe who I've recruited from out of town who is a very fast paddler and this time our goal is to not hold anything back and set another overall course record but this time one that will not be beat!  Should be fun!
After I was done my part of the race on Sunday I quickly got on my bike and still headed out on the course as I wasn't going to miss an opportunity to bike the beautiful and challenging bike course North Bay has to offer!  Probably not the best idea since I was racing a 5km run the next day but I just couldn't pass it up.
On Monday the family headed into Lively for the annual Canada Day Firecracker Run.  First up was Hudson in the 1km!  He finished in a very quick time of just over 9minutes with a big smile on his face.  Then it was my turn...I really didn't know what to expect from my first 5km race after starting to train again.  I knew I would love to be back under 20minutes and I knew from my 3km on the track a couple weeks back it might be doable but this is a fairly challenging run course compared to running on the track!  I started out really strong and felt pretty good and I settled in right behind this one girl who was running really good.  Now I don't run with a watch but I've done enough of these I could tell we were running at a good pace and I started to get excited we might break 20min.  Everything was going good that is until I hit about 1km to go and things really started to hurt and I lost focus for a second and she was gone and there was no running back up to her.  I lost a lot of time in that final km and I felt like I had missed my chance of getting my goal by as I approached the finished I was surprised to see I was going to make it once I saw the clock and finished in 19:47 and 12th overall out of 93 runners.  The girl I was running with finished in 19:18 so it was a little frustrating to know I was on pace for that until that last km but it will come with more time.
Next up this weekend is I'm heading to Milton for Nationals off road triathlon.  Never done one before but I borrowed a bike from my new team mate Charles and as you can see from the picture Hudson say daddy is going to be #1 this weekend!  We'll see about that though...