So this weekend we headed up to Timmins for their annual Sprint Triathlon. We were very lucky and got to stay with a friend of friends so that worked out really nice and saved on paying for a hotel room. We got into Timmins around supper time on Saturday and went straight to their house. We had the house pretty much to ourselves the whole night as they were out at a wedding. A big thank you to Rhys and Karin for letting us stay at their home.
Saturday night we went down to the race site for a little swim and to register. The swim was definitely short...only about 600m. I found out later that the guy who measured it included the run up to the transition as part of the 750m swim. Then it was off to East Sides for some good old pasta.
Sunday morning even though it was a pretty small race with only about 100 people I was a big nervous because I knew Mike Hay is in incredible shape right now and I was in for a tough race. Once at the race site set up went good and I went for a little ride on the bike, practiced some turn arounds as there was three of them in the 20km that we were doing.
So this raced seemed to go a little backwards...its supposed to be that my swim is the best part of the race...well not on this day. Right from the start I didn't feel like I was pulling any water and Ryan Smith pulled out in front of me. I tried to get on his feet and at least stay there but it seemed like harder I tried to get on his feet the worse things got. It was two laps of 300m and after about 200m on the first lap I started feeling wired and it seemed like I couldn't see straight every time I looked up. Sure enough as I came out of the water to run around the buoy for my second lap I face planted right in the sand. I knew something was up and asked myself if maybe I should stop but I didn't and came out of the water about 20seconds behind Ryan. It seemed like as soon as I got out of the water I felt a 100 times better and made up some time in transition. I passed Ryan after only a few 100m's on the bike and just went for it. I knew I would have to bike strong as Mike Hay is a supper strong biker and runner. At each turn around I could see that I was getting farther away from Ryan and Mike wasn't really gaining any time on me. I came in T2 with about a 1:40 lead over both Mike and Ryan. After Mike's 15:45 5km run a few weeks ago I knew I still wasn't in the clear. The run wasn't marked very good at all and right about 500m in I took wrong turn and had to turn back. I felt really strong on the run and knew that this is finally the way I've been training and I'm doing it in a race. Right at the end the road split and again there was nobody there saying which way to go and on the road it said one way for 1st lap and the other way for the finish...so since I went the one way for my 1st lap I figured I had to go the other for the finish. I could see transition coming up but it seemed wired because there was nobody really around and it didn't look like a finish. Sure enough some says that I went the wrong way. I went over to my bike got a drink and a few seconds later the race director came over and asked if I would go back and run in the proper way. I thought that it was kind of wired that he would ask me to run back but I did anyways! It turned out that my time would of been pretty much the same as it was the same distance. They didn't have an official time for me so the time they gave me was made up and I'll post a link to the news paper in Timmins that did a story about the race and I got interview but it says I was only about a minute ahead of Ryan when actually I was about 2 1/2-3minutes ahead. I'm not sure what happened to Mike on the run but he just stayed with Ryan the whole time so that was a little strange....things worked out in the end though and I got a couple nice t-shirts, $50, a watch and a gift certificate for a bracelet.
But then as we got to the car I noticed that some of my stuff was wet in my bag. I thought it was stranged but then Lea said she had put a water bottle in the bag and I guess somehow it wad opened and sure enough my cell phone was in the bottom of my bag and soaking wet...no more cell phone! It was definetely fried pretty good!! Well accidents happen and we have to move on.
Anyways it was a good weekend overall with some nice prizes for winning. I will post some pictures later tonight when I get home from work. Four more days and we move into our house!! Crazy!!
Thank you to the people who said I couldn't, you have been what has defined me, never give up, and never back down".
