Guess who's back... ?
End of summer recap
After having my last race at Toronto Triathlon Festival (TTF), I didn't do any other in-season races. I'm not sure if I had mentioned this but I was still considering doing Lakeside at the time, but as I was still dealing with injury I ended up deciding against. I still went to the race for the weekend and worked as a crew member on the run course. It was a good experience, hard work, and really early mornings. Sounds like tri training without the swim-bike-run. Although I didn't race I made some quick cash over the weekend and got to watch the races so I can't complain.
Now you might ask, "But Lakeside is in September, what happened from TTF in July, to Lakeside in September?" Only one thing happened, but it deserves a mention. I decided that Buddy Green's coaching wasn't quite suited for me and come August I was back to training solo. In this period of time I did some training on my own, based on how I was feeling and what I felt my injury(ies?) could tolerate and after a couple of weeks I started looking around the London community for a new coach. That is when I spoke to Alex Vanderlinden about being coached by Cliff. I chatted with Cliff, and he with Alex, and next thing I knew September had rolled around and I became Alex's first (as far as I'm aware) athlete. With Coach Alex ready to roll, a new house and housemates, and a new school year at my feet, I was ready to do things differently.
Off-season recap
In school, I worked my butt off over first semester to finish with a 90+ avg, and slowly faded throughout second semester although still finishing strong, managing to get 80+ for second semester (and with only one mark below 80 the entire year!).
In terms of training, there was a lot of changes that had to be made throughout the first few months to adjust to my seemingly unfix-able, constantly injured legs. The main goal of the off-season training though was to get my swim to a higher level so I can come out in or near the front pack in draft legal races. Oh right, I forgot to mention, I've decided I want to make an attempt at racing draft legal. At the moment it seems like it would be the most enjoyable form of racing (for me), but more on that later. Back to the training. I swam with the Purple Coached Fitness coached by Ken Fitzpatrick again in the mornings, and as the winter progressed started adding some extra days with the Triathlon Club and even getting in some swims with Coach Alex himself (who was now training with the varsity team rather than the morning swim group). We managed to get me through the winter in decent shape, with the fewest (or maybe shortest) setbacks to date. I was even able to race TriOntario's Indoor Provincial championships with a few club members. Good times were had.
As I did last year, I raced the Masters Swimming Provincial championships which was in Windsor this year. I was lucky enough to be taken into the Vanderlinden household (along with Alex and Angela Quick of course) for the weekend and couldn't express their gracious hospitality in words, so a big thank you to them. The weekend went well, with me going under 4:50 in the 400, under 20 mins in the 1500 and almost breaking 10 in the 800 (it was at the end of the meet). PBs across the distance board is what I like to see.
Immediately following the meet was the final exams period so training took a back seat while I crammed my skull to bursting with formulas and problem solving methods.
Jumping ahead to May, I have had no luck with finding a summer job in London so I'm stuck moving back to Timmins basically working as a garbage man. On the bright side, I get to see my best friends in person rather than through a computer screen.
The Now
Training has been ramped up, injuries have been put to rest (or at least into a coma) and race season has begun. Right now I am in the beginning of a run block Alex seems to have planned for me. I have had to chance to do multiple speed workouts so far, including two on the track and I could hardly be more excited. I should be able to post a potential race schedule somewhere on the side of the page but in case I can't I'm looking at the following: Woodstock Sprint (May), ?? (June), TTF Olympic (July), Detroit Sprint Triathlon - U25 Elite Development Draft Legal Race (August), Wasaga Beach Olympic (Sept)
Multisport Canada Recharge with Milk Series: Woodstock Sprint Triathlon
First race of the season. I'd love to say this is a rust breaker, but it is really more of a 'breaking in the new shoes' kind of deal. Other than a cold I caught the previous weekend (long weekend), I was going into this race with some solid, nearly uninterrupted, non-injury riddled training. It's almost as though I was racing in a new body. I took the Friday afternoon off to drive down to London with my dad, did a short open water swim with Angela on Saturday morning, along with a short brick later in the day. The wetsuit felt comfortable and wasn't a pain to put on or take off, but my arms were a little fatigued (I hadn't swam in 9 days). I tested a few things out with elastics on the bike and gave one attempt at a flying mount (which failed with my suit catching the saddle). On race day me and my Dad left my cousins place early to head for Woodstock. We got there at around 7:40 am (race start at 9 am), I grabbed my stuff and headed for transition. I looked around for Alex, but he disappeared pretty quick and we had already discussed race warm-up so I figured I should leave him alone since he was racing as well. In short, my race morning prep was miserable, unorganized and sloppy, even from a rookie's standards. I forgot to get my race chip and body markings, didn't wear my Garmin or put my PowerTap on my bike and instead of getting in the water ~45 mins before race start, I didn't get in until ~15 mins to race start. The water was at 61F which wasn't terribly cold, but getting a few minutes of warm up in the water definitely made the water feel comfortable.
Swim (~11mins): The swim went pretty well. I got off to a quick and pretty effortless start and stayed with Alex for what felt like at least 150m, and when he pulled ahead Angela happened to come swimming up the side so I jumped on her feet for the next 200-250m (up until the first turn). From then on I tried my best to stay on someone's feet but by the end I think I was swimming just in front of the chase pack but all alone in No Man's Land just as Alex had anticipated. I was also having some trouble sighting the actual buoys so I was sighting on other swimmers which I don't particularly like. I definitely need some more work sighting at speed.
Transition 1 (swim-bike): Coming out of the water I wasn't falling all over the place as usual but I also wasn't sprinting out of the water so maybe that helped. For a couple seconds I forgot about the wetsuit and once I realized it had to come off, I fumbled with the velcro for a bit. Once I got the zipper down, taking the suit off wasn't actually as tough as I had anticipated.
Bike (~38mins): Being one of the first (top 20) swimmers out of the water, I got passed quite a bit on the bike, but I felt like I was doing well for myself. At first I was biking with two girls, one of which I thought was Angela, but found out wasn't her when she went by after the turn-around. The big thing I regret about the ride was not jumping onto Meghan Lamers wheel when she went by a couple minutes before the turn-around. I knew from indoor provincials we were similar in ability on the bike and run so I wanted to come off the bike with her and have someone to push me on the run. I let her go by and by the time I had realized the girls I was with weren't chasing her it was too late. After the turn I took off in an attempt to catch her but she was too far so I basically just tried to maintained the gap she had on me (which kept growing but only slightly now). Overall I felt like I was probably a little too conservative at the start of the bike, and although I am disappointed with the time, I'm satisfied with the effort I put in.
Transition 2 (bike-run): I grabbed the mesh running cap I got in the goody back, slipped my shoes on and was out in another fairly smooth transition.
Run (~21-22mins): There were a couple other guys who I came out of transition with. I went relatively hard for the first ~1km as usual and dropped one of them but the other got away. Personally, although this is typically a course I might like running on due to all the crushed gravel, I did not enjoy it at all. Right from the grassy start, it just seemed to sap away at my energy more than it should have. All of the short hills and soft terrain took a lot out of me and I just didn't have the energy to go faster. I used water at all the aid stations to cool me off with the third station (of 4) being for an attempt at getting a small drink of water for my dry mouth. After what I feel like was a sub par run, I crossed the finish only to find out that I totally forgot to get my chip. They were able to get my overall time manually, but this meant no splits and for a while I felt embarrassed, ashamed, frustrated and like the entire race was a waste of time.
Post Race: As I settled down and got some food I accepted that I made mistakes and there was nothing I could do but learn from them. Looking back now, I am just so grateful I was even able to race injury free and nearly 100% healthy. I still have much to learn and tons of hard work to put in, but I'm ready to fight the good fight and can't wait to see how to summer unfolds.
As I was texting Alex after the race he told me to get hungry. With a grin on my face (thinking myself clever), I quickly responded with "I'm starving."
For anyone who read this all the way through, I bow my head. Much appreciated. Hopefully I won't have any posts this ridiculously long from here on. Even I want to say TLDR.
Until next time,
Matt Mahaffy
