What a great weekend. Beautiful weather, wonderful hospitality and a great weekend of tri and du. Tim Hardie did the long course duathlon, congrats to him on completing a very tough course, not to mention that it was also his first multi-sport event! Way to do Dude!
The swim was good, water temperature was fine. The new 2XU wetsuit was a pleasure to swim in, I only hope is that IM Louisville will be a wetsuit legal swim…please!! With the wave start, I started at about 8:25am and Tim did a 3k run before heading off on to the bike course, which gave him about a 25min head start. I tried to catch him, but never saw him on the course. The course was tough, a couple of climbs were in the 15% plus grade, that’s real steep and it just seemed like hill after hill. I was glad that I had changed to a compact crank and changed the gears on both bikes. It was amazing to see some people absolutely struggling up some of those hills on a 21 gear. On some of the descents I was well over 60kph. There were also a lot of turns, on one fast descent, there was a right angle turn at the bottom of the hill. We had driven the course the night before and I knew it was there. When I came down that hill I was squeezing my brakes for all they were worth and for a few seconds I didn’t seem to be slowing down at all. It was one of those times that time seems to go into slow motion. I was thinking what an idiot you are, Tim had even pointed it out the night before and here I was squeezing the life out of my brakes and wondering where to impact the OPP cruiser to minimize the damage! Thankfully, I just managed to make the corner, I’m sure the people working the corner must have been shaking their heads in amazement and amusement when I went through there.
Tim and I met up at the transition area and we headed out for the run. I told him another 5k on the bike and I would have caught him! I stopped for a quick bathroom break and Tim ran ahead. I caught up at about the 3k mark and he was having some leg cramping issues, yeah no kidding, after that bike ride, it was no wonder! I went ahead and kept running. One of my goals was to have a good run, meaning to keep running all the way. It went well and I managed to keep it going. Saw Tim at the turn around and he looked like he was running well and had put the cramps behind him. Also tried the Coke that they were serving at the aid stations, thought it would be good to try it a few times before the IM.
Finished in 3:58, Tim about 20 mins back. Thanks again to Tim for letting us bunk at his Mom’s house on the Lake. Absolutely beautiful.
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