Welland Half Iron Distance - Race Report

This one will be short and sweet tonight. Just wanted to get some news out there as my stats for this race so the DNF.

I will send out a longer version but here is the short one as I have to take care of a little flooding in the basement. Nice!

My swim went pretty much as expected from an effort point of view. You can tell by the other athletes times that this was a quick swim so for me to better my pre-race goal by around three and a half minutes gives me the feeling that I would have been right around the forty mark in the pool. I was 109th out of the water so I am amazed at how many great swimmers are out there. Awesome job everyone!

The great addition to this swim portion was the timing mat down at the water which helped grab the real time instead of the time plus run up to T1. Great planning Multisport Canada!

On to the bike, I was clipping along at a very repectable pace. I was passing a lot of riders and making my move up the results page averaging around 39km/h aftert thirty kilometres. Even though my speed was pretty near my target, something wasn't right as I could not get comfortable in the saddle. My butt hurt at first, then my front went numb. I started to lose focus and speed just as we approached the only hill on the course. Thankfully, I spun up and started to feel good again. I was back in the race mentally and picking up more spots.

As I got closer to the 45km turn around though, things started to fall apart as my lower back became very tight. I used the turn to get out of aero and try to stretch it. This little slow down allowed three riders that I had just passed to get back in front of me. I tried to pull them back but I was getting more and more stiff and staying aero was becoming very difficult. It finally got to the point where I could not stay tucked for more than one minuted at a time so I waved the two guys chasing me down passed and pulled over to stretch things out.

It took around ten minutes before I could return to the bike but by the time I got back on my upper portions of my legs had seized up now. I had absolutely no power and still could not stay down on the bars. My day was down for sure as I would never be able to run at this rate.

On the way back I passed the crash scene of one of the elite age groupers and this area was chaos with cars all over and cyclists on both side trying to figure what they should be doing. Stopping, going, slowing down, etc. I knew I was not going to be chasing any time so I slowly made my way through the area before continuing down the road.

At this point I would like to wish Richard Pady a quick recovery. I don't know the whole story so I don't want to post any assumptions but I heard he was going to be OK. My hat goes off to Nigel Gray for stopping his race to care for Mr. Pady after the incident. I have never met Nigel but know of him and knew that he was having a very strong race to this point. He would have been very close to top spot if he would have kept going so he showed a whole lot of class with this display of care.

After I returned back to the transition zone, I decided that I would be a lot more useful helping out at home as my wife was holding a dinner for her family. I wanted to stick around and see how everyone faired on this day so I hope nobody thinks I was being a bad sport by leaving early?

I was a little disappointed that I did not get to finish the race but I was actually in good spirits knowing that I tried to compete to my best but my back just was not cooperating. This is the first time in a few years that I have had this issue. I have a few ideas as to why (need a bike fit, not enough hours in the aero position this season because I have been training on road bike, went out too aggressive trying to make up for slower swim, etc.) this happened today but I also know that I need to step up the volume in training.

This is tough with my availalbe training hours but I am going to have to get there if I want to complete a much tougher course in August. I also want to race in this event and see how things pan out. Obviously, two months is not very long so I better get my game plan out asap.

Congrats to all those that raced. I see some super quick times posted even with the humid run that presented itself. Hope to see everyone out on the race couse soon!