Bittersweet

Roger’s World – Monday September 21, 2009

This past weekend of racing at Lakeside was certainly a perfect way to end the 2009 race season in the HSBC Triathlon Series. The weather was awesome and so was the racing. However, the sad part is that the season is over, and I have to wait until next year to hang out with my “summer family”.

I will get the sappy part out of the way, but it needs to be said. Most of you already know but this race series has different feel to it. Starting from the top with John Salt, the atmosphere here is friendly, close knit, and as such we have a ton of cool people working and racing in the series. It is like no other. Thanks to the post-race interviews, I got a chance to meet even more people than I normally would. From first place to first timer, everyone is very cool and approachable. So I wish you all a great off-season. Rest a while, then train hard and safe. Before you know it, the summer will be here once again.

Now to the race weekend. I was glad to see that some athletes decided to join me in marking the “606” on their bodies to honour the late Matt Tatham. I hope that you felt his energy and spirit out there as I did, especially on Sunday. For extra inspirational fuel, I met and chatted with Matthew Bulmer on Saturday. He is a blind athlete and he and his guide John just started competing in triathlon and proving that anything is possible. Check out the podcast interview at http://www.gcast.com/u/HSBCTriSeries/main. 

After racing horribly on Saturday. On Sunday, I decided to not race in the duathlon and save all my efforts for the GT 12.9. It turned out to be a good decision because I got my first ever overall win. It was truly unexpected but I guess it turned out to be a nice way to honour Matt’s memory and my wife’s birthday.

The award for “Toughest Performance of the Weekend” goes out the Mike Cheliak. The poor dude was suffering out there, but put in two very long days to capture images of us crazies running around in spandex. Recover well my friend.

I am looking forward to the 2010 season already.

There will be the Year End Awards in October so I hope to catch all of you there.

Feel free to drop me a line with responses, story ideas, etc., by posting here or emailing me at hosspro@hotmail.com 

Have a great rest of the week.

Hug your loved ones and live life to the fullest.

Roger

PS: I have included a Race Report. As always, have a read if you are interested that that sort of thing.

Duathlon – Saturday September 19

3 km run – 14:33 (4:51/km)

T1 – 43 secs.

20 km bike – 35:50 (33.5 km/hr)

T2 – 30 secs.

3 km run – 15:32 (5:11/km)

Total – 1:07:05 9th overall, 3rd in 40-44

This race is fairly easy to describe. I ran one kilometer at a decent rate of speed, but the rest of my running was horrible. My legs were not there. Doing nothing for the last 2 weeks probably has something to do with it. Quite frankly, after the Iron 226 I did not want to do much of anything. I was happy with my bike ride though. Tried a Zipp 808 on the front, sketchy in certain points due to the wind but I like it.

GT 12.9 – Sunday September 20

400 m swim – 8:36 (2:09/100m)

T1 – 1:07

10 km bike – 18:04 (33.2 km/hr)

T2 – 26 secs.

2.5 km run – 12:52 (5:09/km)

Total – 41:04 1st overall

I was supposed to race the Duathlon earlier in the morning but my calves were sore and I was getting some weird vibes from my Achilles. After yesterday’s run performance, running 10 km today was not going to be pretty so I decided to just race the GT 12.9 and finally give that race a good effort – not doing it minutes after racing another event. Plus, I was tied in the point standings with Kirk Nielsen, so I wanted to give him a good battle with this being the final race of the season. Kirk did not show up, but I approached the race visualizing that Kirk was always ahead of me. I guess it worked.

Being not much of a swimmer, I think it is ironic that my swim might have won me the race. I actually saw the leaders the whole way, kept them in check (not dropping my usual gap to them) and rode like heck to get away build whatever lead I could. Once on the run, I gave it all I had. At the run turnaround, I estimated I was about 90 seconds down, but the three ahead of me had left in a wave three minutes before me, so as long I maintained that gap and created more of one on those behind me, I had a good chance of winning the whole thing. I did and I got my first overall victory.

There were two points of inspiration for this win. One, Matt Tatham (he passed away last weekend after winning his age group at Wasaga Beach). I (along with a few other athletes) wrote his last race number (606) on my calf, so his spirit was there to guide me to victory the whole way. Second, was my wife. It was her birthday and I joked on the drive down that I would win it for her. My in-laws think I cheaped out, but I don’t think so. How often do I do something like this? Before Sunday, mmmmmmm…..never! We did go to the Keg that night for dinner.