Belwood Race Report

I had signed up for this one in May, to beat the HST, thinking it was a sprint- meaning 750metre swim, when in actualality it is a whopping ONE kilometre swim. So the debate was on. Do the swim and conquer it but know that I am in no way good enough to be competitive in this mulit sport series- and thus the best I could hope for would be a door prise for my efforts. OR I could be shamed into doing the duathlon, putting all the time I spend in torture in the water swimming in vain, but have a dim nope of hearing my named called so I could take a wooden plaque home... another one. So basically it was a toss up... and cause I am lazy and switching would require effort I ended up putting on the wet suit.

The day started lucky even before I got to the race site via being blessed by a OPP officers good nature and not coming home with a speeding ticket for doing a mere 111km/hr- which is 31km/hr over the speed limit by the way.

Rack didn't look good... lots of really nice bikes. Sinning all over the place with envy. But I had a goal. RELAX on the swim, let the crowd go ahead, and there will be no need to panic. Everything else would be gravy... as long as I was in the top 50% of my age group.

The RACE

I will get to that but first lets do some math:
Triathletes- 399
Dualthon-113
Estimation of Volunteers and spectators- 200
Porta potties- 7 That number is oh sooo wrong. I would call this abuse, and frankly I am a amazed I pay for this.

Ok Swim, made jokes at the start line about being slightly upset about everybody wanting to drown me out there. Didn't do any sort of warm up cause I figured I would just take it nice and easy and steady. Which i did! Super happy about my swim, focused, swam long stretches with out stopping. May have seen 4 colours of caps.. but I'm still happy. Need to working on sighting-cause a couple of times I looked up and I needed to re-orient myself cause there was nobody there. My goal was 25minutes and I did it in 24flat. Victory!! 300/399 OA and 14/23AG

Bike
Nice course- fast. Was a little concerned about maintain race pace for 30km as my longest races have been only 20km The first half was definitely faster than the second but overall felt strong. Not to windy. Didn't get passed by the older ladies who started in later waves until 20k. Felt the limits of my bike bike again. Have thought about getting tribars to get into a aero position, but then I would also have to get a bike fit and a new seat cause mine just wouldn't cut it with all the pressure on anterior region of my pelvic floor. Have wondered about one shaped like this. Except with a cut out for the tailbone.
I didn't really have a goal time until I started ridding the course and really tried to keep it around 30km/hr , but that second half pushed it down to 29.6. 232/399 and OA 10/23AG

Run
Two very flat out and back stretches. Rough large stones at the beginning and the end slowed me down some. Otherwise didn't feel like I lost too much to the bike. Enjoyed counting people I was passing. Hey I had to do something to keep my mine occupied. I am used to music. Really sucked that I didn't catch that last female as she was in my age category... four seconds ahead of me.
On the run 107/399 OA and 4/23AG.

So because of that four seconds I was sixth in my age category and for this race the awards went five deep. umm mildy annoyed that I didn't a plaque to get dusty sitting in a pile on top of bookshelf. Consoled myself with a pair of swim goggles as a door price.

So back to those bathrooms. As a result of not *umm cough* clearing my system before the race I had severe abdominal cramps for three hours after the race. I couldn't eat, I couldn't carry my own bag back to my car, driving home was worse than after the marathon and well all that could have been avoided if the line for the bathrooms wasn't as long as the drive to the race site.