The race of 2020 - UBC Tri

UBC Tri/Du. 

Ugh, it sure seems like a distant memory now, but I figured I'll still blog about how it all went down despite it being suppose to be the opener race of the tri season, and now we all are realizing it's the end as well... 

Over this winter, training for swim has been extremely well clocking consistently 3x per week with these fine folks at UBC Tri Club. Some home turf prep and course familiarization certainly doesn't hurt at all, haha.

I've done this race maybe over a dozen times over the years, but this will be my first one in 3 years and also my first one swimming in the new aquatic pool. 

I had to re-learn the race setup. Re-programed the watch with an indoor swim tri. Studied the turns as the turnaround for the bike has changed. Analyzed the past top 2 winners Josh and Lishan's times and kept telling myself I shouldn't be disappointed at all if I were to finish third behind them! 

As you can clearly tell, I'm totally the type of guy who like to study all the known variables and then optimize the time savings based on objective data.

The swim is 700m in a 50m pool. Start from the left end and snaking back and forth in each lane until the 7th lane on the right. Follow the carpet and a little walk to the wet bag transition was catching the volunteers off-guard. As opposed to the old pool setup when you had to "walk" or ehem fast walk on deck around 3 lengths of the pool before actually getting the wet bag.

I debated and concluded I would check-in a luxury wetbag anyways to drop off the flipflops after walking from transition to inside the pool and keeping some luxury arm warmers. But I kept the key essentials like Jacket and Helmet still at T1 at the bike to be safe. The race heats were a very long wait for me. I got there super early to watch Heat A as it went down the alphabet. Mine was Heat I, 2nd last one for the sprints before the Collegiate heat (all the fast university kids). Luckily they separated us from them fast kids. As we were waiting for our turn, I saw outside the window it was snowing! Flakes and melting on pavement luckily. 

I made sure to line up behind 5-6 people faster than me, but not too far down into the mid-pack. As we took off, the time was started minus 10 seconds from entering the pool. They no longer given a friendly volunteer to touch on on the back to begin (fitting for social distance measures). The swim was a PB for me, I pushed as hard as I could as I knew the seconds were precious. A few faster girls passed me but otherwise super smooth sailing. I wasted about 2 seconds looking for the wetbags, but then quickly abort operation as they were still trying to read my arms tatoos for the numbers. It was about another 200m run to transition. Super technical, any unseasoned good swimmer could unconsciously given up years of hard fitness earned in this split moment.

The bike is a 2 lap course out and back for the sprint (quicker turnaround than the historic point at Kullahun, and longer up to bookstore for the new lap count). I put on some toe covers but apparently not enough to keep the core warm.

As I rode down SW Marine, both the race leaders Josh and Lishan biked passed me as if I was moving backwards and with an invitation to ride faster. I saw them whipped by and then consulted the bike computer. I said to myself, "NOPE, no thank you!" Clearly they were biking more than my capability, as I was already outputting my ideal 230 watts (3.6/kg). I took the little chicane super gingerly given the wet snowly conditions. Goal 1 not taste wet snow pavement. Goal 2 keep around 3.5-6 w/kg range.   

I got off the bike and no longer have any feeling sensation on the toes. The first 3 km was awful. But as blood circulated back into the toes, km 4 and 5 felt faster. 

By this point I was happy to hold 3rd overall. I had some pressure as 4th, 5th, and 6th were all less than 1 minute away and hot on my heals. Any weakness for another clothing item would cost 30 seconds and potentially the difference in 3 places. 

I think my individual splits were not overally impressive by any means.

S:14th (PB!)

T1:5th

B: 9th

T2: 30th (bad toes, bad bad toes)

R: 5th

Coach Jen said I could probably gone faster on swim bike and run. She was not happy. Translation in plain English: A sign of a good coach is moving the goal post immediately, and not saying "Good Job" ra ra ra after the race. 

As I did say earlier, can't be too bummed out about 3rd now can I? Those seconds were really optimized to perfection. :D

Kudos to FsRC gang here David T. (missed him in this picture), Jonathan and Thomas did their own 5km races in West Van and then came all the way to campus to support the race! So cool!

Thanks for reading.

COVID-19: Lessons on how to keep safe. Stay home, be kind, and...LISTEN to your cat (if you have one)!

COVID-19 has caught the world by surprise in the month of March. Like for many of you, and for the racing world, our calendars have been pretty much flipped upside down. Thank goodness for our health care workers fighting the front lines and grocery workers and delivery drivers keeping society functioning. Let's make some pots and pans noise for them at 7pm everynight.

Away from the action, there are some tips on being safe for us stay-at-homers... 

Unfortunately, I learned that lesson the hard way. And oh boy I was in for a "deep" waters surprise. On the day our province of BC declared a state of emergency (on March 18, 2020), I had my own little home emergency. 

Basement flooded! Yikes!

Your questions answered:

1. Yes, that is an inch thick of pooling cold water. The landlord's toilet intake pipe broke and water funnelled down the path of least resistance (i.e. into hallway, then into the laundry room and down to the lowest point in my pain cave).

2. No, that's not an indoor triathlon swimming pool.

3. Yes, my first thought was "Noooo not the smart trainer!"

4. Yes, lesson learnt. The cat had every right for knocking on the door at 4:30am earlier in the morning. After zombie walking to feed him and didn't realizing the adjacent room had flooded. Thank goodness for work at home policy in effect. It was only day 2 and dumb luck that the landlord happened to be home and we spent the morning scooping out more than a dozen buckets of water.  

Power cords hanging around for some dry time.

Jen's little mugs snuck off for a little swim too. Shhh!

Why leave shoes clipped in on bike you say? I have been training for most of my adult life to survive a basement flood. They may say leaving your cycling shoes clipped in on the bike is absolute laziness, but it did saved them from getting wet during the home disaster. A Game Changer!!!

My 2020 Race Calendar flipped upside down. T.T

Here it is again in graphical format.

And log format.

Here's a final recap.

Min Min not so impressed with me.

Great conditions and first race of 2020 - First Half RR

The First Half is a great race to start the year and decade, and it was perfect conditions this year. Unfortunately for me I wasn't ready to race the entire distance as I was still coming back from a slower than normal build up. 

Raymond having some fun as a pacer.

The route is a small counterclockwise loop around the BC Place stadium and then heading in opposite direction from the start line to make a giant counterclockwise loop around Stanley Park. 

It's always good to start the first few kilometers easy. I was settling in and around 12km was when my body had given up. Long story short, I raced 12km at 3:55 to 4:00 per km pace and suffered the last 9km with slightly easier running going 4:20s per km. The 20km per week volume for January had enough. I was aiming for 1:24, but finished in 1:27. It's amazing how competitive and many locals came out for this race. The 3 minutes of slowing down didn't feel too good as I think a good half a dozen friends made me move backwards! Kudos to Michael S, Geoff, Drew, Tyler, Nuru and few others for staying consistent. Anyways hopefully more mileage (anything more than 20km per week ;) ) slowly will help me return to my regular form in the next month or so.

It was nice to see some spectators along course. Under the Granville bridge with the large chandelier art piece, Coach Dimitri had the best cheers, but I wanted to pull out at that point if nobody was watching! T.T Ben M. saw me finish in chill fashion, unfortunately that was as quick I could go. 

Coach Jen keeps reminding me which races I want to do well in 2020. First Half didn't make the top 10 list but it's a good to get towards racing form again. :)

I didn't realize Garmin connect and Strava wipes out a lot of the activities beyond 5 years. Maybe that's good for minimizing risks for privacy and data storage issues. I did a little digging for the 2014 and 2015 data. 

Notes:
2017 was a snow year.
2015-2016 I used to bike a lot!
The races in 2014 and 2015 we had 7 weeks lead up to the race.