Squamish Tri (Relay)

As running has been an issue recently I decided to do a tri without running. I conned, ahem, convinced Barton to be my runner for the Squamish Tri, a race I've wanted to come back to since first doing it in 2006.

Swim
31:19 min

Do you ever find yourself wondering what happened to all the heads crazy people who died in the '80's had cryogenically frozen? Are there still freezers somewhere full of headsicles or have they quietly been dumped while no one was looking? It's an interesting question, however if you find yourself wondering this in the midst of a triathlon swim you probably aren't as focused as you should be.

The relay wave was a pain. It was hard to find a draft in the small group and, as we went last, we had to navigate through the slowpokes in the previous waves. Once I stopped pondering cryogenics, I ended up using the slowpokes to my advantage in the second half as every time I sighted I'd find a swimmer from the previous wave and tried to pass them by the next time I looked. I went off course due to brainlessness (tried to swim to the wrong buoy on the return leg) but nothing major.

Bike
1:18:38 (including T1 & T2)

The bike is an 8km loop that you do four times - it's crowded, in places it's narrow and there are four 90 degree turns. There is one long steep climb and some fun stuff like train tracks that were seriously jarring to cross. Definitely a technical course, which played to a lot of my weaknesses, I'm nervous going around tight corners with people barrelling down behind me and I didn't want to be an ass and overtake right before the corners then jam on the brakes while turning, especially as there were some seriously squirelly cyclists, so I lost a lot of time on three of the corners (x 4 = 12 big slow downs).

On the first lap my legs felt dead and sore, second lap was a little better, by the third lap I hit a rhythm and I had fun cranking up the hill all out on the last lap, repeating my mantra "I don't have to run. I don't have to run."

A major stress was that my bike computer doesn't really work anymore, according to the Sigma I'd only gone 33km when I finished the bike, and counting was proving to be mentally taxing. I really didn't want to miss a lap and get us DQ'd.

Run
50:51

Barton was not a fan of the run course but set a PR on a course that most people seemed to find challenging and most people seemed to have slower than average runs. Pretty impressive if you ask me.

Post Race
It was fun hanging out at the finish and catching the fast guys crossing the line. And seeing the confusion on the LETC boys' faces as they saw me there! (Immediate post-race brain - didn't consider DNF or relay, just "Alison beat me??")

Very impressive showing by LETC - lots of podiums and Natasha and Doneen did their first ever oly.