Rainy Days on the Bike Route

The Central Valley Greenway has already featured in my photos but here are a few more shots:


The mosaic stairs (Tuesday). I'll have to try to get these on a sunny morning when they're covered in dew. Stay tuned for more shots!

Hole in the wall (today).

Wildflower RR

Sunday morning was a relatively relaxed start, we had to be in transition by 8:30 then most of us had to wait for about two hours before we could start. With several thousand althetes but limited space in the water and on the roads, age group wave starts went every 5 minutes to keep things spread out - collegiate men at 8:00, collegiate women at 8:05, then the men's age groups followed by the women's.

I didn't start until 10:35 so I had lots of time to get my bearings in transition and walk through my T1 (turn right at the Mexican flag and run 3/4 of the way to the end of the row) and my T2 (turn left at Italy and run past five racks). This was Marie's second ever tri so I got to pretend not to be nervous and act the big sister, which helped me immensely.

Finally it was my time to go! I thought I was warmed up and mentally prepared. The gun went off and I was away in the water happy to be in the middle of the pack with people my speed. Then the neck of my wetsuit felt too tight, the swimmers were too close, the water was too murky, I needed to find a clear path - panic attack. This was extremely frustrating as I slowed and did head up front crawl or half breast stroke (with flutter kick as whip kick in a crowded swim can be deadly) while trying to get my head straight. At the first turn I finally got my head down and could swim continuous front crawl and only about 2/3 of the way in was I finally thinking clearly enough to pick up the pace and start swimming like I was in a race.

I was frustrated as my swimming has been an area where I've felt that I've had a lot of improvement but that this effort was wasted by me freaking out.

The steep run out of the water to T1 wasn't as hard as I expected, and I found my bike without incident. I'd trimmed the legs on my wetsuit earlier in the week so for the first time in a tri I didn't have to fight with it to get it off. That plus my super new tri bike shoes made for a swift transition (considering the distance I had to cover) and I was out onto the bike course.

Lynch Hill, the start of the bike course is just mean, you have about 200m of flat out of T1 then a very steep hill - think the worst part of the hill from Locarno Beach to UBC. I passed several people who were walking their bikes but most people managed to ride up. The rest of the bike course is just hard - lots of uphills steep enough to put you in your easiest gears and a super low cadence and very little in the way of flat sections.

Once at the top of Lynch Hill I got into an easy spin to get my legs going, grabbed some fluids and started passing people. A lot of beginners and newer racers do Wildflower, Team in Training (TNT) especially bring huge numbers to this race as part of their fundraising challenge and people who would never normally consider doing a triathlon do so to raise money for the foundation. By comparison at the Peach Classic in Penticton, a difficult race but not as challenging, there are porportionally far fewer inexperienced racers.

This turned out to be a fantastic boost to my ego, it made up for the swim frustrations as I spent most of the ride flying past racers (more than a few with bikes three times as expensive as Louis). I may have gone too hard on the bike, I've certainly never ridden that hard in a tri, but it was so much fun!

Into T2 and again no issues finding my spot. I racked my bike, whipped off the tri shoes with amazing speed (did I mentione that I love the tri shoes?), put on my runners, grabbed my hat and took off through transtition. Another quick change.

At the aid station at the exit I grabbed water and dumped in on my head as the day was heating up. About 100m later I realized I should have also drunk some fluid as I'd opted not to bring my own water. Ah well, live and learn.

The first part of the run was on a trail beside the lake, it was a lot of up and down with short but steep hills and I had to walk a few of them. At the first km marker I checked my watch and I was at 5:35. As I was absolutely dying at this point I decided that anything under an hour for the run would be a victory (I usually do Oly runs in 50-52 min).

Once we got out of the trails and onto the road the serious hill began. This was about 5km of continuous up - a short steep section followed by a false flat, then a long steep section followed by another false flat, then a shorter not quite so steep bit before it flattened out. Brenda passed me at the bottom of the hill and was looking as relaxed as if she was out for a Sunday jog, not 44km into a tough race. I yelled encouragement and tried to follow suit but kept having to walk. I finally decided I wasn't going to let myself get passed by the purple horde (TNT racers) and did a slow, slow run up the hill. I walked the aid stations and a few parts of the hill but forced myself to keep running. At the 5km markI was under 30 minutes for the run so I had high hopes of going under an hour, this gave me a bit of steam.

A lot of folks were cheering on the hill and most had obviously done the half iron the day before, judging from their sunburns. It was great having a large crowd of experienced racers there as they said all the right things - telling us to focus or power through, giving exact distances (200yds/1/4 mile) to aid stations or hill crests, not one person said "Almost there!"

Finally, past the 8km mark it flattened out and I could try to relax my legs for the steep run down Lynch Hill. Running fast downhill on tired legs is interesting but not as fun as you might expect. At the bottom there was about 300m of flat to the finish line, usually I put in a kick to the finish but this time I had almost nothing left and was struggling to keep a decent speed. In the finish chute I did have enough energy to high five the kids with their hands out (I'm a sucker for that) and Clayton, who had finished over half an hour before me and was cheering with Benny and possibly some others from the club.

I felt rough after crossing the finish so I found a chair and shade as soon as I could. Apologies to Bronwyn for not going to cheer for her at the finish. After downing lots of water, gatorade, half bananas and a free Powerbar recovery bar I felt better and found my way to the meeting place we'd decided on. Everyone had a great race - Bronwyn and Clayton beat their times from last year, Zosia came second in her age group, Jessica was third in hers, Brenda fifth in hers and Bronwyn 11th in hers. Pretty darned cool all round.

Overall I think it was a good race. Wildflower offers more pain/km of any race I've done yet, that's for sure! I know the mental side of my swim still needs work, but considering my rough start going under 30min is pretty good. I pushed harder than I ever have on the bike, it may have been too much but I tend to be too conservative so overdoing this time it is fine in my books. As sensai Harry from Karate said - it's better to overcorrect than not correct at all. The run was tough but I'm happy I was able to push myself into running almost all the second half despite feeling horrendous, I think that was my biggest show of mental toughness in a race so far.

By the Numbers:

Swim - 29:53
HR - 161 ave/173 max

T1 - 03:57

Bike - 01:31:57
Ave speed - 26.36
Max speed - 71.01
Ave cadence - 84
HR - 176 ave/190 max

T2 - 02:42

Run - 55:11
HR - 179 ave/188 max

Overall - 03:03:42
HR - ave 174, max 190

WF Training Camp (more details)

You knew I couldn't resist giving you the whole story!

After a long drive (with an unexpected tour de San Jose) Clayton, Bronwyn and I arrived at Lake San Antonio on Tuesday afternoon. The rest of the crew, with one exception, were already there:

- Andrew, coach and fearless leader
- Jessica
- Brenda
- Penny
- Marie
- Benny
- Zosia (her husband Matt came on Saturday)

The training camp was mostly about riding, but of course we did some running and swimming. It took me a couple days to get over the drive, I felt that I had no power in my legs and I was just plain tired, so I didn't enjoy the first couple days of working out. Frustratingly, Bronwyn and Clayton didn't seem to be affected at all!

We did a mini duathlon, some swim sprints and rode the bike and run courses several times, all good workouts.

As the week progressed more triathletes trickled in then on Friday the trickle turned into a torrent and the massive campsite was overflowing with triathletes. The race shirt said 7,000+ athletes participated in the three events (half iron, mountain bike tri and olympic tri) and it felt like they were all there on Friday. The buzz in the campsite on that evening was amazing - I see why people call this the "Woodstock of triathlon".

We went against the flow and headed out of camp to Paso Robles for dinner. It felt extremely civilized to be in a restaurant!

The expo area was great - enough gear to get any triathlete salivating and super deals. My plans to do some serious shopping were threatened by me losing my credit card (and driver's licence) on a ride on Wednesday but luckily someone found them on the road and turned them in to the lost and found. I had killed my Polar HR monitor the day before leaving so I got a super deal on a RS200, $50.00 less than the US suggested retail price so likely more off the Cdn price. There were also tons of freebies that I took full advantage of - Triathlete magazine, visors, energy drinks, etc. We were camped near the Cliff bar guys and scooped up lots of samples (we weren't sure if we were being greedy but the guys kept offering us more stuff) and I got hooked on POM. We also came up with about 20 ideas for products that would make us all millionaires, sadly I don't think anyone wrote them down!

Saturday was all about Penny as she was the only one of the crew doing the half iron . We fit our short pre-race workouts in around catching her on the bike and run course. As some fairly huge names in the tri world were doing the race we also got our chance to get a little star struck and cheer on Macca, Lieto, McGlone, Cave, Pip Taylor, et al.

Penny had an awesome race and almost made it look easy. The half iron is a brutal race - the bike course is super hilly with "Nasty Grade" (beware of hills that have nicknames) coming near the end, and the run is much the same except that racers get to do it in the full heat of the day.

Despite the fact that it's a seriously tough course, I started thinking it would be a fun one to try out. Okay, "fun" might not be the right word but suffice it to say I'm contemplating the half.

Wildflower Point Form

California is:
- far away
- very big
- probably easier to navigate if you have a map. Yes we know the way to San Jose, please stop singing and tell us how to get the @#$% out!

Lake San Antonio (and area) is (are):
- full of algae
- in the Salinas Valley (Steinbeck!!!!!)
- close to Big Sur (Kerouac!!!)
- gorgeous
- very cold (night)
- very hot (day)
- remarkably like the South Okanagan, but with oaks instead of ponderosa pines

The camp was:
- hard
- tiring
- fun
- awesome race prep

The race was:
- frustrating (swim)
- great for the ego (bike)
- hard (run)
- very cool (support from LETC folk)

My fellow campers were:
- fun
- great cooks
- fast! (5 in the top 10 of their age group)
- very cool people

I am:
- tired
- sunburned
- glad to be home
- scared of my laundry (camping + training = very, very stinky)

Training Camp Part Deux - Things Get Serious (and the weather turns terrible)

On Tuesday the camp started in earnest. We got our first crack at parts of the course and the workouts got significantly longer.

As per every day of the camp, we started out with a swim. I sneezing heavily after due to water up my nose but didn't think much of it at the time.

Bike – OK Falls (marathon turn around) to Osyoos and back.

Time: 3hrs
Ave Speed 28.69
Max Speed 53.87

We had a fantastic tailwind on the way down to Osoyoos, I didn't notice how strong it was and just thought I was riding like a god. Teresa and I mostly keep in sighting or talking distance and made sure to see Karen was doing okay. We got to the Oliver half bike course and I joked with Teresa that I wanted to stop and find the water bottle and bottle cage I lost on the race. At 1:20 Karen caught us up (after a mammoth sprint to catch up) to tell us that Andrew called her and that the headwind back was killer and we should turn back ASAP.

Due to the wind we decided to do a pace line back. Karen had never done one but after about 15 seconds of instructions (don't use your brakes, try to stay 6" off the person in front's back wheel, point to junk on the road, indicate when you want to drop back) we took off and she was doing it like a pro. About 20 minutes in I realized I'd told her not to use her brakes but hadn't told her the signals for slowing done and stopping – potentially a cause for concern! We fixed that at the roadworks.

Somewhere around Vassau Lake we lost Karen. She had a flat and had intelligently crossed to the shady side of the road to change the tube, meanwhile Teresa and I were looking for her on the other side of the road (we have how many years of post secondary education between the two of us??). Once we though to look 30' to thr right we found her! Karen told us she was okay and told us to go on. Teresa and I pacelined for a bit then decided to ride solo (I need the practice riding into a headwind). I saw a pile of glass too late to avoid it - just as I was about to swerve I heard the puncture and felt all the air run out of my tire. Teresa caught up with me and was eager to help, never having changed a tire, but I told her "Back off - it's my flat!" It was one of my fastest tire changes ever (still not very fast so I'm not telling you the time).

At the end of the ride we packed up the bikes then ran from the park along Eastside Road towards Penticton, our first crack at the run course. Karen was a great runner - turns out she's a coach for Team In Training so will have a HUGE cheering squad at IMC.

My HR was too high (171 ave), probably from trying to keep up with Karen, but it was a fun social run.

This was our first ice bath day – a shock for some of the club members who hadn’t done it before. We got some serious stares from some of the motel guests – apparently people standing in garbage cans full of ice water in a parking lot isn’t something they’re used to seeing. Later in the week we were asked if we were with the group in the garbage cans.

I was sneezing a lot and wondering if it was allergies or what? Figured too much lake water in my nose and didn’t think much of it.


On Wednesday the rain began.

We start with a short am swim. For some reason I adamantly didn't want to wear a wetsuit, can't remeber why now, but I relented.

After the swim I realized the sneezing wasn't because of allergies but due a sinus infection. I was hopefully some salt water up the nose would do the trick and I'd be over it.

While we were have breakfast and the rain started coming down harder and we went out for our tempo run into some fairly nasty weather.

After the run I decided to do the salt water up the sinuses trick to kill the infection and figured I could do up a solution myself, forgetting the results of the last times I’ve thrown table salt and tap water up my nose. There was less swearing than previous times I’ve done it but it hurt unbelievably and I decided I had to find a drugstore to get the sinus-ready saline solution.

We decided to move the bike repair session to the next day and go earlier for our ride. The law of group dynamics meant that we didn’t actually get away from the hotel that much earlier than planned but it felt like a victory anyway.

The plan was to ride from the top of Richter to the top of Yellow Lake but as it was so cold and wet and miserable we decided starting with a long descent would be a bad idea and we opted to start from the base of Richter (turned out to be the base of the second or so roller, but close enough). The ride out with Princess was initially a somber affair – this was our first crack at the Ironman course, our first real test of whether we were up for the challenge or not and we were a little tense. Luckily Teresa had the perfect remedy to hand – ACDC. We cranked Thunderstruck and headbanged, air guitared and howled our way through Keremeos and Cawston. As we kept going and going, and we ran out of tunes, the mood turned somber again. For me this was the part of the course I’d never seen (I’ve driven Yellow Lake tons of times, been to Oliver quite a few and to Osoyoos more than once) and boy did it seem like a long stretch of road. The weather didn’t help, it ocaissionally relented to only being driving rain but we drove through several hailstorms. We finally had to crank Thunderstruck again just to get us into the right headspace.

The rain let up a bit when we stopped and unloaded the bikes. The fast folk (Bronwyn, Chung & Stephanie) took off and disappeared pretty quick. Teresa, Karen and I followed at a more sedate pace. The rain quickly got back up to a fairly serious intensity. The three of us occasionally regrouped to make sure we were all okay (and once to redistribute cell phones) and on one of these times Teresa, with no thought whatsoever for karma or Murphy’s law, blithely said “Ladies, at least you know it can’t get any worse than this!” Thunder claps followed this statement and within minutes it was hailing. Thanks Teresa!

It weather was so ridiculous all I could do was laugh. While we were still in the rollers I saw a figure with a flowery umbrella standing at the side of the road and I wondered what kind of nut that could be. Wasn’t a nut, it was our coach! I gave him a thumbs up and kept going.

I got into a good rhythm and got lost in my thoughts so I almost missed the turn off at Becks Road. I waved at Andrew and kept going and had to do a quick stop to turn and keep going.

Teresa and I regrouped and rode to Yellow Lake together, Teresa insisting Olalla be pronounced “Ooh-La-La!” The climb to Yellow Lake was steep but not too bad. At what I had thought was about halfway – Yellow Lake – I saw Andrew and said I wanted to keep going to the top. Apparently Yellow Lake is at the top of Yellow Lake Hill. Who knew! Suddenly the second big climb of the race was a lot less than I’d expected – very cool!

I was happy to keep going and made it to what I had thought was the top (the second roller, just before the fun descent) and got ready for a fun ride down. I was at about 64kmh when a Winnebago in front of me felt the need to slow down to 40 and take over the entire road so I lost my speed and actually had to pedal – stupid motorhomes. Met up with Andrew at the bottom and was instructed to take 97 towards Oliver. The road was terrible – minimal shoulder, lots of traffic and the road was so busy that the cars and heavy trucks couldn’t give us much space. It didn’t thrill me too much and I cut the ride a bit short (turns out I was supposed to ride for three and a half hours so I cut it more than a bit short!).

Despite the insane weather it was a fantastic ride, on seeing me at the junction of 3A and 97 Andrew commented “You’re on a high!”. Strangely, riding in the pouring rain was when my sinuses felt their best all day.

We drove back to where we’d left the cars at the base of Richter and Teresa and I drove back the long way – backwards along the course route over Richter and up 97 through Osoyoos and Oliver. We decided Richter was a tough looking climb but not as bad as Cypress or Seymour and very doable.

I desperately needed French fries so we drove through A&W, at which point it seemed logical to get a burger at the same time (my 20% for the day - at his nutrition talk Andrew'd told us we should try for at least 80% healthy food). I realized, after I’d eaten it, that this was my first fast food hamburger since my pre-vegetarian days.

We hit a mall on the way back and while Teresa grabbed food I picked up saline solution for my sinuses, hoping that would clear out the infection.

IMC Training Camp - It Begins!

The Cast:
Coach – Andrew T.
Calves/Thumper – Bronwyn
Princess – Teresa
Club Reporter – me
Mom – Stephanie
Trooper – Karen
Thumper – Chung
Rumour Mongerers – most of the above
The family – Tim, Thomas, Matthew, Jessica

Sunday
After the Peach Classic awards ceremony the massive LETC crew thinned out as the non-training campers headed home. Left at the Bowmont were Andrew, Teresa & Bronwyn (in the Party Room), Stephanie and family and Chung & I.

We gathered at the Peach for the training week overview session. Of the six people participating in the full week camp five of us were LETC members. Karen was the only non-LETC member and joining into a pretty tight group but that fact that we’re a friendly (if somewhat gossipy) bunch and Karen is a thoroughly nice person meant that she fit in right away. Well, "fit in" might imply she was as cooky as the rest of us, which didn't seem to be the case.

We had a chat in a coffee shop about the camp and what was coming up. Overviewed the schedule etc. then headed back to the hotel for what became a common occurrence – a potluck feast.

I believe this was night when the Kieffer boys were swimming the length of the hotel pool apparently trying to drown each other - Stephanie said they were playing "Ironman swim."

Monday - The Camp Starts
As we had all raced the Peach on Sunday, Monday was an easy day – light workouts and getting to know each other.

Easy swim – 30 minutes continuous at a relaxed pace in Okanagan Lake.

We changed, washed off the duck mites (or whatever it is that causes duck itch) then got into our workout gear for a core strength and stretching session in the park across from the hotel. Unfortunately my camera had dead batteries, which is too bad as it was a beautiful day, one of the few we had over the week, and a beautiful setting.

After the workout I got in touch with my sister and hung out for most of the day on Lee Ave with her and the boys. Apparently the key joy in the inflatable pool isn't swimming in it but filling it with water (possession of the hose being of paramount importance).

Next installment - Getting serious and testing out the course.