Tuesday 30 September 2014

Europe trip Part 1 - Arriving in Maastricht!




“Sorry this train does not go to Liege, you should have gotten off an hour ago when the train split. You are now in Genk. We go back and you will be in Maastricht in another 2 hours”

After 10 hours of travel, this is not what I wanted to hear. I was already imagining putting my feet up and catching a nap in cosy Maastricht, instead, we got on the train from Brussels airport and ended up sitting in the wrong end of the train.
You see, after landing in Brusells, we were supposed to catch a series of trains via Brussells-Midi and Liege, on to Maastricht. I saw no network maps at the Brussels airport, so I went and asked the person at the Belgian Rail (B-Europe) counter. He firmly shook his head at our plans and directed us to take a train to Leuven, then to Liege and onto Maastricht.
After reaching Leuven, we boarded a train labeled for Liege. We got on. I knew the journey is approx. 1.5-2.0 hours, so we both spaced out a little and didn’t concern ourselves too much. After 1.25 hours, I began to get worried, but couldn’t find any where to look up a map. I convinced myself to wait it out. Then the ticket check came to verify our travel, and she gave me the news above.
Already sleep and food-deprived, I was now genuinely upset at our screw-up. They made the announcement when the train was splitting only in Dutch/Flemish (not even in French) and we obviously didn’t have a clue. The staff at Brussels also didn’t inform us, so we were dumb-founded when this happened.

Anyway, after a 2.5 hour unnecessary delay, we finally arrived in Maastricht!






The first thing I noticed after we got out of the train station was: "Holy crap! That's a lot of bikes"...

I knew Netherlands is the most bike-friendly place, but it still shocks you...makes us Canadians feel like being alien to cycling as a culture!

Went to a local grocery store, and believe it or not, these are chocolates!!




 We’re super pumped to be taking a vacation mid-year. We haven’t had a break since the wedding in January. Even if just for a week, we typically don’t get a chance to take 2 vacations in a year. This leads to some very random poses:


But my air miles were expiring, and we were both getting sick of not having actually travelled anywhere in the world, so we made an abrupt decision in August to visit Netherlands!!




Surabhi was going to be in Maastricht for work and that would mean a place to stay! We really couldn’t ignore the chance, so we bit the bullet.



Keep pedaling.

Thursday 25 September 2014

Barrelman Bike/Run Race Report

BARRELMAN BIKE/RUN RACE REPORT

The highlight race of the 2014 year was the Barrelman. Being held for the first time this year, this race has been promised to offer a great course right by Niagara Falls and some fast racing. It would be my 4th “half iron” race of the year.

I’ll try to make this short…my habit of mentioning too many details only bores more geeks like me and attracts more yawns!


First and foremost, a big shout out to the Multisport Canada crew so making Barrelman an astounding success. I was wary of things going wrong in the point-to-point transitions of the bike course, but MSC left no stone unturned here. Clear instructions, logical layout of things, and knowledgeable staff.

I encountered a few hassles due to my own lack of planning but there were enough co-ordination in place for me to figure everything out pre-race. For example, I wore my running shoes until the race start in order to get my warm-up in, but forgot that the dry clothes bag for post-race must be dropped off to MSC by 9:00am. Daryl Flacks and his family kindly offered to bring my shoes over to the finish line so I could warm-up. Thanks Daryl! 

 

Short version:


Bike:
·         Official time: 92.0 km in 2:35:05 (35.6 km/hr)
·         Garmin time: 92.6 km in 2:34:20 (36.1 km/hr), 200W AP (201 NP)

Run:
·         Official time: 21.1 km in 1:33:03 (4:25 min/km)
·         Watch time: 21.1 km in 1:32:58 (4:25 min/km)

Overall

Thanks Roger Hospedales for the pics!
  • 2nd place overall, 1st AG (M39 and under) in the bike/run category.
  • 28th fastest bike split of the day. Enough said. I still suck at cycling. No improvement on my lower/speed at all in the past 18 months...only marginal aerodynamic gains. Time to go back to the drawing board.
  •  9th fastest run of the day including ze pros. Granted, they’re in a different league...so out of the normal over-achieving AG’ers, my run was 5th fastest of the day! 

 

Long version:


Bike:

Like in Welland, this was a TT-style start with people departing every 5 seconds. The great John Salt himself descended to the T1 mat to wave us off. He was all business.

We all knew this was going to be a windy affair today. The forecast had rain and thunderstorms all morning, and I’d been watching the radar maps for the last 3-4 days. As a point-to-point course, the wind seemed generally in our favour, but against us for the first 40k of the 90k ride.

Once I started, it was clear that the steady-state wind wasn’t that bad…maybe 25-30 km/hr, all you had to do here was find your headspace and settle into a gear and forget about how slow you were going.
But I didn’t account for the wind gusts. And these were real bad. So bad that I swayed across the road unexpectedly multiple times throughout the ride (not just during the headwind part) and nearly lost it a few times. I had to get out of my aerobars and steer by the base-bar because it was getting hard to go straight.
One time, you’d be leaning left into the cross-wind coming from the left…and then a sharp 50km/hr gust would come from the right, catching you completely off-guard. The first 40 km were full of this stuff…even during the latter tailwind sections, there was a lot of cross-wind gusts that slowed me down instantly from 45 km/hr to 25 km/hr (so fast I wouldn’t even have time to change my gear down…I’d be fighting to keep the bike rubber side down) and then back to tailwind within 10 seconds.

That was the ride, in essence. A few bumpy sections in between. The last 15km or so, which zig-zagged us towards Niagara Falls was mostly tree-lined and supposed to shelter us from the wind (which it did, it just happened to be cross-tailwind we got sheltered from!). All in all, I didn’t go that much faster than a loop course….unlike my original thinking. Lots of other fast times on the course though…some people went faster and some went slower than Welland.

The last 7-8km on the bike were amazing riding next to the Niagara river leading to the Falls. So much win right there. I actually wished I had my iPod/phone with me to take some pics along the way!

As I undid my shoes to dismount at T2, I swung my right leg over to the left side to get ready to get off the bike…and then the wind threw one last gust from the right. Instead of getting off in the middle of the pavement, I was steered to the left, squarely at the volunteer yelling me to stop and get off my bike. I braked hard and very nearly hit the poor chap. Then I had to instantly duck to avoid banging my head into the big “DISMOUNT” sign on the side of the road behind him.
My feet hurt from such a rapid deceleration and I could already sense a few blisters in the making. Ah well, disaster averted!! The crowd was super loud here and let out a collective “ooooohhh!!” at my near miss. Glad to provide some entertainment. They would probably have liked to see an amusing face-plant! :D

I did meet my goal of averaging 200W, and am happy with that. Speed is what it is. At 200W average power output, I can proudly say that both my legs are definitively better than 1 leg of the overall winner, Lionel Sanders (raced at ~365W and 46 km/hr = Mind boggling). He's taken the tri world by storm this year...his 4th place at the 70.3 World Championships just 2 weeks ago confirmed his potential to be what we already knew from seeing him at local races over the last few years!

Transition:

Having never had the chance to see the T2 setup before the race, I didn’t know where to rack my bike. A little confusion here but volunteers guided me to the right spot and I found my red-T2 bag with my goodies for the run. Good stuff.
Obviously...this is after the race! The volunteers even packed up our stuff back into the red bags when I came back to get my stuff!! Amazeballs.
Run:

As in previous races of this distance, the goal was to break 1:30 on the run. This was a 2-loop course.

1st loop:

Heading out into the run, my legs felt good. I let myself run slow since the brick legs always deceive me. At the 2 km mark, I was at 8:00 mins. That’s not slow. Damn. Then I saw the hill they’d talked about in the race-briefing for the first time. It was steep looking, but nothing dreadful. I chugged up at 5:30 min/km pace and once it was over, I realized that the next 4km are also a slow slog uphill.
But, whatever goes up must come down, so I looked forward to the next 2 km of straight downhills. It didn’t disappoint. This would become my best memory from this race: coming charging down Murray Street facing Niagara Falls and getting doused in the natural mist from the Falls. Fantastic feeling.


Thanks Roger Hospedales for the pics!


10k was at 43 mins and I was OK with losing just 30s to the hills on this lap. This was the beginning of my mental lapse, now that I think of it. Unknowingly, I had already negotiated a time of 1:31:XX from my original goal of 1:30. Hmmm.

2nd loop:

Between 12-16 km, I slowed down again. This part is all slightly uphill. I remember doing the math to calculate my finish time…at the pace I was going, I would come right between 1:35-1:36 for the run. I went through thoughts like “that’s OK…this course is hillier than you planned” or “It can still be faster than the Peterborough run split” and “maybe everyone will just be slower today”. Nonsense.

Of course, at this point I was just about to hit the downhill on Murray street again and all the uphill portion was nearly done…I noticed I hadn’t eaten my last gel and was about 15 mins overdue. Once I gulped down the nutrition, I hoped it wasn’t too late to start my kick to the finish. I stormed the downhill and began firing on all cylinders again. Soon I changed my run goal to sub-1:35…then sub-1:34.

I think the mental game is one I should consciously improve on. It was much worse 2 weeks ago in Ottawa where I basically fell apart mentally on an easy flat run because I just didn’t want to run hard anymore…so I did a little better this time. Maybe it just comes with experience.

I had only been passed once in the run so far (by Rich Pady, nothing to be ashamed of!), but then one 28-year old decided to pass me at 17km. I tried hanging on to him but he was too quick and built a good 30s lead on me within a few minutes. My mind fought with my legs a bit more and I was able to speed up to keep this distance. I told myself that I NEEDED to come under 1:33. I sprinted hard in the last km and although my watch said I made it, official timing showed 1:33:03. No matter. The high of pushing myself is always rewarding.

I found myself being happy at this race on a few occasions. From the lakeside views on the bike to going through touristy part of Niagara Falls only to be awed by the Falls. Twice. One of the cops manning the intersections was particularly enthusiastic and high-fived me on both loops with words of encouragement. Passing by the old Hydro station, excited kids and random tourists…this was right up there on experience and natural beauty as last year at Zofingen, Switzerland. 
Folks, this is not just a race. It’s an experience. Live it up.


Post-Race/Awards:

After I caught my breath and had one (or two?) chocolate milks, I got lazy in their compression boots again and chatted with Garima and a few familiar faces.

At the awards, I was surprised. In most races, Bike/Run or Duathlons are generally considered a notch below the main triathlon show (and rightly so, from an organizer’s perspective). However, in every regular season race, MSC has always given the same awards and AG categories to the duathletes despite their lower numbers.  At Barrelman, this was no exception. In fact, they went a step further! I was unexpectedly called up to the podium on several occasions:
·         AG win: M39 and under
·         Fastest bike split for my AG
·         Fastest run split for my AG





Yes, I know these are small victories…and don’t mean much in comparison to the competition in the Triathlon race, but it still feels good!
The last two instances earned me a Timex chrono watch each time! I was also given a plaque for my AG win, a bottle of Rockway wine (Garima said she’d take care of this one ;) ) in addition to my finisher’s medal, t-shirt and hat. Wow. I almost felt like an elite athlete!


Add in live updates, great parking, shuttle buses, healthy post-race meal, good deals at race expo…I could go on for a while.

I’m very happy with this race and the way things turned out. Sure, I could’ve gone 1-2 minutes faster on both the bike and run, but there’s always that improvement n execution, not fitness. It would’ve made no difference in the overall result anyway.

This draws us to a close of the multisport races for 2014. We both may do 1 or 2 running races in the Fall, but no plans are certain yet. 

On the way back home, we stopped at Niagara-On-The-Lake to enjoy some fudge and cookies! Day complete.




Time for R&R. We are headed to Netherlands next week!!! So excited. We’ll be staying with Surabhi so we get to catch up with her as well.


Keep pedaling.


Wednesday 3 September 2014

The Canadian Half Iron 113 Duathlon 2014


I wanted to return to Ottawa to do this race ever since 2012, when I won it in a great time. It was one of the rare races that I've done, which was boring...as in, uneventful. Nothing went wrong, everything went to plan. It was a near perfect race and I wasnt even exhausted at the end!

Originally, I had no plan to do this race. Definitely not the full Iron 226 distance (4 km Run, 180 km bike, 42.2 km run) as I have not trained nearly enough to do justice with an attempt. I was mainly eyeing the Half Iron distance (2 km Run, 90 km bike, 21.1 km run) but was still uncertain about registration as me and Garima had been dreaming up plans to visit NYC for 3 days. Once that hope was shattered, I decided to do this race a mere 6 days out, but missed the online registration deadline by a few mins (relevance of this is coming later...hang on!). Our salvaged getaway plan was to head to Montreal after the race for 2 days!


The weekend arrived after a very busy work week that saw us both miss 2 days of taper workouts and generally mentally drained. We packed our bags and hoped to beat the long weekend traffic out of the GTA by leaving early on Friday.

After arriving in Ottawa at 8:30 pm on Friday night, we got to stay with Cindy who graciously offered to host us for the race. We last saw her when she visited us in Toronto during Canada Day weekend.

Race morning was uneventful and getting to the race site+parking was a breeze as it took only 10 mins from Cindy’s home. 

I'm comfy in this folding bed.
Wake me up when its time to go go!
We hadn’t yet registered for the race and got our first shocker of the day. The race day registration was expensive. For me, the race day registration fees was $250. OMG. Regular rate was $175 online till 1 week before the race (which I stupidly missed due to my own fault). Garima was racing the Sprint Distance Duathlon which was significantly cheaper, but had the same race day surcharge ($80 online versus $115). But still, a 43% RACE DAY FEES INCREASE?!?! HOLY SMOKES BATMAN!

OK. Rant over.

This is a big event for the Somersault series with races of all distances happening in wave starts throughout the day. The first race (Iron 226 triathlon) begins at 6:30 am and the last race (Evening Marathon) begins at 5:30pm…with finishers all the way till midnight! I can’t imagine how complex it would be to organize something like this.

My race was squeezed in to start at 9:30am but Garima started at 8:00 am. This meant I could cheer her on during her race, and after she finished, she would have to suffer through sitting in the sun waiting for me for 5 hours…no overlapping parts at all.

OK...so if you want to skip the boring race day details, go right to the bottom to our pics from the Montreal trip!

The Good:

  • I won.
  • Very spectator friendly race.
  • Generally well-organized/co-ordinated. 
  • The race was on a Saturday which meant me and Garima were still able to enjoy the rest of the weekend heading to Montreal!!
  • I still had fun! Sort of.

The Not So Good:

  • Bad, bad roads. Bumpy all the time, and people weave left and right all the way without warning to avoid the potholes and cracks. I don’t blame them not looking back before weaving either…that gets tiring when you have to do that every 10s over a 15 km loop that you have to do multiple times. My aerobar pads slowly tilted down in the first hour, making my elbows a good 3-5cm lower than where they started. After the race, I found out that my saddle was also considerably tilted down…this is a first. I have a lot of neck and butt pain 3 days after! This road is so much worse than the last time I did this race in 2012.
  • So windy…like tents-and-signs-falling-off type windy…we witnessed this as the medical tent blew away after I finished the race! There was tailwind during the biggest 2 downhills on each lap, and headwind / crosswind all other times. Everyone I spoke to was disappointed with their bike time this year..by like 10 mins! 
  • Lost my 2nd L’Arabar snack, lost an electrolyte tablet, and leaked a chocolate gel in my hands going over bumps!! Ended up 200kCal in debt compared to what I planned, despite carrying some backup.


  • Dinged my front derailleur over a nasty bump that dropped my chain right from 50-12 to a 34-12 gear. At first I thought I’d just suck it up and keep pedaling as hard as I can..but my cadence went up to 120 RPM for the next 15 mins. After comparing my lap splits, I gauge losing about 1-1.5 minutes in the outbound section of lap 3 due to sheer inability to pedal any faster on that gear. I eventually had to stop twice to manually shift my chain up to the big ring. 1 more minute down the drain as I couldn’t pedal at that RPM for the remaining 50km!
  • This is really my fault in the end, I knew that my front derailleur was dodgy, and I was just lazy in doing a cable replacement as the internal cable routing on this bike can be highly aggravating!! Shoulda fixed it, coulda maintained my speed, woulda been 2-3 mins faster for free. Shoulda coulda woulda.
  • Did you notice the empty bottle cage behind my seat? Yep, I dropped my flat kit (was in the bottle) as well. Along with spare CO2 cartidges, valve extenders, tire levers, etc. I went looking for it afterwards, to no avail. I might as well have a hole in my wallet these days.
      Run:
  • Running through a little gravel and lots of uneven grass in both transitions. Long run till from transition area to mount/dismount (~1:15 each way, with the timing mat half way) No T1 time.
  • Once I got my running shoes on, I quickly went to gauge how far back I was off the leader. I’d been keeping a time check on him on each bike lap and he didn’t seem to gain time on me other than when I had to stop or had the chain mishap. My legs felt good and I was surprised to find myself only 1.5 mins behind him after 3 kms, and I had caught him by 5 kms. 
  • Then the next string of weird things happened....i had some new cramping pain under my right big toe. Strange. It got worse as the race progressed, but I was able to phase it out. When I took off my shoe after the race, I found a big piece of packing tape and grass stuck to my socks. "Thank you for the flying dismount and running without shoes in transition", the big blister on my foot said.

  • I saved my biggest mistake for the last 7-8 kms. Once I realized I had a comfortable gap on the 2nd and 3rd place, I closed shop and shut it down. I was frustrated and now didn't have any motivation to push hard. After doing the first 13 kms at a good 4:13 min/km pace, I just lost the will to keep at it. I slowed down, took it slightly easier just enough to maintain a good lead. But perhaps the biggest lesson I learnt was that towards the end,  it still hurt just as bad as if I had run fast all along!! Once you slow down, whether deliberately or not, the legs just wouldn't wan't to wake up to run fast again...even if you left something in the tank. I realized this in the last few kms when I tried to pick up the pace but just embarrassed myself. Run till you blow up, or reach the finish line, is the new motto!

                                                                                                               Image belongs to: www.zoomphoto.ca 

Finish line video (@ 1:51:11): 

The Bad:

  • Race day registration fees. I won’t pretend to know what it takes to put on a race, but I can only compare with other events I’ve done where I’ve had to register on the day of the race. Paying a 43% premium on race day doesn’t sound right. 
  • Road surface sucks. Best Bike Split says I lost 4-4.5 mins because of this road surface…holy crap.
  • The mental fart on the run really did me in. I lost 5 mins in the last 8 kms because I just didn't need to push anymore!

Garima's Race: 

Garima's race was short and sweet. She had a similar slow bike ride because of the tough wind+road conditions, but she did have 2 very good runs. She finished the  3 km Run, 30 km Bike, 5 km course in 1:40 and finished as 4th woman overall, 1st in her AG and 13th in the whole field! I snapped some pics of her before my race began later in the day.




Post-Race:

There was a lot of uncertainty about when the awards were going to be. Nobody had a real good idea. So painfully Garima waited for another 2 hours (she had already been waiting for 5 hours while I raced!) and we shared some fresh BBQ burgers and pasta (put on for only the half iron and full iron participants…) and I got a massage. There was a little subtle announcement which Garima happened to pay attention to, and as she walked over to the Finish line to ask if they were doing the awards….she was handed my medal and prize pack. That was it. 

We saw an unused podium nearby so we grabbed the chance to take our own pics!


Did I mention I won? As a nice irony, I got a gift certificate as prize to a local Ottawa shop for…a free bike tune up. Well, this way I can at least get my derailleur fixed and my saddle/aerobars adjusted!!
Saddle tilted down...
Arm pads rotated downwards...
 Then we went to Carleton to re-live some college memories and eat at the university cafeteria. This place was going bonkers during frosh week at this time of the year!


Too much food. Not enough workout.
Now you know how they get the Freshman 15!
I'll leave with some great time we had at Monteal,which is definitely a more bike friendly place than Toronto!!


Next race is the Epic Tour Halton 140 km bike ride!! I promised to do this ride with Garima as it is going to be her longest ever bike ride. Should be fun!


Keep pedaling.