On The Road To Ironman

DCRainMaker Giveaway

2011-01-14T06:35:00.000-05:00

Stop by his blog for a chance to win a brand new Garmin 310XT!!

www.dcrainmaker.com

Good luck everyone :)

One year already

2010-11-08T08:14:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the 41th New York city marathon, one year ago I was there sitting at the starting line waiting for 10:20 so I could start my first marathon. It seems like it was yesterday, I can't believe how fast life goes by.

I hope that everyone who was running the marathon yesterday enjoyed it as much as I did last year. And for all the first timer, keep running, it is such an awesome sport :)

Since the marathon I completed my first half Ironman, and then a second one. I qualified for the world championship next year and I ran a couple of half marathon, triathlon, 15k, 10k etc. A year full with awesome races, and I am already looking froward 2011. I love the sport of triathlon so much, and I really hope that I will be able to keep at it for many years still!

October is over

2010-11-05T08:50:00.001-04:00

October is over, a good running month, not bad swimming and sucky riding ...

October's totals:
Bike:	7h 30m 11s - 189.45 KM
Run:	20h 48m 04s - 228.09 KM
Swim:	8h 50m - 21900 M
Stretching:	2h 00m
Yoga:	4h 30m

I need to keep my running and swimming there, but I got to get back on that bike dammit. I know that spring is far but still I don't want to lose my bike fitness.

I am not dead ;)

2010-10-26T09:32:00.000-04:00

I know I haven't post much lately. The training is going really well so far for fall, I am really happy with my running. Real life is taking a ton of times also, and decided to get involved with the triathlon club and the organisation of the triathlon next summer so I have a ton of things to do, which cut my free time to post.

I decided to go with a running focus winter, I will try to improve my half marathon as much as I can during the winter so that I can cut some time on my half Ironman next summer :) BUT I need to make sure to keep my bike speed, and I must try to get faster in the water too.

Overall a busy winter is in front of me, which is cool since I do not race anyway ;)

October Timex Global Trainer Giveaway

2010-10-07T05:27:00.000-04:00

DC Rainmaker is giving away a Timex Global Trainer, I never had the chance to try one so I can't comment how good it is but I am pretty sure it is. Stop by his blog and enter the giveaway.

DC Rainmaker

Good luck everyone!

How much of a race result is psychological?

2010-10-05T08:40:00.000-04:00

While running with a friend a couple days ago we started talking about race result, trying to figure out a plan to get better result in our next race. At some point I told him that I thought that at least 50% of a race effort comes from the head, and the rest comes from the body.

I know that not everyone can get out there and run 2h05 marathon, but I still think that for most of us our head limits us more than our body.

When we go out there for lets say a half marathon and we start with the idea that we will run it in lets say 1h40, do we just convince ourself to not push harder than that? Is racing without a watch the solution? Or should we train more at high speed so our head gets used to run/bike/swim while suffering.

I wish I had the answer, maybe with more experience I will eventually find it. If you have an idea please leave a comment, I need to get faster for next season ;)

Team Trakkers

2010-10-01T07:44:00.003-04:00

Trakkers is what I call an amazing product, it is a real time GPS tracking device. An amazing tool when you go out on a training ride or run and you want your loved one to know where you are in real time. And an even more amazing tool for when you are out there racing and you want your friends and family to follow your race in real time. You can also use it to track you training and racing informations, and see them after the training/race.

If you want to see by your self here is there a link to their web site. Trakkers

For the third year now the application is up if you want to be part of there team. Here is the link to the application form

I will be trying for the third year to get into the team. Maybe 2011 will be my lucky year finally ;)

They have some amazing athletes on there team, one of them is Sonja who is heading to Kona soon. Stop by her blog and wish her luck :)

Some random pics from the Syracuse Half Ironman

2010-09-29T10:59:00.001-04:00

I took the plunge and bought the photo gallery of my Half Ironman, it was a bit expensive but I figured that it would be cool to have a nice a souvenir for when I will get old ... well older ;)

Heading to the Long Course World Championship Triathlon in 2011!

2010-09-28T14:29:00.000-04:00

Yep you read right, I qualified to represent the Canada at the 2011 Long Course World Championship.

It is still far away, but I am happy because it gives me a race to train for even if the season is over. 13 months or so from now, I can't say I won't have the time to train for it ;)

You know anyone who did Silverman? If so is it that hard? Since the World's will be on the same course, I figured I could ask.

Off season!

2010-09-25T14:49:00.000-04:00

Off season is knocking at my door. At first I had the idea of running another half marathon before calling it done for 2010 but I decided otherwise finally.

2010 has been a good season for me overall. Here is my recap:

I ran 2 10k, PRed in the second one by a good margin. It was kinda downhill though, so I can't really count it as a PR ;)

I ran my first stand alone 5k ever, which gave me a nice PR.

I ran a stand alone 15k for the first time also, another PR ;)

I ran two half marathon, PRed in the first one and ran the second one as a training run.

I also did 4 triathlon, I PRed in the one in my backyard at Lac Beauport. I competed in the Drummondville Oly distance. I also completed my first half Ironman ever which gave me a spot for the world championship 2011 in long distance triathlon (4km swim, 120km bike and 30km run). I then completed my season with Syracuse 70.3 with a nice PR last week end.

Overall I am really happy with my season, and even if my running gave me some nice PR during the summer I need to work on it bad because I got disappointed by it in both my HIM.

So my goals for the winter are:

Swimming at least 3 days a week, more would be better, we will see.
Biking 3 days a week to work on my FTP
Run more, and then even more. I will try a new program which will get me running 6 days a week.
Lose 10 pounds, running like that should help ;)

I will start the off season kinda slowly though, biking will be easy for the next couple of weeks depending of the weather since I sold my Fortius and I am still looking for a new trainer.

I will try to get my hands on the new LeMond Revolution Bike Trainer, it really seems like an awesome trainer from what I read so far. I will keep you posted about this as soon as I get some news.

Syracuse Half Ironman

2010-09-21T11:04:00.003-04:00

Last Sunday was the initial Syracuse Half Ironman. Me and my family headed there Friday. Saturday morning was family time so we headed to the zoo to visit a bit in the morning. Then in the afternoon I headed to the expo for pre race meeting, packet pickup, shopping etc.

After that we headed to the transition zone to drop the Speed Concept and then we drove the bike course to get a feel of what it would be on Sunday morning. The more I was driving on the course the more I was nervous about the ride. There was hills everywhere!!! One thing you can say about that bike course, it is far from being flat ;)

Sunday morning

On Sunday morning I woke up early, the hotel was at 20 minutes or so from the transition zone and I wanted to be sure to be there early. I had some oatmeal for breakfast and a coffee, then I woke up my wife and kids and we got ready.

I was REALLY happy that we left the room early because there was a ton of traffic on the way, I would say easy 30 minutes wait. When I finally got to the parking I was at like 10 minutes walk from the transition zone. I finally got there just to hear that it was closing in 5 minutes, I rushed through my routine to make sure everything was laid out for both transition. Finally they postponed the start by 15 minutes since there was too many people still jammed in the traffic.

The swim

I was in the second wave of the 40-44 men and I was hoping for a 40 minutes swim at best. I said to a friend that if I had a perfect day I could probably swim a 40 minutes 2k. We jumped in the water and started swimming, after what felt like 2 minutes we started passing green cap which was the from wave before us. At first I figured that it was someone having a bad day, but when I saw a second one then a third I knew I had a good day.

Then I saw a couple of yellow cap, and then some purple. At that point I almost thought I was a good swimmer for once. Now I know how it feels like to pass people on the swim.

When I reached the first yellow buoy I felt really good and thought that I just started to swim and I was already at the first turn. The turn was crowded, even if we had wave start it was still crowded. For the second part of the swim I still felt great and was drafting from a bunch of guys in front of me. We were still passing people left and right. When we finally got to the second yellow buoy there was a guy who was holding it. I hope everything was ok with him.

We then turned and started heading back to the beach, still I was feeling awesome and I could have swim all day long.

We finally reached the beach, when I got out my son yelled at me "Check your time" I was really happy to see that I was at 40 minutes or so for my swim, first of the three done with a time that made me happy, yeah :)

I then proceeded to the wetsuit stripper, dammit this is something I could get used to. When I started running after the stripper I lost my goggle, someone was kind enough to grab them for me and gave them to me. Then I restarted running and dropped my swim cap ... WTF was up with me at that point. Anyway, grabbed my swim cap and run to the transition zone which was a long way from the lake.

I am usually in the last 15% of the swim but today I got out of the water in the top 45% :)

Transition 1

I decided to put socks on for the ride, it was cold and I knew I would need them so I took the time to put them on. Running without the shoes but with the socks kinda ruined that purpose since when I jumped on the bike my socks were wet but still, they kept me for having frozen feet I guess.

The bike

When I got on the bike I didn't know what to expect, the day prior to the race I drove the entire bike course to see how it was and I was scared of all the hills. It seems like there was always a hill.

So when I jumped on the bike that morning I was really unsure of what kind of bike split I could come up with.

The first 3km or so were downhill which was nice, besides the railroad which was really dangerous. When we reached Jamesville we got to the start of the first hill, nothing too long but it had a good % still. I decided to not push too much while going up the hills and to keep my energy to push on the flat/downhill instead so I just cruised up the hill. Then when we got up it was flat for maybe a km, I hammered it down to pass as many people as I could pass.

Since my wave was the 19th of 21 so I had a ton of people to pass on the bike which was really cool. Then we got to the hill, it was around 10km(6 mile) long so once again I cruised my way up. When we finally reached the top of the hill it was really cold and we were in the fog which was really special to ride. It was a little bit more dangerous, but so much fun to ride.

I knew that my family would be at the hill where we were crossing the 20 and I was happy to see them there. My son ran by me for a while yelling, I almost fell like the riders in the Tour de France going up a hill ;)

After that I was all by myself for a long while, I knew I wouldn't see them again before at least 60km. I tried to get into my best racing bubble and passed as many people as I could.

It was the first time that I was in a triathlon with that many people, and it was really cool because I always had someone to pass :) There was a couple of riders which I pass and they re pass me over and over. I remember Liam, Steve and Lucy for sure. Also a guy with a nice Cervello whom I couldn't see his name and another one with a black Trek TTX.

After maybe 60km or so I decided to check my average, I was pretty sure I would have an ok average but nothing great. To my biggest surprise I was at almost 31km/h which made me really happy since I knew that he last 15km was mostly downhill and that it should help me get that average up.

When we passed the 20 again I was hoping to see my family there but I didn't, I wondered what happened since my wife told me she would be there. Maybe they went for food or something and missed me who knew. Anyway I just kept going knowing I would see them at the finish line.

Even if that was the downhill part of the course it was still hilly. Most of that course was rolling, with some HUGE hills to go up here and there.

They said that this race had the most challenging bike course of the Ironman 70.3 series, since I haven't done them all I can't confirm this but it was not the easiest course for sure.

We finished the last kilometers with some rolling again and once I got to the top of the last hill my family was there waiting for me. Then it was time to remove the shoes and head to transition again. I felt great for the entire bike course and I could have kept going without any problem which was a really nice feeling on race day :)

Transition 2

Once again I decided to get some dry socks on, I had three pair of socks with me. At that point I had the weirdest idea of putting on my compression socks. I tried for maybe 30 seconds before deciding that it would take me an hour to get those things on with my feet all wet. So I grabbed my other socks, but them on then my running shoes and off I went. I had to go pee, but the porta potty were all full with people waiting in line. So I started running instead.

The run

Accoring to the profile of the run it was mostly downhill for the first 7-8km then mostly flat up till the finish. So my plan was to try to get some nice split on the downhill while not pushing too hard and then settle into a pace when we would hit the flat section.

As they said the first section was downhill but with some uphill here and there which was more than enough to make those splits harder than I thought that they would be.

During the first km I stopped to pee. Then I started getting the km in. There was people all the way from jamesville to Syracuse, not a ton but alwayssome people here and there who were cheering for us which was cool.

Every time I hit an aid station I grabbed water, I had two gels with me and decided to get one in after 3km or so, thinking that I would have the other one after 12km. The run was tough, I wanted to hit a 5:15/km pace for the entire run but there was no way I could hold onto that pace sadly. I tried to convince myself to run faster at almost every split, but I had a hard time.

At some point around the 5th mile I wanted to walk the aid station, but told myself I was not allowed to walk a damn aid station before mile 10, which I did. At mile 10.5 or so I walked the aid station and I stopped to pee once again. I guess that the fact that the weather was colder than usual didn't help since I was probably sweating less than usual.

From mile 7 or so to 11 we were on Erie blvd which is as straight as you can have a straight street and it was tough on the mental to see that long in front of us.

Around mile 11 we finally turned on another street, the nicest part of changing the scenary came with a false flat going up for a mile and a half maybe. Then we turned left with maybe 1 mile to go and it was downhill and then flat to the finish chute.

My son was waiting for me maybe 250 meters from the finish line and he ran with me behind the other spectators since WTC doesn't allow family member to run with us anymore.

I finally crossed the finish line in 5:34:38 with a huge smile on my face.

I just love this sport :)

Every time I do a long event like this one I always think how long even if they like that, those days must be for the families coming to cheer on us. I am really happy that my family was there with me, and for that I thank them :)

Swim : 40:43 (97/276 AG 852/2098 OA)
T1 : 3:52
Bike : 2:49:13 (62/276 AG 458/2098 OA)
T2 : 3:19
Run : 1:57:31 (102/276 AG 812/2098 OA)

Total : 5:34:38 (77/276 AG 581/2098 OA)

Getting ready for Sunday

2010-09-15T06:40:00.000-04:00

I am getting ready for Sunday, this is my A race of the season, the race for which I trained for the last 6 months. Yesterday I installed my new Renn disk on the bike, I will have to get out tonight and test it out, just to make sure everything is working fine before the race. Then tomorrow will be the last day at work. After that it will be packing all my stuff, putting everything into the car with the bike and heading to Syracuse on Friday.

If I said I am not getting nervous I would lie, so I won't say it!

This will be my second half Ironman, but my first official one since the other one was not the official distance. I am aiming for a sub 6hours, but the bike course seems to be a tough one. I will try to not push too much on the bike and make sure I still have a lot of energy for the run. I also need to eat more this time around, last time I didn`t focus on that and I lacked energy at the end of the half marathon.

Here is how the bike will looks like for the race :)

My bib number for the race on Sunday is #1727 in case you want to follow me on the Ironman.com website

Marathon des deux rives - Half marathon

2010-09-02T10:35:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday was the Quebec city marathon. I decided to run it as part of my training for Syracuse 70.3 which is in less then three weeks now.

I woke up early on Sunday morning, got my coffee and had a good breakfast, the start was at 8h30 and it was a 20 minutes car ride or so so no stress. My friend Patrick, who was running his first half marathon ever, picked me up in the morning and we headed to the start.

Once there we walked around and chatted with some friends. I saw Genevieve who was also running her first half marathon. I think it is really cool to see people getting into the sport, and I really hope that even more of my friends will get into this wonderful life style :)

Twenty minutes or so before the start Patrick had to go to the porta potty, so I told him I would wait for him. But we never had the chance to meet before the start, so I headed to the starting line. At that point I still had no idea how hard I would run that half mary. But I knew it was a training run and that there was no way I would PR since I swam 2.5km and rode 75km the day before.

I was way in the back at the start which was cool, instead of starting with all the speedy I was with the people who were there to enjoy the day. When I, finally, crossed the starting line I decided to push a bit and see how the legs were feeling. For the first 4km or so I had a PR`pace, and it made me wonder "Can I really PR today?"

By the time we crossed the bridge I saw Patrick in front of me. I joined him and we chatted a bit, his pace was ok so I decided to stick with him for a while. Around the 8th km or so Patrick tried to pass behind me to reach the aid station and he kicked me or something. I almost fell and I told him that was the reason why I wouldn't run a 1h30 half today. We had a laugh about it and kept running. At the 11th km or so Patrick told me he couldn't keep up with me at that speed and that he would just slow down a bit.

At that point I had a decision to make, pushing hard and try to make a time not too bad even if I knew I wouldn't beat my east or stay with him and just enjoy a really nice day. I decided to stay with him and try to push him so he would finish with a good time.

For the next 5km or so we had a slower pace by still not too bad. But at the 16th it started to be really tough for him. He told me that if I was not there he would probably just sit and relax a bit. My daughter was at the 5km aid station volunteering, so I stopped to talk with her for a couple of seconds and drink some water. When I looked at Patrick at that point I knew I would have to push him to get the last 5km at a not too bad pace.

By that time the sun was really hot, the wind was not that strong and there was no shade at all on the course. So we had to suffer our way through the last km. His longest run was 18km which was correct to make sure he would complete the run, but still he had a hard time with the last couple of km. I pushed him through them, and tried to push him so he would sprint by the end. But he had nothing left in the tank, he did a mini sprint of maybe 25 feet, and that almost made him puke. At that point I knew I pushed him at his limit ;)

I completed the half with a time of 1:51:30, which was 8 minutes slower than my PR. But I was happy to run it with Patrick for his first!

Overall I had a really good day, and an awesome training run!

The ProBar - Yummy :)

2010-08-23T10:50:00.000-04:00

Last month my local bike store started selling those bars, I grabbed a couple to try them out as I am always looking for stuff to eat while I am out there on the bike.

So far I tried the Fruition Cran-Raspberry and the Blueberry flavor. All I can say is that I fell in love with those bars. They are just right, easy to eat while riding and small enough that you can pack a lot in your back pocket ;)

Sadly my LBS don't sell all the flavors, so I tried to find an online retailer who sells them in Canada, or who ships to Canada. Not a ton of luck on that side yet, but Mountain Equipment Coop sells some of them too so I ordered from them (damn they do not ship fast BTW)

I wish they had more peanut free products, with my intolerance it is sometimes hard to find good bar without any peanuts. I ordered myself some Whole Berry Blast, 370 calories in one single bar and no peanuts should be nice. Anyway as soon as I will have tested some more flavors I will let you know.

Anyway, I am planning to feed myself on The ProBar for my incoming Half Ironman in Syracuse in less than four weeks ... dammit in it getting close ;)

Here is a link to their web site if you want to check it out http://theprobar.com/

Enjoy :)

Race report - Triathlon Drummondville

2010-08-18T11:48:00.001-04:00

Since the start was at 11:25 and the triathlon was at maybe 1h30 or so drive from my place, I woke up as usual, had breakfast then packed the car and drove there.

Once there I got to packet pickup and Steve was there, guess that the decided to arrive around the same time. I got into the tent, grabbed my stuff and then went to the t-shirt table. Once again they didn't have all the size left when I arrived, and their t-shirt where huge. I grabbed a medium and it looks like I have a large. I guess they tough that triathlon was a sport where everyone is oversize.

After that I headed into the transition zone and prepare my spot, we had a rack just for us the old people ;) Once my spot was ready I headed out for a little run to warm up. I wanted to bike too but I got squeezed in time and figured it would be better not to be late at the start.

My friend Steve was starting 10 minutes after me and I knew he had a good chance to pass me before I finish my swim, so I tried to push as hard as I could to not make it happened.

At first I was with some people and I tried to stay with them. It worked for most of the first loop, but when we were coming back in the current I lost them and after the buoy there was no way to get back to them. So I finished my swim all by myself.

By the end of the second loop I started seeing people from the wave behind me and I was scared that Steve would pass me, I got passed by maybe 10 people from what I count see. And I knew that he was a good enough swimmer to get out of the water in the top 10.

I just tried to swim as fast as I could to get out of the water. Once I approached the exit I heard a volunteer yelling that it was slippery, and slippery it was dammit. I almost fell while getting out of the water.

I really need to improve my swim, this is usually what kills my race. I can make up some time on the bike and run but the swim always put me so much in the back of the pack that it is hard to have a good time overall.

Once I reached my bike I put my helmet on and started feeling dizzy a little bit. I took a couple of seconds to let it pass, then I headed out of the transition zone. A transition without a wetsuit is always so fast, but there is no way I gain much than when I swim with a wetsuit.

I jumped on the bike with one thing on my mind, get back some time on the faster swimmer. At first I got pass by a coupe of guy from the wave after me and I tried to stay with them. It worked for a while but they were fast and at some point I lost them. I was not drafting of them, but trying to stay in range.

I tried to cheer on everyone from the club as I was seeing them on the course, and besides that I just push hard and tried to keep a good average.

When I got off the bike I was disappointed with my bike split, I had no idea what was my avg or exact time since I didn't want to check but I felt like I had not much power during that leg.

I need to rethink my training, I feel like I do not have power on the bike this year and I can't say why.

Transition 2 went as smoothly as the first one, I loved my Zoot Ultra Race, as easy as it gets to put them on.

I tried to get into that 10km with a sub 45 min time in mind. I wish I could have push to get it but sadly I didn't have enough juice left in the tank to get it.

This course is mostly flat so it is an easy one to get a good run, which I did but not as fast as I expected. The only problem with it is that it is a 4 loop course, and every time you have to turn 180 degrees you lose some speed.

Not much to say about the run itself, it went as smoothly as it could with what I had left in the tank. I cheered on my friend from the club as much as I could, thanks the volunteer on my last lap and finished the race with a nice last split ... guess I still had some juice finally because I pushed the pace for that last split ;)

Here are my results from last year sprint on the same course.
Swim - 20:15
T1 - 1:31
Bike - 33:02
T2 - 1:34
Run - 23:21

And here are my results from this year Oly, same course but twice as long. 2 loop of the swim course, 4 of the bike course and 4 of the run course.
Swim - 36:39
T1 - 1:38
Bike - 1:06:15
T2 - 1:36
Run - 45:38

I finished with a time of 2:31:52
Overall - 65/104
Age group (40-44) - 13/18

My time was 5 min or so slower than my best Oly, but this one was not wetsuit legal which cost me probably that 5 minutes. Overall a good race for me, but I really need to find a way to get faster in the water.

Today is giveaway day :)

2010-08-05T09:34:00.000-04:00

DC Rainmaker is giving away what I should call the best GPS device out there for triathletes, stop by his blog and enter the giveaway.

DC Rainmaker

Good luck everyone!

Post HIM thoughts

2010-07-27T11:21:00.000-04:00

My first HIM is in the books, I have another one in September and I want to get there as ready as possible.

Last week end I was hoping to finish under 6 hours, sadly I didn't, not by much but still. Now I am sitting here wondering what I can change in my training, what I should adjust to make sure I will get under 6 in September.

Do I need more long ride, or more long run. Or do I need both. During the last months I tried to do bricks as much as I could, now I am wondering if it was the best idea.

When I knew I was to run after a bike ride I was going a little bit easier on the bike. And then my run after was not as fast as usual. Was it the best way to train for the HIM, I wonder now.

I still think that I should have been faster a bit, and since the last 10km of the run was tough I wonder if it could be because my bike training was not good enough. I didn't finish the bike ride with the feeling that I was looking for, I was hoping to get off the bike as fresh as I am after a 40km ride usually. But it didn't quite went that way, when I got off the bike I was feeling good but tired.

Anyway, enough with my rambling, I need to fix my plan and my training to get ready for a sub 6 in Syracuse :)

First Half Ironman - In the books!

2010-07-26T18:12:00.000-04:00

It is done! Yesterday I completed my first half Ironman ever. Atually it was not a real half Ironman, the distance were off a bit. The swim was 2.3km, the bike 90km and the run 21km. But it was close enough to the real thing for me to consider that my first HIM is done :)

Since this was my first Half Ironman I tried to give me all the chances so we slept at the hotel the night before. My start was at 7h10 and it is almost a three hours drive from my place. I woke up around 5am, got ready and tried to eat a bit but the nerves were killing me at that point and the food didn't want to get in much. Anyway I forced an oatmeal and a yogurt down and figured it would be ok for now. After that we packed the car and went to the site.

I grabbed a gel before the swim start, trying to get some more calories in.

At the beginning I knew that the swim portion was not where I could gain time so I just went in there with one thing on my mind. I wanted to swim the best that I could without pushing too hard and burn too much energy for the rest of the day. I knew it would be a long day and that I had to keep as much as energy as I could.

The start was a beach start, I let the fast swimmer outrun me at the beginning and jump behind them. The swim course was not really intuitive, we had two loop to do but it was two different loop. Something like a 800 meters loop and a 1500 meters loop.

Heading out the winds was mostly head wind and we had a lot of big waves on the lake. At some point I couldn't see the buoys because the waves were too high. I guess that all those waves didn't help my already awesome form in the water ;)

Anyway, I tried to find some feet but no luck in there, everyone was either too fast or too slow for me. Mostly too fast though!

After maybe 1800 meters or so I heard someone yell while I was swimming. I stopped and saw that women next to me. I asked her if she was alright and she told me that she had a cramp. There was no kayak close by so I stayed with her a little bit waiting for her cramp to pass. When she told me that sh was ok I restarted swimming and completed my swim.

We got out of the water together and she thanked me to stop by her in the water. I told her that I was happy that she was ok and then proceeded to the transition zone. I saw my wife and my daughter and smiled to them while running out of the water.

I can't explain why I was that slow. I am not usually a fast swimming but I never swam slower than 2:30 during training for the same kind of distance so it is hard for me to explain why I was that slow today.

I knew from the start that the bike course was not perfect for me, a lot of hills which is not really my strength on the bike. But whatever I chose this race to be my first HIM and I had to deal with the course.

My plan on the bike was to keep the HR at 140 AVG, and I did exactly that. I wanted to get a bike split faster than 30km/h but I knew that if I pushed too hard then I would pay for it on the run. So I kept my HR at 140 and tried to push as much as could with that.

At the 30th km I saw the race leader, that meant he had 30km on me at that point. This is a lot mid race if you know what I mean :p I wanted to get back to my friend Jacques on the bike so we could run together but I never made it back to him. He was 10 minutes faster than me on the swim and we basically had the same ride so it was a no go for that goal.

I had an avg of 29.2km/h at the turn around which didn't quite make me happy, I was too slow. So I tried to push it on the way back. At first it went ok but around km 60 or so I was mostly alone with no one to pass and I got into an easier pace for a while. when I got to the 70th km it was the turn around of the Oly and there was a ton of bikes around me on the road which gave me some strength in the legs. I had people that I could try to pass again.

At one point Steve passed me, we talked a little bit and I told him it was tough. He then went away trying to complete his Oly as fast as possible. This guy is damn fast so I was not unhappy when I saw he just left me there like I was sitting on the side of the road ;)

The rest of the ride was ok, legs were tired but I knew it was about to end, well for that part.

When I saw the transition line I saw my wife and my daughter on the side of the road cheering on me and taking picture. I got out of my shoes and got ready to jump off the bike and run into transition. I then realized that maybe the legs wouldn't be too happy about it so I got a little bit slower than usual to make sure.

1900 feet of climbing sure are not easy ;)

I can't say if it was my run training, my bike training or both but my run didn't go as planned.

I was hoping to run a 1h50 or sub half mary but the legs didn't feel the
same way.

I got out of the transition zone and I had some good speed so I pushed a bit, after 1km I got a cramp in both quad which stuck with me for maybe 500 meters. That made me realize that running too fast was not a good idea at that point.

I can't say if this was because I didn't drink enough on the bike but those cramps were not welcome at the start of the run for sure.

My run was mostly at the speed I wanted it for the first 5km or so, but after that it started to fade slowly. The first two loop were not too bad, at the start of the third one though it started to be harder and harder.

At least on the third loop the cloud were back and it gave us a nice shade, because up to there I was getting hot. I ran the third loop, with some walking break at the aid station but nothing too long.

Then the fourth loop came, I knew it was my last and that I should push through it to get some time back. But at that point it was really tough on the body.

For the first time since the beginning I walked the hill on the last loop. I didn't had much left and even if I didn't want to I did it.

Then I was in the final stretch, a little bit over 1km to go to cross the finish line. I then had another cramp in my left quad, at that point there was no way I could run on it though, so I stooped and figured I needed to stretch it. Grabbed my feet and started the movement to stretch the quad. It seems that this really PISSED my hamstring because it decided to cramps too.

I that point I was there standing on that stop sign, trying to find a way to get ride of both cramps. I started massaging my leg and hoped that I had some massaging talents. After a little while the cramps left me alone, and I restarted running, if we can call that running at that point. I was mostly running with my right leg and jumping on the left one because the cramps were still hurting.

I did that for 200-300 meters maybe then it seems like it was better because I was able to run to the finish line. I crossed the line with a huge smile, well I think I was smiling ;)

Half Ironman done

Finish time 6:11:41
Swim 1:05:26
Transition 1 2:20
Bike 3:00:32
Transition 2 1:45
Run 2:01:26

Can you say Half Ironman?

2010-07-09T11:02:00.000-04:00

Yeah I finally made the decision. I signed up for a half ironman in July and for my A race on September 19th.

The plan is to use the July 25th one as a preparation for my A race in September. In between I will run a couple of Oly and a half marathon as part of the training.

I would lie if I said I am not nervous about going into longer distance, but it is a good nervous feeling. I did some longer ride lately. The longest being up to 140km, one long brick and a lot of 16-20km run. This week end will be my last long workout week end, but I might have to work both days so I am not too sure what kind of workouts I will get done. Then next week I will try to squeeze in something kinda long and then go on taper for the entire week before the half. Lets just hope that a week is enough of a taper for an half ironman :)

Forerunner 110 giveaway

2010-07-05T08:36:00.000-04:00

Stop by DC Rainmaker's blog, he is having a great giveaway. A brand new Garmin Forerunner 110 :)

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2010/07/garmin-forerunner-110-giveaway.html

Good luck :)

Long run and ride

2010-06-28T09:13:00.000-04:00

Saturday morning me and some friends from the triathlon club got together for a nice swim at the lake. Water temperature was really nice once again. We swam 2.2km or so in 45 minutes, nothing fast but I never said I was a fast swimmer so ;)

After that I had planned to go for a long run, so I headed back home put my running gear on and went for a 20km run before lunch. The legs were a bit tired from Friday's brick and the plan was to run an easy Z1/2 run, so that is exactly what I did.

Yesterday was the long ride of the week end, once again with some friends from the triathlon club. We went for a 100km ride easy once again.

Here are some pictures of our ride.

I always love riding next to the rivers, it feels like vacation every time :)

Ramping the km for my HIM in July

2010-06-26T17:12:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was a longish brick, nothing huge but still. I had a 70km ride in the mountain with a 2000 feet of climbing followed by a 10km run.

Overall it went pretty well, which is giving me confidence for July 25th :)

Here is a picture of the view at some point while I was riding.

Today I had a long run, and tomorrow is long ride day. I guess that going back to work on Monday will be good to get some rest :P

Triathlon Lac Beauport - Race report

2010-06-20T16:52:00.001-04:00

Yesterday was the first triathlon of the season, the Lac Beauport triathlon.

Since the lake is 15 minutes or so from my place I arrived there early and grabbed a nice spot in transition. Then I chatted with people from the triathlon club and with friends who were doing the race. At some point I went and rode 5km or so with Steve, then we went for a 2-3km run and after I finally got my wetsuit on I jumped in the water for a couple of 100 meters swim.

My plan for the swim was to do everything possible to beat last year's time. I placed myself in a way that I would be into the traffic at the beginning, and it worked ;) I got kicked, punched and grabbed in place that you wouldn't believe.

Sighting went pretty well, I have the feeling that I swam pretty straight versus last year. Since there was a lot of waves I swam with people from the start to the end. Trying to find a pair of feet to hold to, but no luck with that. I basically had to swim the entire km alone, oh well life is not always easy ;)

I got out of the water, and hit my watch when I reached the beach. Not a bad time, but not as fast as I expected. I thought that maybe today I would finally swim my km under 20, but no way. I still have to work on my swimming to reach that goal.

Then it was into transition one, I had some problems with my suit, it got stuck on my heels. Didn't lose much time on that though. I then grabbed the bike, ran to the exit and jumped on it. New bike and not a lot of practice this year made it a tough one. I lost times trying to get my feet on the pedals/shoes and then getting up to speed.

I had no idea how my biking would go today, and I had my new bike on which I rode a total of 35km before this race. I was a little anxious, not too sure how it would go. I was pretty sure that the bike wouldn't be where I would gain time this year, but I almost finish with a split 3 minutes faster than last year, which made me really happy!

I gave everything that I had on the bike, I couldn't see my speed since I didn't put my watch in the quick release (I was scared to lose it during the swim so I used the bracelet without the quick release) So I just push hard, and harder. At some point during the bike I got a cramp in my right calf, happened twice to be exact. Both time while going up a hill standing on the bike mashing the pedals as hard as I could.

It worked fine, bike felt really good. My legs were not at 100% though, I guess that 2 days is not enough I could still feel that they were tired. I got a peak of 65km/h which was not too bad :) The bike handled really good in the wind, and in the turn also.

Transition two went almost flawlessly, I jumped off the bike and passed like 10 person while entering the transition zone. When I got to my transition spot there was a bike in my spot, which made me lose a couple of seconds but not much. Put my shoes on, grabbed my race belt and there I went for the race.

Going into the run my plan was to get a faster run split since my running has been really good so far this year. WRONG!!

Dammit when I got out of transition my legs were sooooo dead, I couldn't get any speed. I tried to convince myself that it was only 8km, that it wouldn't be too long. I honestly wanted to stop and walk a couple of times but I just kicked myself in the butt and kept running.

Eventually I saw the first km sign, then the second and the third. At that point I was going up a hill and I was suffering. I tried to keep a good pace, 4th km was better, going down a hill helps ;) Then the last 4 were just survival, trying to stay with a not too bad pace to finish with a good time. I finally finished the run a little bit more than a minute faster than last year. I will take this with the legs that I had ;)

Swim Time = 20:34 (2:04/100 meter)
Transition 1 = 0:56
Bike Time = 42:36 (32.4 km/h)
Transition 2 = 0:49
Run Time = 37:17 (4:50/km)

Total Time = 1h 42m 23s (1:47:48 last year)
Overall Rank = 102/218
Age Group Rank = 14/28

My new baby has arrived!!

2010-06-12T10:52:00.000-04:00

Here he is, waiting to be finished in the LBS yesterday. I will go get him today and we will ride together for the first time :) I just can't wait. The new Trek Speed Concept 9.9

Descente Royale - 10k race

2010-06-06T14:56:00.001-04:00

This course is a really easy one, everyone always told me how easy it was to PR on it. I never really thought that it would be that easy though. Don't get me wrong, I pushed hard and at the end I was out of everything. But still, I don't think that I can hold that kind of pace on a normal course.

Going down a false flat for 10k is great ;)

Last Friday, I had a chat with a friend from work who is a speedy. I told him that his 43:12 time would fall this Sunday. So today's secret plan was to beat Alex's time. I honestly was not sure that I would be able to do it though. I analysed my 10k that I ran in May and decided that I didn't push hard enough, so today's plan was to push as hard as I could push.

As soon as the race started I went almost all out, I was actually way too fast the first 500 meters and I slowed on purpose to not go too fast and run out of legs by the end.

The first 4 splits were fast, 4:09, 4:10, 4:09, 4:06. Then the 5th was like 4:21. I got scared at that point because I thought that my legs decided to stayed at the 4km mark.

The first 5k was still damn fast, actually faster than my faster 5k ever. At that point I knew that I only had to run 4:20 splits or so to beat Alex. So I tried my best to stay on that pace. 4:20, 4:19, 4:20, 4:17 and 4:03 to toped it off :) Second 5k was a bit slower, but I was just trying to find the energy to keep pushing that kind of pace at that point.

At the speed at which I ran that first 5k I was not really sure what would happen on the rest of the race.

For once when I actually saw the finish line I had nothing left in the tank, I tried as hard as I could to sprint the finish line, but my body told me to go f... myself ;)

Finish time : 42:43
Age group : 34/176
Overall : 142/1015

Ottawa half marathon

2010-05-31T06:14:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was the Ottawa Half Marathon, what a wonderful race it is! If you never did this race please do so, there was around 40k runners there who ran one of the week end race. From the kid marathon, which was so cute to watch, to the Ottawa marathon. Here's how my race looked like.

Sunday morning I woke up early, walked around the hotel and grabbed a coffee and a sandwich at Tim Horton's. I then met with some friends who were running the full mary and chatted with them a bit. Then back to the hotel to get ready and headed to the race starting line.

My plan was to stay at 5:00/km or so to finish the race in 1h45. I was pretty sure that I could keep this up if everything went good and that I had good legs that day.

Martine, a friend of mine who is in the tri club, was doing the half too. But with 9-10k people on the starting line there was no way I could have find her.

And there we go, I wave to my wife and daughter and start running, making sure to get into my pace and not too fast and then I hear "BOB" It was Martine just behind me, how funny that she saw me in the middle of all those runners.

So we started running together, that was cool to have someone to chat with instead of being all by myself. Around the 5km she told me to go, she had a knot in her stomach and she didn't want to slow me down. I stayed with her to see if it would pass and it seemed to so we kept running together. I told her we already had a quarter of the race done so nothing to worry about.

By the 8km or so we were crossing back to Ottawa and while we were on the bridge I saw that the 1:45 rabbit was slowly getting away from me and I didn't like that. So I pushed a bit while crossing the bridge to try to keep her in sight at least. When we got on the other side of the bridge I realized that I had lost Martine. At that moment I decided to go for my own run and just pushed the pace to get back to the rabbit. I stayed with the 1:45 group for a while, always keeping them close by.

It was weird because my Garmin was giving me the km split earlier than they were on the course. At that point I realized that I couldn't trust the Garmin on that particular course because it was probably longer. So I started counting my overall time versus the km on the course to make sure I was on pace to PR.

By the 15th km or so I knew I had everything to get a PR, I was faster than my planned pace of 5:00/km and even if the course was a bit longer there was no problem at all beating that score.

At the 16th I decided to lose the rabbit and I started pushing. For the next two km I pushed a 4:48 and a 4:41 km, honestly in my mind and my body it felt more like two 3:00/km split but what can I do :P At that point I knew in my mind I was wayyy ahead of the bunny and then I heard someone yell , "lets go 3km to go, we can run that in our sleep". Yeah you are right, that was her like 0 feet behind me.

I laugh a little bit at that point, I pushed so hard to get away from that pack just to realize that they were behind me the whole time :P

At that point I just gave what I had left in me to get to the finish line as fast as possible. My friend Patrick told me he would be waiting for me on the left side of the road at the 500 meters mark. So I started checking when I got there, saw him slapped his hand and yelled "PR Baby!!"

I then ran everything I had left to get to the finish line with a really big happy smile on my face :)

My wife and daughter were by the finish line but I couldn't see them sadly. But I got that PR, even if my training for that half mary was far from being perfect.

Now I got to get faster, because I would like to run a half mary at least that fast to finish my half Iron in Sept ;)

I don't think I could have run faster with the training I had. My injury last winter didn't help but not much I can do about it. Now I got to train harder in the next month to get faster for the next one in August.

Total - 1:43:50
Age group : 151/574
Overall : 1207/9207

It's been a while

2010-05-08T11:16:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I post here. I got busy with life, and really busy with work. I also got injured and had to stop running during the winter, which got me into a non posting mood. I mean not much to say about riding in the basement and running 1 minute walk and 1 minute run for 15 minutes ;)

By the end of February I finally got the go to restart pushing a little bit. So I did, and last week I ran a 10k to start the season. I am not as fast as I was last season, if I can call me fast that is ;), but I am still happy with my 47:14 finish time.

Now the season is restarting, I have a 5k next week. Then I will be in Ottawa to run the half marathon. After that another 10k and then the triathlon season will kick in. 1 sprint and 3 oly for sure, maybe a forth one I will see. Then back to another half mary and to complete this summer I will race the Syracuse Half Ironman on September 19th.

I am off to train a bit now ;)

2009 is in the book

2010-01-05T09:41:00.000-05:00

First of all, my apologies for being away from almost two months. After New York I took a semi break from training. While I kept running, swimming and biking I just did the minimum to make sure I don't forget how to ;)

Now I need to get back at it, the Triathlon season will be here in a little bit more than four months, so time to get back in shape.

As far as 2009, here are my totals.

2009 totals
Bike:	186h 18m 57s - 5084.52 KM
Run:	167h 08m 01s - 1749.78 KM
Swim:	80h 44m 29s - 149680 M

2008 totals
Bike:	129h 32m 03s - 3284.61 KM
Run:	53h 00m 42s - 482.64 KM
Swim:	27h 47m 53s - 33450 M

I am pretty happy with what I accomplished on my second year, lot of improvement versus 2008 which is good :) Now I need to start 2010 as soon as possible to make sure I have another great year. As of now I have a small injury which stops me from running sadly. But I should be able to restart pretty soon.

Here's a recap of 2009

1 Half marathon
1 Marathon
1 Century (metric)
1 Sprint Dduathlon
1 Duathlon Plus Relay (biked 90km)
7 Sprint Triathlon
1 Olympique Triathlon

During this year I completed my first triathlon and my first marathon, and I am really happy about it!

Have a Happy New Year 2010 :)

Vasovagal episode - What the heck is that?!?

2009-11-06T15:55:00.000-05:00

Yesterday morning I went for my usual Thursday morning swim with the triathlon club. We are lucky, this week the coach decided to start the practice at 6am, so we can sleep in.

After 45minutes or so, I go out of the pool and went to the bathroom. At some point I started feeling really light headed. Five minutes or so later I woke up lying on the ground with blood all over my head. At first I wondered why I fell asleep on the ground, then after a couple of seconds I realized that I passed out and saw the blood on the ground. I went and sit to get my mind back, and started wondering if I should get back to the swimming pool to get help. But since I was full of blood I was not sure it was a great idea.

At that point I saw one guy from the club, and I asked him to go get the coach. After that everything went really fast, the medic got there and checked me. After a couple of testing and all I was in the hospital all plugged in. The doctors were not sure if I it was a problem with my heart so they decided to test me for every possible heart problem. I got like three electrocardiogram to make sure that I had no arrhythmias in my heart.

When they finally got all my results they told me that finally it was a vasovagal episode. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasovagal_episode

I got 6 stitches on the top of my head and the doctor told me to always eat before going for a swim, a little bit to make sure I have enough energy. I decided to take a couple more rest days before restarting my training, just in case.

New York city Marathon

2009-11-04T07:50:00.002-05:00

Last Thursday I left home around 11PM to jump on a bus and head to New York city. The trip from Quebec to New York is around 11 hours of bus, I knew it would be a long way so I tried to get on the bus as sleepy as possible to sleep in the bus. We got to New York around 11AM on Friday, the bus driver left us at the marathon expo. As soon as I got there I grabbed my bibs, shirt and all the goodies and then headed into the expo to enjoy myself a little bit. I bought a nice jacket, some gloves and a cap to run during the winter. I also got my some compression socks and a pair f compression tight from Sugoi. After that we headed out and walked around New York to visit a little bit, we walked something like 4 hours maybe and this is without counting the 2 hours in the expo. This was my first wrong decision of the week end.

After that we had dinner and headed to the hotel for the night. On Saturday morning it was the International Fun run at 9Am so we got up early and headed there to run 4km with a ton of people from everywhere around the world. After the run we had to walk around for an hour or so to try to find the bus. We then got to the Hotel, rushed into the shower to get ready as fast as possible to make sure that we got ready for the next bus since we had a New York city tour in the afternoon. We jumped on the bus, headed back into Manhatan and walk around a little bit more, maybe an hour. We headed to Time Square to shop a little bit at the M&M store, then walked more to grab the bus for the city tour. After the tour we waited in line for 30 minutes or so to go to the pasta diner. It was nice and the pasta were good. After that we did walk a little bit around to visit a little bit more before heading back to the hotel.

Overall, I evaluate that we walked around 6 to 8 hours on Friday and Saturay, it was a big mistake to walk that much the days before my first marathon. ut it was my first time in New York and I wanted to see as much as I could of the Big Apple!

On Sunday morning I got up at 3:30AM, no need for a wake up call or anything, the nerves took care of it ;) I decided to wear my Nosa Tri shoes from Asics, which was another mistake. Those shoes fits me well without socks on but with my compression sock I was a bit tight in them, but I kept them anyway ... I got ready and jumped on the bus, we headed to the start waiting area. We got there around 6:30, it was raining a little bit with some cold wind. I was happy that I brought a lot of old clothes to keep me warm. And a friend of mine who was there let me used a space blanket from another marathon to keep me warm.

Around 9h15 I decided to head into my coral to get ready for the start, a guy who was on the bus with me decided to come with me so we could run together. Honestly, I was happy to have someone with me it made me feel safer a little bit to have someone with me who ran more than 20 marathons before. We got to the start line after some trouble in the coral, I can't say why but there was a huge fucked up with the corals for the 10AM orange line start. People were crossing over the fence, some people almost hurt themselves to try to get to the start line. I was amazed to see how some people were going nuts ust to reach the start line. After some trouble we finally reached the start line and heard the big BOOM that was announcing the start. No time to warm up or anything, it was just walk to the start line and start running.

The start was on the bridge from Staten Island to Brooklyn, I never really realized how much a bridge can be compared hill, now I tell you it can be without any problem. while we were crossing the bridge we saw one of our friends from Quebec, she was celebrating her birthday on November 1st while running the NYC marathon so we ran next to her and started singing Happy birthday to her. I think she was surprised.

Right when we got off the bridge it started, there was lots of people on both sides of the streets, a lot of people told me that there would be people along the course but I never imagined that it would be that much. Young kids were there high fiving us while we were going through their streets.

The first 8 miles of the marathon had three different course, then at mile 8 we were all joining together into one big bunch of people. It was amazing how much work it was just trying to pass someone. I tried to stay with Robert, the other guy from my bus, he was planning to run a 3:45 marathon and my biggest dream was to run a 3:45 marathon so I made every thing possible to stay with him. This was my biggest mistake, after 3 or 4km I felt that the pace was too fast for me, but I decided to stay with him thinking that I would be able to HTFU, damn was I wrong ...

At the 25th km or so we crossed the 59th street bridge, this bridge is high when you have to run over it believe me ;) While approaching the other side of the bridge we could hear people screaming, cheering, yelling. When I passed under the bridge and saw the 1st Ave full of people cheering on us I swear I started flying for a while. It was such an amazing feeling to hear them all cheering, New Yorkers are the best believe me!

After the 30km mark I checked my pace and saw that I was at 5:40/km (9:08/mile) this is where I realized that a sub 4 hours marathon was probably not possible anymore for me. I had to run the last 12.2km under 1:09 and my pace was going down the drain at that time. I decided to stop to the porta potty at that point. After that I restarted running I made the decision to stop looking at my watch and just enjoy the experience. I wanted to soak myself into that awesome feeling that the crowd were giving us. So I did, I ran the last 12km in 1:20 or so, a really slow pace for me, but at that point I didn't care much I just wanted to have fun.

And I did, I finished the race full of emotion, running in central park was so incredible with sooo many people, I can't say how many but something like 100k maybe. Cheering loudly to transport every runner to the finish line. It was my first marathon, and when I crossed that finish line it was one of the most incredible moment of my life.

When I thought about it after the marathon was over I realized that I made a HUGE pacing mistake at the beginning, I choose the wrong shoes and I didn't train enough to finish in my dream time. Next time will be better, I tell you ;) I don't think that triathlon and marathon training fits well together, especially if you want to perform and run a fast marathon. My biggest training weeks were 70km of running or so and my biggest month was 220km or so. I honestly think that I would have need at least 100km a week and over 300km months to perform well in the marathon.

But triathlon is my sport and marathon was just something I wanted to try, I am not sure yet if I will run another one soon. For now I did complete a marathon, and it was one of the biggest and the best marathon! And for that I am proud of myself :)

New York city was just AWESOME!!! I felt in love with the city, the marathon organisation is almost perfect. I hope that I will be able to go back there one day.

Thank you to all the New Yorkers and people from around the world who came to cheer on us, you guys made Sunday one of the best days of my life and for that I will always thank you :)

Quick update

2009-11-03T10:27:00.000-05:00

The NYC marathon is over, I finished in 4:12:15. I would lie if I said I am not disappointed with my time but not much I can do right now to change it.

I will explain what happen in my race report to come in the next days.

Thank you to everyone who followed me, cheered me from home. It is really appreciated!

The nerves are officially killing me

2009-10-29T11:03:00.000-04:00

The closer I am from the starting line the more nervous I am, I guess it is normal. I am jumping in the bus tonight and heading to NYC, I should be there around noon tomorrow. Then I will visit a little bit, grab my bags from the expo and try to relax and give my legs a nice break on Saturday.

Four days to go

2009-10-28T09:23:00.001-04:00

Four days from now I will be running my first marathon. I will be in New York city at the starting line waiting to live a lifetime experience. Everybody that I know who ran a marathon told me that it is an awesome experience, and everybody who had the chance to run the NYC one told me that it is really special out there.

I have the chance to live both on the same day, my first marathon and the New York city marathon. To say I am not nervous would be a lie, I am nervous. I am not too sure yet what pacing strategy I will go with on race day. I am scared to go out too fast and break by the 20 miles mark. And I don't want to go out too slow and finish slower that I could.

I am in wave 2, coral D, my bib number for the race is 32511. If you ever want to follow me during the race you can use the race day tracker which will be available on the NYC marathon web site Sunday morning. Or you can sign to receive update by email every time I will cross a 5km mark and at the half marathon. If you want to use that feature go to http://athletealert.ingnycmarathon.org/Alerts.aspx

I know I did the training that I had to do, but am still nervous about the entire experience. How will I react when I will hit the wall. Will I be able to keep my running pace for the last 10k. So many questions and I won't have the answers before I am done with my marathon.

Overall, I can't wait to see how everything will be. My first goal for the race is to complete it. I would be really happy if I can finish it under 4hours and I will be really happy if I can finish it under 3h45.

We will know soon enough I guess.

New sponsor

2009-10-23T08:48:00.001-04:00

Yesterday night I had one of the best news ever in my mailbox. I received a email from Kestrel in which they said :

Thank you for submitting your resume to be considered for the 2010 Kestrel Team. The response was overwhelming as we received many worthy resumes. At this time, I am happy to announce that you have been chosen to represent the Kestrel Team in 2010!

I was speechless, and really happy. When I decided to apply for sponsorship with them I was not really sure if I was fast enough for a company to get any kind of interest in me. And it seems that Kestrel decided to give me a chance, and for that I am thanking them.

You can be sure that I will do everything that I can to represent them the best that I can starting now.

Stop by their web site to check their new 2010 bikes, they have some really nice and fast bike for sure!

http://www.kestrelbicycles.com

Thank you TriCenter!

2009-10-14T07:44:00.001-04:00

This past Monday I won a brand new Garmin 310XT, thank you to TriCenter at competitor.com!

If you want to watch a really good show about triathlon stop by http://www.competitor.com/tricenter You can also follow them on Twitter, @TriCenter. This is where I won the watch.

Since I bought a brand new Garmin three weeks ago, I guess that my wife will now be the owner of a 310 too, lucky her.

Thank you again TriCenter.

Last long run done

2009-10-12T07:42:00.000-04:00

It's done, my last long run is done. I ran 32km (20 miles) in 2 hours 56 minutes yesterday. I was happy because it was not as painful as the other 32km I ran two weeks ago.

Today I started with one thing in mind, to run at 5:30/km (8:51/mile) for the entire run, at first I had to slow myself down, I was feeling like running faster. But I knew I had a long way to go and that I didn't want to get those legs tired too fast.

I decided to do the same course as my last 32km run, which was to run for 27km then turn and come back for 5km to meet my wife in a parking lot. Everything went as planned until I had to turn and come back. I knew there was some wind blowing on my back and I knew it was a strong one because I could feel it even if it was a downwind. Anyway, I turned around at 27km with an average of 5:27/km which made me happy because I was a bit faster than what I expected.

At that moment I realized that the wind was really strong, I had to run the last 5km with a headwind of 30 km/h (18 mph) which slowed me a lot. I had trouble keeping my speed during those last 5km.

Now I just need to hope that there won't be any huge wind in New York city in three weeks.

September totals

2009-10-01T08:26:00.001-04:00

September was the end of the triathlon season, and since I still have the New York city marathon coming I had make the decision that after the Olympic triathlon I would kinda take it easy on the swim and bike side and just focus on my running until the marathon. Lets just say I guess I really took it easy on other sports because I biked once and didn't swim since the 12th of September.

Looking at this now I think I took it way too easy, but my next triathlon is in May 2010 so still have the time to restart training. Enough with my rambling, here are September's totals

Swimming - 4700 meter in 2:27:00
Biking - 272km in 10:21:00
Running - 228km in 21:03:00

As far as swimming and biking goes this is one of my smaller month of the year if not the smallest.

On the bright side though this was my biggest running month ever, which is normal since I am doing a marathon in a month. But still, I should have run a little bit more, actually a lot more. But I still have some overuse injuries that hurt sometimes and my chiro asked me to take it easy on the middle of the week runs, so I listened to him. I would be so pissed at myself to push too hard and miss the marathon.

Now that September is over I need to get my ass back on track for swimming and biking, I will setup my tri bike on the trainer tonight so I will have that option if it's too cold outside. As far as swimming goes, the tri club restart next week so I will restart swimming at least three days a week.

Sunday's long run, tough one

2009-09-30T10:04:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday I ran one of my two 20 miler runs before the New York city marathon. I couldn't wait to get out there and try my new Garmin 310, but on the other hand I knew I was heading out for three hours.

Everything went as planned for the first 23/24 kilometers or so, then it started to hurt. My stomach wasn't happy anymore and my legs were not either. My head was playing that little game with me that I should walk, just a little bit, just to give me a little break.

I didn't listen to the head, or the legs or anything else and I just kept running, finish with an ok time. A little bit slower than last week but still not too bad. I just need to figure out why I had trouble with those gel, I will try another brand this Sunday to see if I feel better.

or the most important part of that run now, I LOVE my new Garmin 310. This new vibrating instead of beeping is just awesome. And it felt way smaller on my wrist, even if it's not smaller. Hard to explain.

RIP Garmin 305

2009-09-24T18:07:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I had a 10km planned, it was a rainy day with a ton of clouds. I went out of the door and started running, I was trying a new route so I had no idea exactly where the 1km lap would beep. I just ran and heard a bit here and there but since I usually don't always watch my running time while I run easy run I didn't care much about it.

Once I got home I checked my watch only to see that I ran 4.22km ... ok this was a new route but when I run for almost an hour easy I have an idea that I ran at least 10km. So I used the old MapMyRun method and started mapping my route.

When I finished everything I realized that I finally ran 10.4km That got me thinking, did I hit a button while running or something. So I checked my route on SportTracks and I realized that the Garmin lost the GPS badly. The route was jumping over houses way too far from the street to have any sense at all and it stopped about in the middle of the real run.

I figured that since it was really cloudy yesterday maybe it was because of the clouds too. But I have run with that 305 in every possible weather in the last year and it NEVER lost the satellite before. It started to lose it randomly lately, but never for more than 2 or 3 seconds and I always thought it was because of a tree or something else.

Anyway today I sent an email to Garmin to ask them if there was anything I could do to try to get the GPS back on track. They gave me a procedure to do which would reset my 305, after that I had to update the FW in it to make sure it was up to date and everything should work fine.

So when I got home I did exactly what they told me, and then went for a run. I choose a quick 5.6km route that I run pretty often so I would know exactly how much I would have run. It was a nice sunny day with almost no clouds so perfect for the test. I went and ran for 28:50 for a total of 462 meters according to my Garmin. 1:02:25 / kilometer ... I always knew I was a slow poke but this is way behind slow.

My guess is that the Garmin is dead now, not much that can be done to get it back to life. I sent another email to Garmin and I will see, but my hope are not too high.

Lucky me my warranty finished on Sept 5

Sunday long run .. on a Saturday ;)

2009-09-19T13:35:00.000-04:00

This week end was the 30 km/18.7 miles long run week end, I only have two long run of 32 km/20 miles to go now. The marathon is coming pretty fast, only six weeks to go now and I will be running in the streets of New York.

With the triathlon season now over I ~~kinda~~ completely stopped my biking and swimming training. At least for the last week. I figured that a week or two would be a nice break after a first season filled with a lot of races. I still feel guilty because I didn't bike or swim in a week but I figure it is good for me and it gives a better focus on running, which is the plan if I want to get a strong first marathon.

Today's run was a good one, I knew at the moment I started running that I was feeling good and that I would have strong legs. I guess that taking some rest days here and there is a good idea finally ;)

I finished my run with a 5:32/km (8:54/mile) pace and now I am wondering. What should I go for as far as marathon pacing for New York. Any of you marathoner out there that could give me an idea? Here are today's split.

5:43, 5:28, 5:24, 5:38, 5:35, 5:32, 5:34, 5:32, 5:42, 5:39, 5:38, 5:38, 5:33, 5:35, 5:34, 5:41, 5:31, 5:16, 5:21, 5:28, 5:38, 5:25, 5:23, 5:28, 5:29, 5:27, 5:30, 5:28, 5:28, 5:26 /km

9:05, 8:43, 9:04, 8:55, 8:56, 9:08, 9:08, 8:57, 8:57, 9:07, 8:46, 8:33, 9:00, 8:43, 8:44, 8:49, 8:46, 8:52, 8:37 /mile

As you can see I was faster on the second half of the run, well a little bit faster ;)

If you have an opinion of what time I should aim for as far as pacing I will welcome your opinion, I really don't want to get out too fast but I don't want to finish it and still have a lot left in the tank either.

To give you an idea, my faster half mary is 1:45:20 and my faster 10k is 45:26 which was at the end of an Olympic triathlon.

Feel free to give me your opinion!

Triathlon Esprit - Race Report

2009-09-13T10:30:00.008-04:00

Yesterday was my A race of the year, the race for which I have been training for the last 6 months. I decided to do that race in February to raise money for Leucan, and I decided that it would be for my first Olympic triathlon.

We left Friday afternoon, drove to Montreal to get there in time to pick up my race bag. After that we went for diner, had some pasta and some veal with a cheese cake for dessert ;) then it was off to the hotel for a good night of sleep before the big day.

I woke up around 5h45, my race was not starting before 11h30 so I was in no rush to get to the site. We got ready and left the hotel around 7am, stopped by a coffee shop and I grab two bagels and a coffee. After that we headed to the race site, since it was still early we had a good parking spot. I watched the HIM and IM racers for a while, then the start of the Duathlon, and the first wave of the Oly. I was in the third waves, so with an hour or so before my start I went for a warm up run of about 10 minutes. I probably ran around 2km, my legs felt fresh and I was pretty happy with that. There was no way to warm up on the bike sadly, so after my run I got into my wetsuit and headed to the start line.

At that point I ran into one of my wife's friend who was there since her BF was doing the Oly too. I knew his secret plan was to beat me since I out ran him in another triathlon earlier this year. He asked me what I was aiming for and I told him between 2h30 and 2h45. I didn't want to tell him about my secret sub 2h30 plan ;)

After that I headed into the water and swam a 100 meters to get used to the water, which was really clear and nice to swim into. I talked with some other guys from the tri club and then got into my bubble trying to get ready for my race.

I hadn't swam in the last week, last time was last Saturday. I was not too sure how 6 days without swimming would, but I was about to find out.

And then the horn blew and off we went, it was really like a washing machine, we were about 100, maybe more trying to squeeze into a place where we could not all go at the same time. I was feeling really good and my swim was good, at least that's what I was feeling. I got into a good rhythm and started drafting from someone who was swimming exactly at the pace I needed to go. I had no idea how long a 1500 meters would feel like into a race since this was my first, but I just swam at a speed where I felt good. After what seems to be really not long I swam by the turn around for the sprint, at that point I realized that I was swimming at a good pace because it felt like I just started swimming. Then before not too long I swam by the Oly turn around buoy, I was still drafting from those feet and I was pretty happy about my swim at that point.

Starting around the sprint buoy I could feel that my wetsuit was chafing on my neck, I wanted to stop and try to fix it but I didn't want to lose any time and I didn't want to lose those feet to draft from either. So I just HTFU and kept going. My plan for the day was to race it under 2h30 and I knew that to succeed with my dream goal I had to swim under 30 minutes so no way I could stop and lose time.

Me and the feet in front of me played mouse and cat on the last 600 meters, I was swimming faster and he would draft off me for a while, then he would pass me and I would draft off him. We passed a some people on the swim, which is unusual for me and it made me happy.

When we finally reached the end of the swim I looked at my watch and I saw 31:30 or so. At that point I knew I would have to be faster that I wanted on the bike to get those two minutes back in the bank.

At the swim exit we had to go over the run course, climbing stairs when getting out of a 1.5km swim ain't that easy, believe me!

Then it was into the transition zone, we had a long run to do. When I finally reached my bike I removed the wetsuit as fast I as I could, grabbed my helmet and my bike and off I went. Jumped on the bike when I crossed the mounting line, thanks to the coach who made me practice the flying mount :)

The bike course is a 4,4km loop that we had to do 9 times, it is on the Gilles Villeneuve circuit. The pavement is perfect, and I mean really perfect. Not a single bump, crack or anything on it. I started to ride hard, as hard as I could. I knew that I had to go under 1h10 including transition to be able to reach my secret goal of sub 2h30. First lap I was around 7:30, I did some math and realized that it was all possible at that point. I kept pushing and the second lap was faster than the first.

At some point I saw a crash, and another one. Imagine 500 person or so on a 4.4km circuit at some point. Add to that 50 from the IM and some of the Sprint people who started to ride with us at some point. The circuit was crowded, and I mean really crowded.

The bike part went really good overall and I was really happy when I check on my watch and saw that I was going into T2 with a 1:04:xx split.

Went into the transition zone, raked my bike removed my helmet, put on my running shoes and grab my running belt and off I went. Really good transition in my opinion.

Now I only, yeah only, had to run a sub 50 minutes 10km to do it. I decided to run without my Garmin for this race, just go by feeling. I started running and after a kilometer or so I saw some guys from the elite, who started 20 minutes after me, passing me like I was sitting on a bench waiting for the bus. Damn those guys are fast.

For the first 3 or 4km I was running with a guy, but at some point I think that my pace dropped a little bit and I lost him. I kept running and pushing as much as I could. I remember looking at my watch at the 5km mark to see I was around 22 minutes. I kept doing maths in my head to make sure I would be under 2h30.

At that point I kept pushing hard, trying to make sure my pace was not going down too much. With less than two kilometers to go I passed that guy who wanted to beat me. He started in the wave after me so he was 20 minutes after me. I had less than 2km to go and he had almost 6km. I knew he couldn't run that distance in 20 minutes and at that point I knew I would beat him. Made me happy :) I then proceed to run by him with a really good pace and I never saw him again before the finish line.

I finished with a time of 2:26:37 for my first olympic, I am really happy about it. And I beat my wife's friend by 3:08 ;)

Swim 1.5km - 32:11 (2:09/100 meters)
45/62 AG 334/456 OA

T1 - 2:08

Bike 40km - 1:05:01 (36.9 km/h - 22.94 mph)
13/62 AG 92/456 OA

T2 - 1:31

Run 10km - 45:26 (4:32/km - 7:17/mile)
13/62 AG 123/456 OA

Finish in 2:26:37 :)
19/62 AG 138/456 OA

Tri'ing for the kids - Next week!

2009-09-03T09:47:00.004-04:00

As most of you know, since 2009 was my first year as a triathlete and as an athlete too, not that I consider myself an athlete yet but it's coming ;) I decided to race my first Olympic triathlon for the kids of Leucan. Leucan is an organisation here in Quebec that raise money to help families with kids who have cancer.

Leucan is an association that grew out of the link between parents of cancer-stricken children and healthcare professionals. Since its foundation in 1978, its mission has been to enhance the well-being, healing and recovery of children with cancer and ensure support for their families. In the last 15 years, Leucan, which receives no government grants, has witnessed impressive growth and diversification of its services to families. Leucan plays a key role in pediatric oncology, working jointly with collaborators in the field, while using a comprehensive approach to care.

As soon as the diagnosis is made, Leucan provides various services to cancer-stricken children and their families across Quebec. These services are adapted to suit their needs all along the different possible stages of the illness. Leucan is present in all walks of family life whether it be at the hospital, at home, at school, in social life or in the public eye, by means of financial assistance, welcome, emotional assistance and support services, information, hosting and support in playrooms, massage therapy at the hospital and in the region, socio-recreational activities, support groups, school life and end-of-life and bereavement follow-up services.

Last year I decided to participate in their Shaved Head Challenge and I shaved my hair to raise money for them. this year I will be racing in an Olympic triathlon. I have been training for a long while for this triathlon, and I have been racing in 7 sprints triathlon over the last four months to get as ready as I can be for next week end. My goal is to finish with a time under 2h45, I would love to hit 2h30 but for that I will need an awesome swim and I know I am far from being an awesome swimmer ;)

Since the distance will twice as long as most of my races I had during the last four months I will have to make some adjustments to make sure don't go out too fast, on the bike especially since it is usually where I can get some position after getting out of the water late. My plan is to try to swim in 30 minutes, bike under 1h10 and run under 50 minutes. With two good transition and those times I would hit my dream goal of 2h30, if I am slower at any of the distances then I will have to say good bye to this dream goal ... for this time.

For now everything looks good though, my run and bike fitness are pretty good and the swim should be wetsuit legal which will helps me to have a faster swim. With nine days to go there's nothing much I can do to get better. I will have some long ride in the next three days and a long run on Sunday, 27.5km (17 miles), in preparation for NYC. Also on Saturday morning I have another brick practice with the club including some interval sessions which is always fun.

Then on Monday I will go into taper to get as ready as I can be for Saturday's race. As of now I know that there's nothing more I can do except trying to get as ready as possible for the race. Maybe I should stop caffeine and alcohol for three-four days before the race to give myself every possible chance ... I will see how I feel, I am such a coffee addict ;)

You can visit my web site if you want more information about this www.robertlejeune.com

August 2009 totals

2009-09-01T08:46:00.003-04:00

August has been a good month overall. This is my biggest biking month ever and I am pretty sure this is also my biggest running month ever. I trained for a little bit over 60 hours during the month, which is probably another record for me.

I also had three triathlon sprint during the month to make it even more fun ;)

Swim - 14650 meters in 7:51:13
Bike - 887.5km in 35:41:56
Run - 189km in 17:34:05

I have one triathlon left this summer, my first olympique, in two weeks. Then after that it will be a run focus program from there until the New York city marathon in two months.

Skipping a semi long run?

2009-08-31T06:37:00.002-04:00

The plan for today was to go run at semi long run, 18km was my long run for this week. This is a rest week so the long run is not as long, or longer, as last week. I got up at 5AM ready to go out and run just to realize that my left foot hurt. I guess that I hurt myself running bare foot yesterday in or out of the transition zone.

This is weird, it's like I have a bruise under my heel, not pain other than that. But believe me running on a bruise is probably not fun, so I decided to skip it ... for now.

Now I am wondering, the rest of my week is already full of running, should I run this longish run and skip a shorter one. Or should I just go as if I did it and forget about it.

Or maybe I could change my entire running technique and start that forefoot landing that everyone talks about ;)

Seriously I will see how it goes, if I feel better tonight I will go run it, if not I guess I will just forget about it. Which I really don't want to do though.

Triathlon de Quebec - Race report

2009-08-30T15:29:00.010-04:00

I woke up early and had breakfast with a cup of coffee, after that I headed to the race site to help finish the setup for the competition. Since it was my club's triathlon I was volunteering yesterday, this morning and this afternoon.

As far as warm up goes I went for a ride, but there was a lot of water in the street and I changed my mind, rode maybe 2km just to make sure everything was working as intended. After that I went for a quick 1km run, my legs felt fresh. I guess that almost no running for the last 6 days really helped.

As usual my swim is what killed my race, I was faster with the wetsuit but still lost a lot of times there versus everyone else. At first I tried to get into a nice groove and give what I had in me. After 250 meters or so someone passed me and I jumped behind him and drafted from there until the end of the swim. One or two times I almost lost him but I knew that if I wanted to have an ok swim I had to stay with him so I pushed a little bit harder.

I dropped my cap and goggle while running into the transition zone, I had to come back to get them which cost me some precious times. Then I ran as fast as I could to my transition spot. Looked around and saw those two guys sitting on the ground. I removed my wetsuit, grabbed my stuff and went, they were still sitting on the ground ;)

I knew I was in the back after my swim and that I had to mash the pedals as much as I could to get some time back. At the start it took me probably 3-4 km before my legs felt good, I always have a hard time to warm up on race and it cost me times at the beginning of the bike section. After that I pushed as hard as I possibly could. One girl from the club fell on the ride, looks like she is ok finally!

No one pass me on the bike, which probably means that I should swim faster I guess :p

As far as transition two goes I went in, got my shoes, went off!

I hadn't run much in the last 5-6 days besides my brick practice on Wednesday night. I had some pain in my legs and wanted to give them a break before going hard on the last marathon training part and I decided to do it the week before this triathlon to give them some kind of tapper.

So going into the run I had in mind to run it hard, as hard as my body would let me run it. When I got out of the transition zone there was some people from the club there with me and I know that they do run some nice split usually, but I didn't want to stay around and chat so I just start running hard from the start. I passed them and never saw them again. Actually no one ever passed me on the run again. I am really happy with my time today, 4:11/km is really good and probably my best split in a triathlon.

Every time I saw someone on the path in front of me I just ran hard to get back to him/her and then I was looking for another person to pass. On the last stretch I did a sprint and pass a guy, this was a good decision since he was in my age group. If I didn't do that sprint I would have lost one place in my AG and OA ;)

Since this race was organised by my triathlon club I had volunteer to help before and after. That made the entire experience way different. Sadly the triathlon and the marathon were both on the same day today and a lot of people had to choose one or the other.

I hope it will get fix for next year.

Triathlon de Québec

2009-08-28T09:27:00.002-04:00

Sunday August 30th will be held the fourth edition of the triathlon de Québec. If you pass by feel free to stop by and have some fun with us ;)

Here's the link of the web site Triathlon de Québec

Longest run ever

2009-08-23T13:34:00.003-04:00

I am still working on my training for the New York city marathon, today was my longest run ever. I had a 24km planned and I didn't feel like doing it, which is a bad thing when you have to get out for 2+ hours.

I woke up, drank a couple of coffee and off I went, before the heat kicks in. I wanted the run to be as smooth as possible so I made the decision to go by feel and not look at my Garmin, too often ;) I can't say if this is the reason why it went so well finally, but I ran my 24km without any problem and I actually enjoyed it ... As much as you can enjoy running for 2h22

I kept it simple today, went for 12km then turn around and came back, all of that on the bike path. It was nice with a lot of runners and riders out to take advantage of that nice Sunday morning that we had over here.

At kilometer 20 or so a guy passed me with a stroller, I was probably running at something like 5:45 or so and he just flew by me like I was sitting on a bench. Damn he made me feel slow :p

On those long run we always have a lots of times to think about everything and I started to wonder why this week run of 24km was easier than last week run of 22.5km. Yesterday I didn't take it easy per say. Started the day with a 1.75km swim and a 60km bike ride and in the afternoon I ran 11.5km, all that training should have made today's run harder but it felt good. Last week I had a triathlon on Saturday, 750 meters swim 20km bike ride and a 5km run to top it off. The distance were way shorter, but it seems like the fact that I went all out last week compared to this week made it easier this week.

I also realized that I ran 35.5km in two days this week end, I didn't even reached 42.2km and I can tell you that my legs are toasted. I can't even imagine how it will be on marathon day.

In two months from now I will know the feeling ;)

Running
Distance - 24km
Time - 2:22:28

Do you like GU?

2009-08-23T07:09:00.003-04:00

If you are a fan of GU, or if you want to test it out stop by Chasing The Kenyans blog. She's giving away free GU to celebrate her first blog birthday.

Here's the link http://www.chasingthekenyans.com/

Enjoy! :)

Not their first time on a bike

2009-08-20T19:18:00.001-04:00

Triathlon Drummondville - Race report

2009-08-15T19:47:00.010-04:00

I woke up not so early, had a hard time sleeping with the heat but we can't complain when the weather is that nice ;) The race site is at 1h30 from my place and my race was starting at 12h50 so we didn't have to worry too much. We left home around 8h00 since some of my friends from the club where doing the Oly and I wanted to be there to cheer them up a little bit.

Once we got there I grabed everything in the car and brought it all the way to the transition zone just to have them tell me that the transition zone wouldn't be accessible until one hour before my race. That meant I would have to carry everything with me or go back to the car. I finally just kept my stuff with me and cheered the people from the tri club. Finally I entered the transition zone and prepared my spot. After everything was ready for the race I went for a quick warm up on the run, I ran about 1.5 km (about a mile) just to get the legs moving. After that I grabbed the bike and rode 6.5km (4 miles), my legs felt tired from a really huge training week.

The weather temperature was 76, so no wetsuit once again today. I jumped in the water and swam a little bit just to get used to the water. That would be my first river swim and I was not too sure about the current, but it didn't seem that bad when I got in for my warm up swim.

Everyone got ready and we all lined up on the beach for our start and bang, there we go for another triathlon :) I tried to swim as good as I could, which was not that good, while trying to always have the buoys in sight so I wouldn't swim too much for nothing. Sadly after maybe 200 meters my goggle started to fog and I could barely see anything. At least I could see the big buoy but that was about it. I kept going, at some point I had the feeling that I was not moving that fast, which to be honest is normal for me in the water though, and I figured that it was probably because of the current. I had to find a reason other than thinking that my swim suck ;) I am wondering if it's the fact that the last two races were not wetsuit legal that my swim times were that much slower or the fact that the coach made me change my strokes completly. I guess that it will takes time to get use to the new stroke, and that eventually my swim will be faster that what they used to be :)

I finally got to the exit of the water, with once again not too many people around me. I really have to work harder on my swim because I hate being one of the last guy to get out of the water, even if this gives me more people to pass on the bike ;)

Transition 1 went ok, I was a bit thirsty and I drank a little bit from my aero bottle before I took off. But overall a good transition. I jumped on the bike and had a hard time to put my feet on my shoes though, I can't explain why but it took me a couple of seconds to get them for good which pissed me off a bit. As soon as I could finally put them on I started mashing the pedals as hard as I could.

The bike leg went really well, no one passed me and I passed a ton of people. I got out of the water in 102th position and I had the 14th fastest bike split out there. The course was two loop of ten kilometers each, mostly flat so I could ride as hard as possible without having to worry about the next hill ;)

Transition two went ok, if you don't take into the fact that I went to the wrong rack with my bick. I counted the rack from the end and I knew I was on the second one, but when coming in from the bike split I couldn't see the last one so I counted two and entered on the third one. Good job Robert ... This probably cost me like 30 seconds and 2-3 place on the OA.

The run portion was two loop of two kilometers and a half each. By the time that we started the run it was really hot. The fact that the start of my race was at 12h50pm was cool because I could sleep in, but it meant that we would run under a hot sun and humidity. The weather was probably over 95F I would say. When I looked in the car at 10AM it was 34C (93F)

For the second time I decided not to run with my Garmin. I am trying to race without it whenever I can, so I can push myself as much as possible without checking my HR or my speed. At the first turn around, 1.25km in, my time was ok but I knew I wouldn't break any record in that heat. So I just pushed as hard as I could without going out too much. It went relativly well, I got passed by maybe three persons and I was happy with that.

By the time I was at 750 meters or so from the finish line I started puhing really hard, I still had good legs at that time and I knew I could sprint good to finish the race, so I did. There was a lot of spectators which was cool because it meant more people cheering on us, which is always cool when you finish a race.

Swim 750 meters in 20:15 for 2:42 / 100 meters

Transition 1 in 1:31

Bike 20 km (12.43 miles) in 33:02 for 36.33 km/h (22.57 mph)

Transition 2 in 1:34

Run 5km (3 miles) in 23:21 for 4:40/km (7:30/mile)

Finished in 1:19:43

7/10 AG

46/120 OA

Performance

2009-08-13T13:02:00.001-04:00

Funny video for bike geeks ;)

Am I worthy for a sponsor?

2009-08-13T08:23:00.003-04:00

Today I applied for the first time since I started doing triathlon for a sponsorship. Kestrel bike opened their sponsorship program and I decided to go for it.

I thought about it for a while, I know I am not a podium finisher on every race that I do, but I sure give everything that I have at every race though. But I wondered, is this enough for a company like Kestrel, or any other for that matter to invest into me, an age grouper of 41 who is just starting in the sport. I know that I am still far from placing in every race that I do, this year I got one podium in all the races that I did so far.

But still after thinking about it I figured that I could be a good representative for a company. I spent over ten years of my career as a sales representative for different compagnies, I know a lot of people and I take part into as many races as I possibly can every year. I have also been known to talk about my bikes all the time, with everyone ;) Most of the people that I know are now riding on a bike that has been bought at my local bike store, because I told them how good they are and how great their bikes and their service are.

I guess it will really depends what they are looking for, if they want people who place on podium race after race then I have no chance at all for sure. But on the other hand if they are looking for different kind of athletes who race hard, then maybe I will have a chance. Maybe that the fact that the bike leg is always my stronger leg will help me in the process too.

Don't you think I'd be really fast on this bike? I have the confidence that I will be riding on a Kestrel bike next year :)

Mountain bike rides

2009-08-09T08:42:00.015-04:00

Last week I was visiting my parents during my vacation. They live in Sept-Iles and we went by plane since no one was feeling like a 8 hours drive. The bad side of going by plane though was that I couldn't bring my bike since I don't own a bike case. But I had a plan, I know someone in Sept-Iles who is the owner of a bike shop so I figured that he would let me use a used bike for the week. So I brought my pedals and my shoes with all my cycling gear and I was ready.

Once we got there I drove to the bike shop only to have Bruno tell me that he doesn't have any used bike as of now. Dang that meant no bike for me for the next four days. I know that four days is not that long, but it's still long when you can't ride.

At night I was complaining that I should have brought my bike instead of thinking that Bruno would let me use a bike from his shop and my sister told me. "You can take my bike if you want"

She's really nice, but I mean she owns a mountain bike, I don't ride mountain bike I ride road bike. I decided to take it anyway and figured that riding that heavy monster around would be a hell of a workout.

On Thursday I went for a ride, I decided to ride to place where I used to go when I was young just to see how it changed over the past 23 years, since I moved out of Sept-Iles. After not too long I decided that since I had a mountain bike maybe I could just go ride mountain bike trail.

At first I rode up the mountain behind the city and took some pictures of the sea, the islands and the city.

After that I decided that I wanted to find a trail that were heading to a lake where I used to go fishing when I was young. Here are some pictures of it.

Finally I never reached the lake, but I was really close according to my GPS. I headed back home after one of the best bike ride I had lately. Even if I had a small crash and I was all wet and full of mud I was still having a blast.

Since I had so much fun, I decided to go back the day after, but took another road. I rode for a while on a bike path until I saw a small trail going up a hill, I decided to go for it ;)

I reached place where I never went before where I saw such a nice view of the river.

Every turn I was doing had another awesome shot of the river.

Then I got back another trail trying to reach another lake.

I even found an old stair going up I don't know where ...

And I finally found the lake, at that point I felt like jumping in and go for a swim but I didn't have anything with me and who knows, if I reached it someone else could ;)

I had a blast those two days and I regrets that I didn't go before Thursday finally. Now that I am back home I know I made a mistake out there, I had such a blast on that mountain bike that I think I might have a buy one so I can go out on the trail when I feel like it and have fun again :)

Totals for July

2009-08-08T20:35:00.002-04:00

July has been a good month overall, with two races and a lot of training :)

Swim : 22850 meters for 12:21:00
Bike : 664km for 24:19:00
Run : 161km for 15:15:00

Don't say she lost

2009-08-06T08:05:00.002-04:00

For those of you who already follow Fatty's blog you know that Susan died yesterday, for the others here's the link http://www.fatcyclist.com/2009/08/05/dont-say-she-lost/

Rest in peace Susan, you have been and always will be an inspiration.

Triathlon Charlevoix - Race report

2009-08-03T11:40:00.013-04:00

Yesterday was the triathlon de Charlevoix, a really nice place to do a Triathlon. Nice lake, hilly ride and a not so easy run. everything to make it a fun day. And to make it more enjoyable it was a really nice day to race since the rain waited till we were all done before it started.

I woke up early since I had to drive to the race site, which is 1h30 from my place. Had breakfast at home and brought stuff to eat in the car as well, you never know when you will be hungry ;)

Grabbed a coffee and there we went for Charlevoix.

Once we got there I registered since they didn't offer the registration online and I didn't feel like sending everything by mail. After that I walked around with my wife and watch the lake and the site then chatted a bit with people from the club that were doing the tri also. The bike course was two 10 km loop, we went to ride the loop one time relax to warm up, after that I went for a run by myself and prepared for the start.

The swim was not wetsuit legal, here in Quebec to be wetsuit legal the water has to be colder than 72. At the beginning of the swim they offered that we could wear a wetsuit but we would be DQ automatically. So I decided to go without my wet.

The swim was as good as I can swim, I know I am slow but no where close to 2:49/100 meter. The swim had to be way longer than 750 meter, I just can't believe this. I talked with everyone from the club and for everyone it was there slowest swim for a 750 meters too, so the overall guess is that the swim was way longer than 750 meters.

The transition was looooonnnnnggggg, I would say from the exit of the lake to the start of the ride at least 3-400 meters. And to make sure we would start the bike portion tired we had to run up a small hill with the bike ;) Here's a picture of a part of the transition, the lake was behind and we had to run up that hill that you see with the bike.

I jumped on the bike and started pedaling just to realize that my legs were a bit toasted. I can't say exactly why but it was painful at first. While going up the hills I got passed by 2 person and I tried to remember their jersey to make sure I would pass them back on later on.

I would say it took me around 5km before I could really push hard on the bike. At that point I was at the turnaround and it was mostly downhill back to the transition zone so I pushed as hard as I could and kept passing people. I passed at least one of the two guys who got me on the hill and kept pushing hard to get as much advance on the bike as I could.

Same for the second loop, I got passed on the hill by a couple of people and I made sure I could get back to them later on. I also got passed by the winner of the Oly distance, whom I never saw again during the race ;)

Transition two was a really good transition, but another long one.

Solid run for me, the course was not easy with a couple of hills and it was hot out there for the race. Not that hot but compared to the weather that we got this summer it was still hot. The sun has been nice enough to show his face during the run too.

For the first time since I do triathlon I never got passed on the run, I passed a lot of people on the run though and I was really happy about this.

At some point I was running and I saw a guy in front of me with a MDot tattoo on his right calf so I slowed a bit to talked with him. "Nice tattoo" I said, He replied "Thanks, I got it for LP 2007". We chatted for a couple of seconds and I went to finish the race. I talked with him about it later after the race.

For the last 2km or so I was about 150 feet behind a guy who I wanted to pass before the finish line. But I was never able to reach him, it seems like every time I tried he knew it and it would go faster.

Finally I passed a girl up the last hill and sprinted to the finish line. Later on she told me that she was not that happy to see me pass her, she said it is usually the other way around.

I placed in my AG for the first time ever, which made me happy :) Here is a picture of my price which I filled up as soon as I got home ;)

Seven people from the tri club were there, we all got hardware :)

Swim - 21:05 / 750 meters
2:49 / 100 meters

T1 - 2:11

Bike - 35:42 / 20km (12.2 miles)
33.6 km/h (20.9 MPH)

T2 - 1:32

Run - 22:52 / 5km (3 miles)
4:34 / km (7:00 / mile)

Total - 1:23:22
16/42 OA and 2/3 AG

My guess is that I am not born in the good year

2009-07-29T09:56:00.002-04:00

Last week end I had a race, that was my fourth Triathlon of the summer. I started racing in triathlon this summer and really love the sport. For that race I finished 28th over 195 competitors which made me really happy. After that I started to analyse the results of the race and realized that even if I did my best result ever on the overall, I still finished 8th out of 20 in my age group. Top 15% overall, but 40% or so in my age group ...

So I started analyzing the results even more, and here are my observations.

There was 11 age group for that race. I checked my results against each age group to see how I would have placed in each of them.

19 & under : 5/13
20-24 : 2/10
25-29 : 3/6
30-34 : 4/14
35-39 : 5/20
40-44 : 8/20
45-49 : 2/15
50-54 : 2/8
55-59 : 2/5
60-64 : 1/2
65 & + : 1/2

I would have place top three in seven age group over 11, and at least top 5 in every other age group. So I guess that I am, hmmm lets say lucky, to have a really competitive age group, and if I want to eventually come back home with some hardware I will have to get way faster. For a race of 1:16:49 I need to improve by 7 minutes to get down to 3rd in my age group. This mean that I need to get almost 10% faster, still a long way to go I guess.

Triathlon MemphreMagog - Race report

2009-07-28T09:35:00.005-04:00

First of all, sorry about my lack of posting lately. I was busy with the Tour de France, I just spent way too much time in front of the TV in the last three weeks.

I headed to Magog on Saturday since we had a ride planned with the club in the afternoon. Meet everybody there around 16h00 or so, we went to pick our race number, shirt etc and then headed out to get ready for the ride. The plan was to ride the second half ot the Olympique course, which was bad for me since my Sprint was on the first half of the Olympique course, but I figured that riding is riding anyway :)

I tried as hard as I possibly could to control myself on that ride to not ask too much on my legs since I wanted them to still be fresh for the race on Sunday, I didn't follow my plan well on that part, at some point I pushed a bit with the Elite crew to show them that I can follow them on the bike ... kinda ;) After that we went for diner, had some pasta with a bottle of wine with my wife and a friend.

I can't really say why, but I had a hard time sleeping. I guess my stomach didn't like the pasta that much. I finally got some sleep, at least my race was starting at 10h25 so I was not in a rush as much as those doing the oly.

I woke up around 5h30, made some coffee and got ready. Stopped on my way to the race site to grab a bagel and some more coffee. When I arrived there I racked my bike in transition and prepared my spot when I heard that they made the decision to finally allow the wetsuit, I was a lot happier at that point ;)

After that my transition spot was all ready I went to the swim exit and cheered on my friends who were doing the oly. After that all of them were out of the water I went for a 2.5km run to warm up a bit before the start.

The swim was one 750 meter loop, we were starting in the water. We couldn't hear the official calling how much time before the start so at some point I just heard the whistle and I started swimming. I started on the right side since we had to follow a line of buoy and they were on the left I knew that it wouldn't be too bad on the right, and it was a really good idea.

I tried to remember everything that the coach told me during the swim and make my stroke as effective as possible. I finished with a swim time longer than the last two triathlons, but I placed MOP overall, which is better than the other tri so I guess that the swim course was a bit longer and that my stroke was better ;)

Transition one went pretty good overall, still having problem with my suit that get stuck on my heels though. The starting line was crowded though, I had to run way past it to get some room to jump on the bike.

The bike course was way harder than I thought it would be. At first I struggled with the idea of putting a 12-27 cassette instead of my 11-23 but finally decided to keep the 11-23. Worst idea EVER!

The first 3km were mostly flat with some little hill, then we had THE hill. I was climbing at maybe 11km/h (6.8 mph) while climbing standing on the bike and pushing every little drop of energy that I had. I saw two person who had to walk the hill on my way up. I got passed by 2 or 3 person while climbing and I swore that I would pass them back pretty soon.

Once that big mofo was behind me the bike course was a bit easier, even if I left my legs on the hills I tried to get back to speed and gain as many speed back as I could. I passed back everyone that passed me while climbing and passed a lot of others. Since I finished the swim in 89th place and the 34 and less wave started 5 minutes in front of me I had a lot of people to pass.

Went to the turn around and restarted pushing as hard as I could. Finally reached that hill and I hammered as hard as I could on the descent, probably reach 85 km/h (53mph) on the way down. As I was approaching the transition zone I removed my shoes and got ready to jump off the bike, there was that girl who decided to stop in the middle of the road to unclip, I went by her so fast while yelling WATCH OUT, I hope I didn't scare her too much.

Transition 2 went really well, only small problem is that I have a hard time to rack my bike with the aero bottle on. I've got to find a solution to fix that. Then I put my shoes on and started running out of the transition zone.

For the first time I decided not to run with my Garmin, I didn't know what to expect for that run and I was hoping that they would have put a marker at each km so I could have an idea of my pacing. Sadly there was no marker, so I had to guess my pace on how I was feeling.

I went not too hard but hard enough at the beginning and found two guy about my speed. I followed them for a long while but they finally dropped me at maybe 1.5km from the end. I tried to get back to them but I was unable to push.

At maybe 500 meter from the line I saw a friend who was doing the Oly, chatted with him for a couple of seconds and then I sprinted to the finish line. He tried to follow me but he was too tired to stay at my pace so I finished in front of him ;)

Swim - 16:08 / 750 meters
2:08 / 100 meters

T1 - 2:25

Bike - 34:42 / 20km (12.2 miles)
34.6 km/h (21.5 MPH)

T2 - 1:21

Run - 22:53 / 5km (3 miles)
4:35 / km (7:00 / mile)

Total - 1:16:49
28/195 OA and 8/20 AG

Drivers please share the road.

2009-07-24T15:00:00.000-04:00

OLYMPIAN KERSHAW TRADES IN SKIS TO HELP KEEP CYCLISTS SAFE

The Canadian Press
By Michael Tutton, The Canadian Press Posted Thursday, July 23, 2009 3:46 PM ET
When Olympic cross-country skier Devon Kershaw read of how a van recently smashed through a group of five endurance cyclists in Ottawa, feelings of frustration and grief returned.

The three-time World Cup medallist lost his girlfriend, Sofie Manarin, in 2001 when a truck struck the 17-year-old skier's bicycle during a summer training ride in her hometown of Sudbury, Ont.

Kershaw says many Olympians who cycle on highways live in terror of inattentive drivers.

"Myself and teammates have close calls many times a year. You're cycling or running or roller-skiing and you have to suddenly jump into the shoulder," Kershaw said in an interview Thursday.

He notes that cross-country ski star Alex Harvey was knocked off his bike last weekend by a driver who pulled out of an intersection in Canmore, Alta. Fortunately he wasn't injured.

Reading of how the five cyclists were sent to an Ottawa hospital, with one suffering internal brain and body injuries, Kershaw said he felt a sense of painful deja-vu.

"This has got to stop," the Olympian said of the road carnage, as he prepared to take a break from training twice daily on various highways near Canmore.

For the survivors, family and friends of cycling victims, the scars run deep.

Kershaw learned of Manarin's death when he came upon her damaged bike frame surrounded by ambulances and police cars. He had been out for a training ride on the same day and was following her route.

"It shaped who I am. It's been hard for me. I go to Sudbury to visit and it still hurts," he said.

He still recalls "Sofie's laugh, very distinct and always present," and recalls, "she was small in stature, but had a big impact and presence with everyone she interacted with." They'd been friends since she was 12, and in a relationship for over a year.

Next week, Kershaw will return to Sudbury for a group ride that will support the bicycle safety group Share the Road.

Figures compiled by Transport Canada show that between 50 and 80 cyclists a year have been killed in car and truck collisions annually since 2003.

Eleanor McMahon, the founder of Share the Road, lost her husband, OPP Sgt. Greg Stobbart, when a driver with a record of driving licence suspensions struck him while the officer was on a training ride.

She said she was thrilled when Kershaw approached her to assist
with the cycling coalition's work. "The two of us have come
together, given the beginning of our experience was one of sadness
and one of loss," she said.

McMahon said she has travelled internationally, studying Europe's extensive network of biking lanes, and noting that in many jurisdictions road laws protecting cyclists are strictly enforced.

"This has become my life's work now," she said. "I want to bring a cycling culture to Canada."

She's currently lobbying the Ontario government for legal changes to help protect cyclists.

"We're looking for a one-metre passing law in Ontario this fall . . . this allows officers to penalize drivers who fail to allow one metre when they're passing a bike," she said.

Kershaw said he's "a huge supporter" of the proposed reform, noting it's the law in 14 U.S. states. He says it "recognizes that cyclists have the right to enjoy their recreation and commuting safety."

Jocelyn Lovell, the Canada's Sports Hall of Fame cyclist who suffered a spinal cord injury in 1983 after being struck by two trucks, says athletes like Kershaw can add emotional punch to the effort to advocate for legal changes and bike lanes.

"Damn right. Good on him. And if laws are being broken, cops should charge people," he said from his home in Mississauga, Ont.

"Bicycles belong. They will be here 1,000 years from now long after cars have been returned to being dust in the ground."

He said when he started driving a van, he went back to the area he was struck "to face my monster," and was stunned to see it was a place where it was easy to see and simple to navigate.

"I was just a cyclist in somebody's way . . . just a thorn in someone's side."

Duathlon Levis Relay - Race Report

2009-07-05T07:59:00.002-04:00

I woke up early and slowly finished to pack my stuff, I was in no rush since the start of the Duathlon was at 1pm. After that I drank a couple of coffee and had almond butter and banana on toast with oatmeal and yogurt and some fruit. Damn I eat like a truck ...

I rode there around 10am or so since I knew a couple of people who were competing in the half Ironman. 45 minutes prior to the start we had our pre race meeting, I was happy to see the runner of the team arrived because I was not that prepared to do the entire event by myself. After that I walked into the transition area and finished to get my spot ready. I wanted to head out for a quick ride but it was complicated, the transition zone is in a bad spot and going out for a warm up is painful so I decided to just run a little bit and then warm up during my first loop.

The race was a Duathlon Plus, it was 5km run then 90km ride and 10km run to finish. Marc was doing the running, he did a good job on both running legs. He ran the first 5km in 22:29. He was aiming for a 20min 5k but he started a little bit too fast and drained some energy on the first km and after that it was a bit harder to keep the pace.

The transition went pretty well, I was waiting for him into the transition zone and when he got by I took the chip and then started running with the bike. I jumped on the bike and had some minor problem clipping in my pedals, but overall not a bad transition.

When the bike leg started I told my runner "See you in 2h30" and I took off. After that I started doing some math in my head and realized that 2h30 was a hell of a good time for the bike split there and that maybe I was a bit optimistic ... But I just started mashing the bike as hard as I possibly could, for the first 6-7 loop or so I was over my LT heart rate and I started to wonder if I would be able to hold that pace. But I was feeling great so I didn't bother much with it.

After maybe 6 loop I started to get some rain at one end of the loop. When I got back to the start/finish line my runner asked my if I was sweaty or what, so I told him it was raining at the other end. Since the beginning we were having a nice little East wind, nothing too strong that was helping a bit on one side but that was not much of a trouble on the other side.

When the rain started the wind turned and started blowing stronger, like 20km/h (12mph). At that point it started raining really hard, I never rode in such weather. The sky was just pouring on us, seriously. My Garmin is full of water and it is supposed to be water proof, at least under the rain. At that point I had a really nice average and that stronger wind didn't make me happy since I started to worry that I would go under my dream goal of 34km/h (21.1 mph)

But I just kept mashing the pedals as hard as I could while having in my mind that I had 90km (56 miles) to do. I was passing people left and right and I got passed by a couple of REALLY fast guy, two of them even passed me twice, which made me kinda unhappy ;)

At some point, around 70km (43 miles) or so I could not see anything on my Garmin, the screen was full of fog kinda. So I ask Marc, my runner, how many loop I had to do still. He said 5, so I knew it was coming to an end, and I was happy about it because it was starting to be painful. But I still had that speed goal in the back of my mind and I knew I could not slow down a bit.

I kept mashing the pedals as hard as I could in the wonderful weather, while riding in so much water that I could not see the holes in the pavement anymore and I had to guess that at some point it would be smooth or not. I decided to wear tri short for this ride, I am not too sure yet why, but anyway I decided to wear them and I couldn't change my mind at that point so I had to deal with them. I was seriously starting to feel, or to not feel it anymore at that point.

But I kept going hard trying to give some time to my runner if we wanted to have a chance to grab some hardware. I finally made it to the 23rd loop in 2:34:10, which gave me an average of 35km/h (21.76 mph) I am a happy camper ;)

Jumping off the bike was not that good, I can't say why but I unclipped both feet and I had a hard time to jump off the bike. I should have just remove my shoes as I usually do during a Triathlon, it would have made me feel more comfortable.

Marc then headed out for the 10k, he ran it in 48:12 which was a great time in my opinion.

We finished the Duathlon with a time of 3:46:08, which was a really good time in my mind.

Duathlon Plus 5km, 90km, 10km (3.1 mile, 56 mile, 6.2 mile)

Run 5km (3.1 mile) : 22:29 - 4:30/km (7:14/mile)
Transition 1: 0:44
Bike 90km (56 mile) : 2:34:10 - 35km/h (21.76 mph)
Transition 2: 0:35
Run 10km (6.2 mile) : 48:12 - 4:50/km (7:46/mile)

Category 5/8
Overall 8/14

The competition was really fast this year, with the same time last year we would have finished second with almost 5 minutes in front of the third team. Every year it gets harder and harder because the other teams are stronger.

Totals for June

2009-07-02T11:07:00.004-04:00

I am happy with my training load for June, it's been one of my bigest month. Here are the totals
Swim : 16980 meters
Bike : 685 km
Run : 90.5 km

Not a big running month but I am just getting back from that ITBand injury and I am still taking it easy on the running side. But still I am really happy with those numbers.

I did some comparaison with last year totals, it's impressive hom much I trained so far in 2009.
Swim : 262% of my 2008 totals
Bike : 87% of my 2008 totals
Run : 167% of my 2008 totals

This should give me a really good year of training for 2009, but I must admit I kinda cheated since I started running in July last year and I started swimming in September.

Triathlon Trois Rivieres - Race report

2009-06-27T14:23:00.014-04:00

Today was my third Triathlon of the season, I woke up around 5AM to start the day. Prepared myself and grab some toast and oatmeal for breakfast. After that I finished packing the car, stopped by a coffee shop and then we drove 1h15 or so to the race.

Once there I stopped to get marked and grab my goody bag. Then I found a nice spot in the transition area and started getting ready slowly. It was still early, probably two hours to go before the start of the race so I was in no rush. Unpacked everything and I went inside to change into my racing clothes.

After that I went for a test drive around the track to see which corner were tricky and where I would have to push hard. I was a bit in a rush at that point because they were about to close to bike course because the Duathlon was starting an hour before us.

After my quick ride I went for a warm up run, and then headed to the pool, yeah the swim was in a huge outside pool. The pool was 100 x 50 yards, with the buoys inside it was probably something like 90 X 40 yards. We had to swim 3 times around the pool plus one length of 90 yards. that should give around 750 meters they said ;) According to my calculation it was more around 820 meters or so. So I went for a warm up, I did one lap around the pool. The water was not that warm, probably 68-70 and it was a no wetsuit swim which made it interesting.

After that I went to chat a little bit with my wife while watching the duathlon until the race director called us for the pre race meeting. Once we got there he gave us some explanation about the swim, bike and run courses and then we had to get ready. There was three waves of swimmers, but because it was in a pool they decided to wait until the women and relay finished their swim before letting the men start. The 34 and lower started first and then we jumped in the pool 2 minutes later for our start.

The swim was like most of my swim, by the time that I got out of the pool there was not that many people still in it, I would say 5 others swimmers were still in there to make me feel better about myself ;) Here's a proof of it, not like I think I need to prove that I almost finish last on my swim though ...

The run from the pool to the transition zone was long, according to my estimate I would say 200 meters or so. Once I reached my transition spot it went really fast. I was in and out in a couple of seconds, since I didn't have a wetsuit it really helped with the length of the T1. Got to my bike, put my glasses and helmet on and I was gone. I decided to let me shoes on the bike one more time to try and get better at it. It went really well today to be honest, I guess that practice finally give me some results.

After that I hammered the bike as much as I possibly could, the course was speedy and I knew that it was my place to gain some spot back. I don't think I got passed more then three times maybe. There was no hills at all, it was flat course with only one turn where we had to slow down more than the others. So I rode as fast as I could without even thinking about my legs for the run. It worked really well because I gained a ton of places on the bike. I had my new wheels on the bike and I can tell you that either they are really fast, or it's mental and it really works ;)

We had to do 8 laps on the track, which was around 21km from my bike computer. the race director said that it was 22.5km but I don't believe him ;) I was so fast that even the camera couldn't get a clear picture of me ...

I didn't see any incident but my wife told me that she saw three crashed on that turn, people were trying to gain every second possible there but it was not a good idea.

When I was about to finished the bike portion I removed my shoes on the bike and dismount right when we were entering the transition zone. One guy in front of me lost one shoe right there and he had to stop to get it. Transition 2 went really well too, I ran to my transition spot racked my bike, remove my helmet. Grabbed my 305, my race belt and a bottle of Cytomax to drink on the run and I was on my way to run that 5km to finish the day.

The run was four laps of 1.25 km each, easy run all flat. I had my fluid bottle on me so I didn't stop by any aid station except for one time to put some water on my head because it was getting hot out there. The run was ok, not my fastest but I gave everything I had left after that super bike leg.

For the entire duration of the competition I was sure that we would have rain, but it held up until we were done. Sadly for the other competitor who were racing later today the rain really started to get stronger after that we left.

Overall I am happy with what I did, I knew that the swim wouldn't be my best event but I am still happy with what I did. I really kicked ass on the bike, this is mostly where I am strong but today was better than any other competition I did so far. As for the run, the fact that I have been injured the last 6-7 weeks didn't help me. I guess I lost some speed if I compare with my results from earlier this spring.

Now I got to get ready for next week 90km ride on my relay team :)

Swim 750 meters / 820 yards : 15:27
Average : 2:04/100 meters
99/120 Overall - 9/10 Age group

Transition 1 : 1:14

Bike 22.5 km / 14 miles : 33:40
Average : 40.1 km/h - 24.9 mile per hour
14/120 Overall - 3/10 Age group

Transition 2 : 1:22

Run 5 km / 3.1 miles : 22:42
Average : 4:32 min/km - 7:17 min/mile
63/120 Overall - 8/10 Age group

Finish time 1:14:25
45/120 Overall - 7/10 Age group

Birthday gift - 3 days in advance :)

2009-06-26T19:10:00.006-04:00

Today my wife bought me a wonderful birthday gift. A new race wheelset! Just in time for tomorrow's triathlon, now lets see if I can push them hard enough to get some interesting speed ;)

How to spend a holiday triathlete style

2009-06-25T08:18:00.008-04:00

Yesterday was a holiday here in Quebec, and the coach had a really good idea how we could spend it. We were joining him at the lake at 7h15 in the morning for a quick swim, then a bike ride and we would finish it off with a run.

When I got there I put my wetsuit on and started stretching while waiting that everyone gets there. Then we headed to the lake to swim, the coach looked at the lake and said, since we are already late we will cut the swim a little bit. He then explained to us where he wanted us to swim, from my estimate that was about 1.5km or so, after checking later on I can tell you it was 1.6km finally. The water was really good to swim in, and at that hour in the morning it is cool because there not a single boat on the lake yet.

After the swim we quickly changed into cycling clothes and we headed out for an easy Z1 and Z2 ride. Here's the elevation of that easy ride ;)

My guess was that we had different opinion on what is an easy ride, but anyway the weather was gorgeous and it was really fun to train with other people. After all the hills the coach made up two different pack and we did practice pack riding with people opening then sliding to the back etc etc. It was really cool to get some experience with that.

Here is my heart rate chart from the ride, it seems like I didn't follow the stay in zone 1 and 2 rule finally ;)

And here are a couple of pictures of the ride.

By the time we finished that 81km ride it was time to head out for a run. Some people were going for the loop around the lake, the same lake where we had a triathlon last Saturday. But I decided to only run a 4km, mainly because the doc still want me to take it easy for my ITBand and also because my left calf has been unhappy with me for the last couple of days. So I decided to do a quick 4km run just so I had a triple workouts but still taking the easiest way to make sure I don't hurt myself before my triathlon on Saturday.

Overall it was a really nice day, weather was as good as you can ask for on a training day. And to be honest the beer next to the pool after was as good ;)

First swim with the Triathlon club

2009-06-23T09:16:00.000-04:00

For the last couple of months a friend of mine who is in the Triathlob club of the University here in Quebec has been talking me into joining the club. I was not too sure, I felt that I was too slow to go train with those people who place on the podium at almost every races. After taking the time to think about it, and two races under my belt now where I could compare myself to the others I decided to give it a try.

I contacted the coach last week and talked with him a little bit, he offered me to join them for a week to see how I like it and after I could make up my mind. Today was the first day of my test week.

Like most of you already know, I am not that good of a swimmer. Reasons are that I don't enjoy swimming as much as I enjoy running ad biking. And also the fact that I started swimming like 8 months ago doesn't help either.

The practice in the pool was at 5h30AM, that meant I had to get up at 4h45AM. Yeah you read that right, 4h45AM, I don't know why but going from 5h something to 4h something was big in my mind. Finally I go up without any problem, drank a coffee and headed to the pool. I could see athletes all around me that usually finished way ahead of me at races and it was impressive. Caoch told me that the lanes were from fast to slow people, so I headed to the last one ;) I knew I would fit better in the slow lane.

The swim was 1h45 with a ton of drills, kick, pull, paddle etc etc. We swam 2750 meters, now my shoulders are not happy with me. I had a lot of fun though, people were nice with the newbie that I was and it was cool to swim with other triathletes.

Tomorrow is a holliday here in Quebec, and the coach had the good idea to schedule us with a OWS at 7h30, then a 3 hours ride and a run to finish it :) This should be fun!

Lac Beauport Race Report

2009-06-21T09:10:00.009-04:00

The Lac Beauport triathlon has been my first contact with the wonderful world of triathlon last year. Me and a friend decided to do the duathlon there to get ready for our big event last year. We did it and I got hooked, one year later I was going back there to complete my second triathlon of the year, and of my life.

I woke up early, 5am or so to pack my stuff since I had to work late yesterday night and I didn't get home before 10pm. After everything was packed I had breakfast, 2 toast and oatmeal with two coffee. I drove to the lake, 20 minutes or so drive, this place is really close to home and this is where I go to swim in open water. I got there early so I had a parking spot right next to the transition area. I found myself a nice transition spot, parked my bike there then I walked around a little bit and waited that the rain stop to set my transition area.

People started to arrive slowly, we finally were around 450 people doing the triathlon, the duathlon and the relays. It was really cool to have that many people even if the weather was not that perfect. We had almost all the possible weather before the race started, drizzle, rain, some sun.

For the last week or so I had been debating which bike I would ride for this triathlon. I finally decided to go with the TT bike instead of the roadie. The weight difference between both is not that much, maybe 1.5lb or so and I love to race in aero position.

Around 8 or so I decided to start warming up, I didn't want to get in a hurry like at my first triathlon. I jumped on the bike and ode a little bit, I wanted to make sure that everything was smooth before the start. I wanted to get the legs moving a little bit but not too much though, I knew that the big hill there would once again be my biggest problem of the day.

After that I went for a quick run, maybe 1.5 km or so. Over the last 6 weeks I had to cut most of my running training because of my ITBand injury and I was scared that it would show during the triathlon. I tried to warm the ITBand as much as I could before the race, stretching and slow running.

Then it was the time to put the wetsuit on. The guy next to me in transition told me that when he did that triathlon for the first time he had to remove his wetsuit in the middle of the lake because he was unable to swim. That same guy does half Ironman, really inspiring. Once I got the wetsuit on I headed to the lake and swam a couple of hundreds to warm up and get the water in the suit.

Then it was back to the beach and wait, we got a little speech from the race director, the triathlon Quebec official and then the waves started.

The swim was a run start from the beach, three waves. 39 & - men, 40 & + men and then women and team. We had two minutes in between each start. When my wave started I was kinda in front, not too sure how that happened and why though ... Anyway, since I was there I tried to give my best to make sure no one would pass over me.

At first when I looked at the course I was sure that it was shorter than 1000 meters, but I can assure you that after swimming it it was 1000 meters ;) I swam a little bit over 1000 meters for sure because I had some problems sighting for the first 350 meters or so. After that it was a bit better, I drafted as much as I possibly could during the swim to help me. I succeeded for maybe 50% of the swim, which is not too bad.

At around 350/400 meters in the swim I saw a woman next to me, this is where I realized that she was from the wave behind me. Damn two minutes in that short of the swim. And what if she was not the first one to pass me. Ok I am in trouble there I got to swim faster. I can think that I need to swim faster, but that doesn't help the fact that I am damn slow in the water anyway. My thinking didn't help much because I saw a couple of women pass me during the swim.

I did succeeded in my goal of not having anyone passing over me. But I had a lots of trouble to swim straight. I need to work on sighting more while in the water. I do look every 4/5 strokes but it's like I am sure I swim straight and I always have the buy in front of me, but at some point I realize that I am like 10 meters away from the group.

I don't like the fact that most of the triathlon here don't give you transition time. It makes my swim time longer and I seem even more slow ;)

I had problems getting out of my wetsuit, it got stuck on my heels and it took me some times. I decided to put my bike shoes and run with them because there was a gravel road from the transition area to the bike start and I didn't feel like running barefoot on that.

The course is three lap around the lake, every time I go there I can not believe how riding around a lake can be so hilly. I mean a lake should be flat no, so the road around it should be too ...

Anyway here's a picture of the profile.

Hills are not my strength, and today's race proved me right sadly. I had a hard time on the biggest hill, almost every time I got to that hill people would pass me and as soon as I would get up the hill I would pass most of them back.

The good part of going up a hill is that you eventually have to go down, here I am trying to take advantage of it.

The rain was more intense at that point of the race, go figure the only leg of the race I was hoping that the rain would stop was the bike and it was the strongest. There is one really sharp turn on that course and today it was not that fun to turn it. Pavement was all wet so we had to brake and get the speed down a lot to turn. This sure didn't help the avg on the bike since right after that turn we had a strong head wind. What else can you ask when you have to get back up to speed ;)

Here is a satellite view of the bike and run course.

I decided to keep my shoes on again since the road was not feet friendly ;) Racked my bike, removed the shoes and then put my running shoes on, I had a hard time since I was all wet from the rain. Transition probably took me around 2 minutes.

I took my race belt and start running, after maybe 2 minutes I checked my 305 to see my running speed just to realize that I AM DUMB ... forgot my 305 on the bike ... I had no idea of my speed so I just pushed as hard as I could but trying to keep enough energy to climb all those hills. The run went by pretty fast, at least in my mind.

At kilometer 6.5 or so my friend Steve was standing on the side of the road, he told me "Go get them, there a bunch of peeps to pass in front of you". I really wish that I could have do what he told me, but I was just trying to keep running as hard as I could to get to the finish line as fast as possible. Sorry Steve ;)

I was at less than 100 meter of the finish line, and damn happy to see it ;)

Here's the run course profile, it was one loop around the lake again but the other way around.

My ITBand injury for the last 6 weeks did cut my training by a lot so I didn't have as much speed as usual today. I was still pretty happy with my time though, I was aiming a sub 40 run, and I did it :) The good side is that the ITBand didn't hurt at all during the race.

As soon as I crossed the finish line I had to pack my stuff in a hurry since I was working at noon and it was 11am ;) S toped by my house for a quick shower and drove to work. I got there 5 minutes late and my boss asked me "So, what was your finish time?" Good boss :)

Swim 1000 meter and T1 - 22:58
Ride 23.3 km - 45:15
T2 and run 7.7 km - 39.36

Total time 1:47:48
AG 16/25 OA 106/203

Celebrating one year

2009-06-18T08:36:00.000-04:00

Saturday is the Lac Beauport triathlon, this is the first event in which I participated last year. Me and a friend did the relay duathlon, it was our first for both of us. I remember seeing everyone with their wetsuits and being amazed that some people could do that. They were to swim a WHOLE kilometer then bike 22km and run a 8km to finish it. At that time I was just starting to ride my bike, I mean seriously, I maybe had two months of serious riding done. I was not running at all and I was not even dreaming about swimming 50 meters ;)

To see them get throught the race was simply amazing, swimming, riding and then running. It was just crazy in my mind ... at that time at least. Two weeks later I had my second relay duathlon, there was a double Ironman, a Ironman and a half Ironman and this is where I fell in love with that sport. Just to see people do an Ironman in between 9 and 17 hours just amazed me and I decided that I would complete one one day. On July 7th I started running, the day after the second Duathlon and I completed a couple of duathlons and runnign events last year. Then I started swimming in September with the intention to complete a triathlon this summer.

I did complete my first triathlon on May 23rd this year and it was an amazig experience, but going back to Lac Beauport this week-end, where it all started will be special. In two days it will be my birthday in the sport, and I am really happy about it. Now I just hope I will celebrate a lot more of those in the upcoming years. And the Lac Beauport's triathlon will always be a special one because of that.

Now I will take it easy for the next couple of days to give my legs a break before Saturday.

Mini triathlon

2009-06-15T06:35:00.002-04:00

What a wonderful week end we just had, the weather was perfect both days.

Saturday morning I went out for a ride with my wife. Pierre Lavoie was in town for his 1000 kilometer in 48 hours. For every team it was a relay with teams of 5 people but he on the other side decided to do it alone. The guy rode 1000km from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon to raise money to help with children sickness. He also wanted to help people realize that we don't do enough physical activities.

He was stopping in Quebec for a quick speech with the mayor and a lot of celebrities before continuing his ride. This guy is impressive, he has won Kona 3 times in his AG. Competed in almost 20 Ironman around the world, and now he finds other goals every day to keep going. What an awesome and incredible person, I am a huge fan of him.

After that ride I knew I needed to swim a little bit but I was not feeling like going to the pool with such a perfect weather outside. So I just jumped in my pool, I figured that the pool is 10 meters long so I "only" had to do 100 lengths of it to swim a kilometer. So I did, it was actually really fun to swim in my own pool, by myself with no one to push me or to slow me down. I had my own lane, and I really enjoyed it :)

At some point I had the brilliant idea to do a triathlon Sunday. I packed all my stuff and headed to Lac Beauport, where I have a triathlon next week. Once there I put the wetsuit on and jumped in the lake. The water was probably around 65-66, it was perfect with the wetsuit. I started to swim, I was not too sure what to do and since the buoy for next week were not installed yet I couldn't swim the course yet. I went and swam for around 15 minutes, not a full kilometer because I am not that fast yet, but I would say I swam around 700/750 meters.

After that I jumped on my bike and started riding, at first I wanted to do 2 or 3 loop around the lake but at that point I was running out of time and I finally decided to do only one lap. It was fun to ride this course again, and to realize that the hill is still one big hill. I am starting to wonder if I would be better with the triathlon bike or the road bike for this course. There was a lot of people there that were getting ready for next week. I saw a bunch of people on there tri bike, which we usually never see around here.

After the quick bike ride I changed again and off I went for one loop around the lake on the run. That was my longest run in a while, with my ITBand injury I really had to cut down the running in the last 6 weeks and I needed to get out there and test the legs on this hilly course. I went and did a 5 minutes/1 minute run walk pattern for the entire run. I was not there to beat a time or anything, I just wanted to run the course once before the race. I must say that this is by far the place with the most hills that I have ever run. My calves are not happy this morning, I guess I made them work in a different way that they are used to.

When I got back home my wife and her friend were heading out for a ride so I asked if I could tag along, which I did. We rode for maybe 35km easy, which was kind of like a cool down for my legs after my mini triathlon.

I really had a blast with this mini triathlon training thing and I will do it again for sure, now if the hills could go away around the lake so I could head there every week end and ride/run on a flat course ;)

I need to find a way to like swimming

2009-06-12T10:49:00.002-04:00

To be honest I don't dislike swimming, but it's by far the sport I prefer the less between the three sports of Triathlon. I am not really effective in the water and I am far from being really fast. I have not been swimming for long though, I started last September and I am honestly really happy with the progress I made from September to January or so, but since then I feel like I have done close to no progress at all and this really doesn't help the fact that I don't enjoy swimming that much.

The only way to swim around here are public pool. I can't go swim whenever I want, I must go when the public pool are open. Usually when I go swim we're in between 5 to 8 sharing a lane, and this is in a 25 meters pool.

I guess that all those little things don't help me love the sport too much. But I would really like to enjoy swimming as much as I do enjoy running and riding. When I am injured and I can't run I miss it, I really do. I miss running those long run during the week end, getting up early and go run outside to start the day ... Same for riding my bike, I miss getting out there and enjoy the ride.

But for swimming, everytime I can find a reason to skip a workout I do it, and I don't like that. And even when I finally hit the pool I find a way to get out after 45 minutes or so instead of staying a bit longer and doing more drills. Maybe this is because swimming in a pool feels like the treadmill, which I dislike so much that I go out and run during winter in -40C temperature.

I need to find a way to start to like this sport as much as the others. Maybe I should try to get more OWS and less pool swim. If you have any suggestion let me know.

And one metric Century race done :)

2009-06-07T20:02:00.002-04:00

I got up early, had breakfast then I headed to my friend's place to pick him up.

Not much of a warm up, I rode for maybe 1 kilometer or so then got back to the car and talked a bit with Martin. I saw Steve who was there so I went and talk with them a bit.

It was a really hilly course and I am not a hill type of guy so it was not that easy.

That was weird, we had a start then rode for 5k and after that we stopped and wait for a second start, but this time only those in the 100k started. The 50k had to wait 5-10 minutes before they could start.

The start was in the middle of a hill, I have no idea why. I mean half the people there almost hit each other while trying to clip in ;) After that I lost Martin, he's way better then me climbing hills and I knew that today would be his day.

When we reached the top of the first hill I saw a pack maybe 1500/2000 foot in front of me and I decided that those would be my friends for the race. So I started accelerating to reach them and some people decided to follow me. Nothing like a free ride ;)

I stuck with them for a while, after maybe 10k I saw Martin next to me. I was not too sure why he was there, in my mind he would be way ahead of me already. We rode together for a long while, with that pack that i decided to adopt earlier. At some point we were at the bottom of a hill and someone said that the aid station was up that hill. I was happy because one of my bottle was empty at that point.

When we reached the top of the hill there was one woman there with 2, maybe 3 bottle of water. and I was like WTF. I had no way to grab one of them so I decided I would get one next aid station. I knew we had only two aid station. Honestly I was not that happy with that, damn why there were not more people then her to give water ...

Then we had another hill, climbed it and when we reach the top I saw ... a aid station with ton of water and people. I then realized that this woman was there to give water/food to her team and no one else :o

At that point I had the feeling that the pack was a bit too slow for us, so me Martin and some others just dropped them and we started pushing.

We had around 50k done, it was about time to turn and go back to the start line. When we turned I realized that the wind, my friend, decided to start blowing much stronger that t was supposed. The weather man said 10 km/h, it was like 22 km/h ... Twice as much, I was not that happy about it. That made me realized that I could not afford to lose my little pack at that time.

We rode for another 20 km or so and then we reached the hill. It was a real bitch, 8km or so of climb after 70km ... man that was not necessarily. Anyway, when we started climbing Martin and one girl decided that they were heading first and I lost them pretty fast. That hill killed out pack, when I finally reached the top of it I was all by myself. There was two guy in front of me, maybe 2000 foot, and a lot of people still climbing. At that point I had to make a decision.

Either I slow down and wait for a new pack to get together, or I start accelerating and try to get back with the pack in front of me. There was 6 of them from my estimate and they probably had at least one kilometer on me.

So I decided that I still had enough energy to push and get back to that front pack. That's where I was happy with all that triathlon training. I am used to ride by myself and I can push some really nice speed. So I started hammering the pedals trying to get back to the front pack.

It took me maybe 5 km before I could see them, at that point I was all by myself. When I reached the last aid station I grabbed a bottle of water and kept pushing.

When I got by the pack, I saw that Martin was in there so I rode next to him and started trash talking him a bit. For the last year he told me how he would kick my ass on that race etc etc. And there we were, 20 km for the finish line and I was still there, pushing him.

For the next 15 km it looked like this, I was pushing and trash talking him and we were having a lot of fun. Then we reached the last 5km, I knew there was no way Martin would let me finish ahead of him, he's way too stubborn for that ;)

At some point he did escape me during a climb and took maybe a 1000 foot advance on me. I tried to keep with him during the last couple of climbs and at some point I was pretty sure I would get back to him. On the last stretch, I was right behind him. Maybe 200 foot and I was pushing everything I had to try to beat him but he finally crossed the finish line 14 seconds ahead of me.

I was really hoping that I would beat him, but 14 seconds is a win for me. At that same date last year he would have beat me by at least 20 minutes. So I am happy :)

Managed to squeeze a ride

2009-06-04T10:06:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I had one of those long day at work, I cam in around 8h30AM and I knew I wouldn't get out of here before 10PM. So in the morning I figured that I would probably be able to squeeze in a ride during diner time.

I removed the wheels on my Opus and put it in the trunk of my car with all my cycling gear. As I was planning around 4PM I got ready and went for a ride close to work. I was finally able to ride for a little bit over an hour.

Here is a picture of Quebec city from the other side of the river.

It is always nice to see your city from the outside, and every time I find it even more beautiful :)

I finally finished with a 29km ride, nothing great but at least I did something during the day even if my work schedule was not workout friendly yesterday.

Restarted running slowly

2009-06-02T08:53:00.003-04:00

Last week I met with my doctor and he gave me the go to restart running slowly. He said nothing over 6-8km and as soon as I get over 3km I should have walk break here and there.

So last Friday I went for a 3km run, I did 10 minutes run, 1 minute walk and 10 minutes run to test it out. I felt some minor pain on my left knee but nothing too bad. After that I figured that it would better to go down to 5 minutes.

So Sunday I went out again, to test the ITBand and my new kick ass shoes :) I did a 5km with walking minute break every five minutes of running. It was ok but I could still feel some minor pain, nothing that would stop me from running but definitely not 100%.

I went back this morning and it was mostly the same, less pain this time but I tried to run slower to make sure It would be better. I am still not 100% satisfied with it, I have an appointment Thursday with my doctor, I will talk with him about him and see how he feels about that. I might have to stop running again, or he will keep me running small distances to keep the legs moving. we will see soon I guess.

Until there, I will ride my bike more ;)

May is done

2009-05-31T20:10:00.002-04:00

Bike - 22:32:32 - 617 km
Run - 6:58:44 - 78 km
Swim - 7:27:27 - 13700 meters

June here I come :)

Now that I am a triathlete ...

2009-05-28T09:43:00.005-04:00

I decided that I deserved some real triathlon shoes, so I got myself those bad boys :) Asics Tri Noosa

Now I just need to convince my doctor that my ITBand is back to normal so I can try those for a quick 5k!

I still can't believe it

2009-05-27T06:57:00.003-04:00

Three days ago I completed my first triathlon, it was an amazing experience and I really enjoyed every moment of it.

It's weird though, because I am sitting here at my desk and I can't believe that I did it. Thinking about the swim that went by so fast that I could barely realize that I was swimming in open water, which was the part I was the most nervous about. Just to think about it again it makes me nervous, but then I realize that I did it and that it went really well so I have no reason to be nervous.

Since then I rode my bike twice, trying to get ready for my next race in two weeks. I will be racing in a 100km which, from what I heard, is a pretty hard course. Lots of hills and not much break during it.

I am hoping to be able to restart running soon too. I miss running, and I have a marathon training to start soon too if I want to be ready for New-York!

You can now call me a Triathlete :)

2009-05-24T07:24:00.017-04:00

Yesterday was that day, the day I would become a Triathlete.

It all started out on Friday, I took the afternoon off from work to get all my stuff ready to leave by the end of the afternoon. We had a 2h30 drive to get where the Triathlon was, so around 4pm we jumped in the car and drove there. We stopped at the Triathlon site to see where it was, where to park the car etc and to get my race packet. Then we headed to the hotel and I then tried to sleep ...

I finally got up at 5am Saturday morning and started getting ready. On the way to the race we stopped at a coffee shop and I had a bagel and a coffee. Then off we go to the Triathlon.

Once there I prepared my transition zone with everything hoping I didn't forget anything. After that I walked around a little bit to talk with people and get used to the transition, where we would get out of the water. Then me and my wife we walked the run lap. After that I went to start warming up.

I ran a kilometer, then jumped on the bike and ride the track once. It was a really nice 4km track that we had to do five times. We were riding on the Formula One track in Montreal, believe me that place is like heaven. I had never seen such nice pavement :) After I came back from my warm up I realized I was almost late for the race talk. So I grabbed my wetsuit and ran to the beach, listened to the race talk and then I went into the lake to swim a little bit.

It was a run start, I was a bit nervous, well not a bit ... I was really nervous. Water was not too cold and I got maybe a 300 meters warm up so I was confident. But still I was nervous.

After talking with Steve yesterday I decided to stay outside so I wouldn't have any problem at the start and I wouldn't be in the washing machine too much. It was a good idea, but I still got cough into that freaking washing machine a little bit. I had people all around me, at some point I figured I could stop swimming and they would push me to the finish line ;)

The first 150 meters or so of the swim were a bit harder, I was not swimming at my pace and I was a little bit out of breath. Swimming too fast and the nerves are no good for the breathing.

After maybe 30 seconds in the water I realized I was dumb ... I should have go to switch my goggles, they were getting full of water, and I mean FULL. I had to swim the entire 750 meters with my left eye closed to make sure my lens wouldn't start floating into my goggles.

I swam to the third buoy, then turned right, swam to the next buoy, turned right again and start swimming to get back to the beach. I was by myself at that point and I figured everyone were already on their bike but whatever I had to finish it anyway. Then out of nowhere a guy in a kayak came by and told me "Turn left". this is where I realized that I was not out by myself, just 30 feet on the right of the pack.

So I moved back with the pack and swam to the beach.

As soon as I felt the sand with my hand I got up and started running. Removed my cap and my goggles and then removed the top of my wetsuit while running and stuck the cap/goggles into my left sleeve.

Ran to the transition zone and to my bike, had no problem to spot my bike. Once there I removed the bottom of my wetsuit, right foot got out well but had some problem with left one. I think that the timing chip didn't help. I had to sit down to remove it completely, which didn't help my transition time.

It was a bit chilly so I decided to put a jacket on to ride. I had a little battle with the zipper which cost me maybe 10 seconds too. Then helmet and sunglasses on and off we go.

Jumped on the bike and started riding. I got up to speed and then I tried to put my shoes on. Damns the velcro was all stuck together and I was unable to put my feet into my shoes. I had to battle with them for a little while which made me lose some precious time during the bike portion.

The track was a 4km lap that we had to ride 5 times. It was flat and really nice, such a great place to ride and get some speed. Besides the little problems I had with my shoes at the start it went really well. I pushed hard but tried to keep enough in the tank for the run portion.

As usual my bike split was my better leg of all three. I passed a lot of people on the bike, but got passed by the leader of the triathlon and of the duathlon too. Some of those guys are so fast it's incredible. I guess it shows I still have a lot of room for improvement ;)

I jumped of the bike and ran to my spot, racked the bike then put my shoes on. While putting my shoes on I got a little cramp in my left calf, that scared me a little bit but it went away pretty fast.

I then started fighting with my jacket's zipper again, I was not happy about it. But it still went pretty well.

After my T2 I went out and my running speed was good, I was around 4:30/km (7:14/mile) Ran the first 2k at that pace then I started getting slower a little bit. I wanted to push but I was not sure it was a good idea at that time. So I just slowed down a little bit for the next 2km and then finish strong with the last one.

On my last lap I crossed the finish line and walked around a little bit trying to get my breathing back to normal and then I realized I just finished my first triathlon, at that exact moment I had a HUGE smile on my face and I was really proud!

Thinking about it I now realize how much of an amazing day it was. I am so happy and so proud of what I accomplished over the last year. I am getting closer of my dream of being an Ironman one day :)

Official time - 1:13:54
Swim 750 meters - 14:27
T1 - 1:35
Bike 20 km - 34:21
T2 - 1:09
Run 5 km - 22:11

My first Triathlon is tomorrow

2009-05-22T05:41:00.005-04:00

Tomorrow is a day that I will remember for the rest of my life. I have my first Triathlon ever. I did some Duathlon over the last year and some running races, but I never did a Triathlon.

Back last year when I was completing my first relay Duathlon I was looking at those people doing Triathlon and I was really impressed. Tomorrow I will be one of those persons, and it is really awesome just to think about it.

Back in September I couldn't swim more then 50 meters. Back in July last year I was not running at all. And back two years ago I was not even riding a bike. It is amazing how far I have come from two years ago. I was just sitting all day not doing much, and now look at me. I am proud of what I accomplished and tomorrow will be one more milestone, from potato couch to Ironman.

Tomorrow I will swim 750 meters, ride 20 kilometers and run 5 kilometers. I know I can complete all the distances without any doubt but I am still nervous about it.

It is probably because this is something new, that I have never done before, that it makes me nervous. It a good feeling though, nervous good ;)

I will make sure to get as many pictures of that first, so I have many memories to share with anyone who wants to hear about them. And to look at them later to remember how I became a triathlete.

Now I am off to the pool for a quick swim before work, just to get my body moving a bit. The last week has been really slow training wise. With my ITBand injury and the bad weather I didn't have the chance to get out much sadly.

What a wonderful day :)

2009-05-19T16:25:00.001-04:00

Here is what was in my email today.

May 19, 2009

	Countdown to the start November 1, 2009: 165 Days
Dear Robert Lejeune, Entry Number: Congratulations! You have been accepted to run the ING New York City Marathon 2009 on Sunday, November 1. On behalf of New York Road Runners, I welcome you to the 40th running of the world's greatest marathon. One of the things that makes this race so special is runners like you from around the world, and we're hard at work preparing to give you the experience of a lifetime. Shortly after June 1, you'll receive an e-mail from us that will include a link to our runner login page. From this page you can provide or verify your emergency race-day contact information, supply information that will allow us to assign your race-day transportation to the start, cancel your entry if needed, take advantage of special offers for marathon entrants, and more. In the meantime, please consider using your marathon experience as an opportunity to raise money for charity. Visit our charities page for more information. We'll be in touch frequently between now and race day, as we'll post the latest news on theING New York City Marathon site. We look forward to seeing you in November! Sincerely, Mary Wittenberg President and CEO, New York Road Runners Race Director, ING New York City Marathon

I don't have much to say but WOO HOOO! ;)

Duathlon Sorel-Tracy

2009-05-17T19:27:00.011-04:00

I woke up at 5h00 am and had breakfast, oatmeal with toast and some pineapple. Then I finished packing the car and drove there, a 2 hours drive. When we arrived there I went to get my package, not much to be honest. They gave us our bib and that was it, it was a non expensive race and now I know why ;)

It was cold so we stayed inside for a while, then I went back to the car and got my bike and my stuff. Headed to the transition zone to park the bike then I went inside to get dressed. Then I went outside to warm up before the race. I rode my bike for 3-4 km maybe to get the legs moving and after that I ran for 1.2km or so. Then I tried to stay as warm as I possibly could, with those 20-30 MPH winds it was really cold.

My plan was to run the first 5km around 22:30, I was aiming for a 4:30/km (6:56/mile) pace. When the race started I stayed with the MOP and I figured they would run at the pace I had planned. I realized pretty fast that they were running way faster that I was expecting.

First km was ran in 3:53/km (6:15/mile) and I knew I had to adjust pretty fast or it would be really hard. By kilometer two my ITBand started to bother me a little bit. Nothing bad but at that exact time I knew that the run after the bike leg would be painful. I tried to keep my pace to finish the 5k as fast as I possibly could without going too fast and burning my legs for the bike. I finished in 21:33, which was way better that my 25:03 last year :)

Then it was T1 time, I ran in put my helmet on and my sunglasses removed my shoes and off I went with the bike. Jumped on it and started getting speed, everything went fine up to when I tried to put the shoes on, at that time I had some problems and I lost some speed while trying to put them on. I do need to practice that move still I guess ;)

The course was really nice, mostly flat with some really small hills. The problem was the wind, it was blowing at 30km/h (20mph) with 50 km/h (32mph) gusts. It was a 11km lap that we had to do three times.

When I jumped on the bike my plan was to get as fast as possible with the head wind and then use the tailwind to get the average as high as possible before turning back into the wind. The beginning of the course was really tough on me, I was really tired from the run and I had a hard time pushing as much as I wanted to. The speed was there but I was seriously thinking that I would die ;) At some point I thought that they were wrong with the distances and that we already had like 15 kilometers done, I then checked my watch just to realize that it was just my imagination and at that time I knew it wouldn't be easy.

The road were not blocked and the traffic was a problem a couple of times. At some point I almost had to ride on the sidewalk because a car was in my lane. They were a bit short on volunteers sadly and we could see it during some portion of the bike course.

Overall I passed a lot of people on the bike, I would say close to 12-15. And I got passed by only two so overall I am happy. But I still think I need to train more and get faster ;)

By the time I reached T2 my feet were so cold I had problem running, and my ITBand was really, and I mean REALLY pissed at me at that point.

The last 2.5km were painful, I mean really. At some point I though I would have to walk a little bit to give the ITBand a break. I tried to keep a pace as fast as I could but it was really hard. I lost almost all the places that I gained on the bike during that run. I wanted to push so bad, but there were no way I could HTFU enough to not feel the ITBand sadly.

And then there it was, the finish line finally. I was pretty happy to see it.

My goal for today was sub 1:40:00 so I have to be happy.

Run 5k : 21:33
Ride 33k : 1:01:29
Run 2.5k : 13:51

I finished with a time of 1:38:58 :) Now lets get ready for next week sprint in Montreal, this will be my first sprint triathlon of the season and of my life. I am getting nervous more every day.

Getting ready for tomorrow's race

2009-05-16T12:31:00.003-04:00

My LBS has been nice enough to let me borrow those wonderful race wheels :) I always thought that my bike looked hot, but with those wheels on it looks even better.

Quick run to test the ITBand in the morning

2009-05-14T11:34:00.001-04:00

I went for a quick 5km to test my ITBand before Sunday's Duathlon. Now I am wondering if it was a good or a bad idea. After maybe 2km I started feeling some pain with my left ITBand, nothing that would stop me from running or slowing me too much, but the pain is still there.

This morning I finally finished with a 3.5km run and the pace was ok for a training run, no way I'd beat a world record but it still was not too bad.

I have an appointment with my chyro this afternoon and he will work on my left leg once again trying to do some miracle. Lets hope he still knows how to do them :)

First Duathlon of the season Sunday

2009-05-13T11:40:00.001-04:00

Sunday is my first official multisports event of the year. A sprint Duathlon which consist of a 5km run, a 33km ride and a 2.5km run to finish. I still have some issues with my ITBand that bother me since my half marathon two weeks ago. I have reduce my running load by at least 50% in the last two weeks with hope that my ITBand will get back on track in time for the Duathlon. I guess that I will go out and run a 5km tomorrow morning to see how it feels as of now.

I don't have any control over that injury, and I want to make sure that I will heal as fast as possible since it's the begining of the race season, and that season is not that long around here sadly.

I went for a quick 40km ride yesterday to see how the ITBand would react, I felt no pain at all during the entire ride and just a little bit of soreness this morning. Nothing that would bother me at all during a race to be honest. Now lets just hope that it will feel the same tomorrow morning during my short run :)

First OWS ... ever :)

2009-05-10T08:52:00.019-04:00

Yesterday I went for my first open water swim ever. I never went out to swim in a lake, sure when I was younger I went to lakes to play in the water and have fun with my friends. But yesterday was different, I was heading there to swim and have an idea how it was before my first triathlon, two weeks from now.

It was also the first time that I would try my new wetsuit, well not that new since I bought it second hand but new to me. I was a bit nervous, I had no idea how it would be, what the lake water temperature would be. I was wondering if I would be able to see the bottom of the lake or if I would swim without seeing anything. A lot of new stuff and I was a little bit nervous about all this. But since I have my first triathlon ever in two weeks I needed to get out there and swim in open water at least once before, to make sure I won't freak out on race day.

We got there and I touched the water to see how warm cold it was. Anyway, I put the wetsuit on, which by itself was an experience. By the time I was done with that I was already sweating and I was not as scared as before to be cold. I figured that this wetsuit was pretty warm since I had it on me for 5 minutes and I was really hot.

And off I go, my wife is sitting on the beach and watching me go into that cold water probably thinking that I really am nuts. My feet tell me that it's cold but I try not to listen to them. Then my hands tell me the same, but I tell them to HTFU and I just keep going. At one point I am in 3/4 feet of water so I just start swimming. OMG! My face is pissed at me because it is so damn cold. I just try to swim but HTFU about the cold but it's not that easy. Every here and then I can feel some cold water getting into the wetsuit, and when I say I can feel it believe me I was feeling it.

I just kept swimming, freestyle mostly, and when my face was too cold I would turn and do some backstrokes just to get some sun, and then back to freestyle. I swam 15 minutes maybe, then came back to the shore to unfreeze my face, hands and feet. Then I went back into the water for another 10-15 minutes maybe and swam a little more. The water was not as cold when I got into it the second time, I guess I was slowly getting used to it.

I am really happy that everything went well. I didn't have any pain or problem with my wetsuit. I could swim with it really easily and not feel any problem with my shoulders. At some point during the swim I stopped focusing on the swim and more on what was underneath me, and at that time my mind could see all kind of stuff that was not really there. I don't know why I am that way though, instead of just enjoying the moment I try to freak myself out. I was happy not to swim in the sea, I am sure I would have imagine at least 20 great white ;)

The only thing that was different from when I swim in a pool was that I felt out of breath a lot, I am not too sure if it was because I was swimming faster than usual. Or if it was because I was nervous, or because the water temperature was colder than usual. But it was weird to feel out of breath like that, even if I was trying to slow my pace a little bit.

I remember when I was young, we had a summer house by the sea and I used to swim in the sea a lot. Never really swam that far from the beach and I could always see the bottom, but the water was crystal clear and it was nice to always see everything. When I got into the lake yesterday that feeling of seeing everything was not there at all. The water was not that clear, I could barely see the bottom of the lake with 7-8 feet of water.

When I got back home I checked the temperature on my pool to have an idea and it was 55, so I figured that the lake was at best 55, maybe colder ;) But whatever the temperature I had fun and I am happy that I finally did my first OWS. Now I am getting more and more ready for my first triathlon in two weeks.

Some people are born with it ... I am not

2009-05-08T14:47:00.002-04:00

I have been working really hard for a year now trying to get faster and better. Trying to learn how to swim in a way that I don't want to die. Trying to ride my bike at a speed where I can compete in my AG. And trying to get better at running to be, lets say somewhere in the middle of the pack on the run. But lets face it, I am not there yet, I think I do put a lot of work, that I am training really hard. But nothing to do, I am still far behind.

In two weeks I will have my first Triathlon ever, I am sure I will get out of the water in the back of the pack. After that I will try as hard as I can to gain some place during the bike and the run legs. But I should still finish at best in the middle of the pack.

This morning I was reading about a guy who was 100lb overweight in 2006 and who decided to lose weight and get his life back on track. I really liked the story, it is always nice to see people taking control over their life.

But I then read that the guy did 18 Duathlon in 2007 and 2008 and that he placed on the podium 11 times out of those 18. Dammit, why does I got no natural abilities at all unless this guy. I mean he did train hard I am pretty sure but he had to have some natural abilities. Especially to place on the podium more then 50% of the time on his 18 first races.

Am I the only one who feels like that, like I have to work really hard to even dream about eventually being in the top 25%. And I am not even talking about a podium here.

It's either that I didn't have the chance to get some natural abilities, or I am really training in the wrong way ...

Marie-Christine

2009-05-06T10:35:00.001-04:00

As most of you know this year will be my first year as a Triathlete, I am really thrilled about this. Every time I go out for a run, a ride of a swim I am always greatfull that I can do this, that I have the chance to get out and enjoy this wonderful sport that we all love so much.

For the second year in a row I decided to raise money for Leucan, a charity that helps the kids who have cancer. They help them and their familly to go through the sickness with different activities, they give money to the research and a lot of other things.

Today a guy with who I am working came to my office and gave me a cheque, with a really good amount of money. He then told me "Please remember Marie-Christine East when you will be out there training and racing, she died a couple years ago from Leucemia" She was his niece and she died 3 years ago, I have been really touched by this and she will be on my mind when I will be out there racing and training.

I have been raising money for Leucan for two years now, and I know that what I do helps others and I am proud of it. But it was the first time that someone that I know told me that a kid close to him had had the cancer, and that sadly she died.

Marie-Christine East, you'll be on my mind and you will be remembered.

A ride to test the legs

2009-05-06T09:05:00.001-04:00

Yesterday night I went for a 50km ride to see how my legs, and especially my left knee, would react. There was some strong winds and I knew it would be a good test. I was hapilly pleased that my legs were feeling really strong, I was scared that after Sunday's half marathon they would be tired for at least a couple fo days.

My left knee bothered me a little bit after the ride though, nothing bad but I could still feel some pain in it when I stayed in the same position for too long. It's feeling way better today, and I hope it was nothing to worry about. I'll go for my first run tomorrow morning and see how it will feel after that.

With a Duathlon in 10 days I just hope that I won't start having knee pain like last summer. It seems that whenever I push hard in race situation my knee dislike that. But I can push hard during training and it usually doesn't bother them.

Last winter I went to see a sport doctor to make sure my knees were correct and that I didn't have anything that would cause me problems during this season and he told me that I had nothing to worry about. I still ope he was right, so far during my entire training for my half I never had any knee pain, left or right, so I was 100% positive that those problems were behind me. But now I am getting nervous about it once again.

Lets just hope everything will get back like normal and that I will be able to run and ride without any knee problem fast. I would be really pissed to have to take some time off with the season that is starting around here, especially since it's not that long.

Tonight I will go for a swim, at least I shouldn't have any knee problem there ;)

Half marathon - Done :)

2009-05-03T14:59:00.004-04:00

I woke up around 5h30 after a really good night of sleep. Had some oatmeals, a yogurt, orange juice and a coffee for breakfast.

We left to the race around 6h45 since we had to be at the start before 7h30. When we arrived me and my wife splited, she was running the 10k and the start lines were in two different places. I had to take a bus to go to the start line so as soon as I arrived at the finish line I jumped into one of the bus and we headed to the start line.

We arrived there 1 hour prior to the start, so we just walked and relax for a while. I took a gel at some point with some water. I went for a warm up around 7h50 or so, during my warm up I heard the start of the 30k race. While warming up I found a gel on the ground, someone would have a bad surprise at some point today, but with over 500 people there no way I would find who lost it ;) I ran 2-3 km at a pace around 5:00/km (8:02/mile) or so trying to get my HR higher a little bit and warming up my legs.

After my warm up I tried to find the friend with whom I was supposed to run today, her goal was to run it under 1:50:00 so she could qualify for New-York next year. I didn't tell her yet that I would run it with her, when we talked about it earlier this week I told her that a 5:00/km (8:02/mile) split half mary was probably a bit fast for me. I finally changed my mind yesterday and when I told her that she would have someone to run with today she was really excited. We met around 10 minutes before the start and got ready for the start.

We had a plan to head out at a 5:00/km (8:02/mile) pace and do whatever it would take to stick with it. We knew that this would give us a 5 minutes to play with if needed, since Nicole needed 1:50:00 or less to qualify to New-York and that was the plan to run it in those time.

The start was a little bit crowded so we knew it would be a pain to get up to our speed right at the beginning. We tried to pass as many people as we possibly can, while I was looking at my Garmin all the time to make sure we were not going out too fast.

The course was nice, from the start line we had around 4k to run to the finish line, then we had a loop of around 17k to run to come back to the finish line. I was happy to see that when we got by the finish line I didn't want to stop and cross it already, that means I was not too tired yet ;)

According to the weather we were supposed to have a head wind to start with. But finally the wind was not too fast and it didn't really bothered us for the first 4k, which was good. After that we passed the finish line and started the loop we had a downwind and I was starting to regret those long sleeves. But it was a bit too late to change my mind on clothing, so I just HTFU and kept going.

When we reach the 10k point I realized that I just PRed for a 10k and it made me really happy. I then wondered if I PRed the 5k too. Now that I looked at the splits I know I did :)

My initial plan was to stick with Nicole at a 5:00/km (8:02/mile) pace as long as I would be able to and then let her go. I didn't want her to miss her qualification because she would have wait on me.

But the more we were going the more I knew that I would be able to finish in 1:45:00 or so. I knew I had it in me. My HR was good, I was around 90-95% LT for the entire race and I figured I could keep that pace for under 2 hours without too much problems.

When we crossed the 10k starting line we knew that we were about to turn around and head to the finish line. We did with 9km to go or so, but at this point the wind was hmm, lets just say stronger than before.

It was not that bad of a wind, around 12 MPH maybe, but after 12 kilometers we could have done without it to be honest. So we started to run with that head wind, at some point I thought that it would show in our splits but it didn't changed them that much.

I was starting to be a little bit tired, but I kept telling to myself that I wanted to be there to see her face when she would finally qualify for New-York. So far she has done Boston, London, Moscow and Berlin and she always said that she needed New-York to finish her top five marathons.

So I told myself to HTFU and she keep that pace. My left knee was hurting and I knew it was probably not the brightest idea of all to keep pushing through it but I had to. We kept going at that 4:58/km-5:02/km (8:00/mile-8:06/mile) pace that we had since the beginning, When I saw the sign 8km I told to myself to just keep going, only 40 minutes to go it was not that bad. And I kept going, after a while I realized that we were at the 4km sign which made me really happy because I knew that we just did half of what we had to do when we saw that 8km sign. And honestly it seems like it went really fast from the 8 to the 4km sign.

4 kilometers to go, only 20 minutes. I am starting to be really tired. I never pushed that fast for that long. My best time for a 10k as 52:14 and I did it not that long ago during a training run to test my speed.

I wanted to slow down a little bit, but I knew I couldn't do that and miss Nicole's finish and my 1:45:00 time that was really reachable. I never even dreamed about doing 1:45 for that half before three or four days ago. But now it was there, I only had to keep going and I would reach it.

So I did, I kept running with her, she was pulling me at that point. I didn't want to let her take any advance on me or I knew I would let her go. When we finally reach the 2km sign she told me that if I wanted to slow down she didn't mind, she knew that even if we ran the last two kilometers at a 6:00/km (9:39/mile) pace we would finish in time for her to qualify anyway.

But deep in my mind I knew that I would be really pissed at me if I slowed down with 2km to go and miss that 1:45:00 mark because of that. So I told her I was ok, I knew it was not true and she knew too, but we kept going at the same pace.

When we finally reach the park where the finish line was she had taken maybe 25 feet on me, so I sprint a little bit to reach her. When she saw me arrived a little bit faster she told me she nothing left in the tank and there was no way she could sprint the last 200 meters. I was happy about it, first because I didn't want to sprint that much and secondly because I knew we had done a hell of a race and we both reached deep to find the energy to finish it in that time.

That was her best half marathon lifetime, and same for me. From 2:14:20 to 1:45:20, which means a PR by 29 minutes, I am really happy about this :) I also got my 5k time faster by 30 seconds or so and my 10k time by over 2 minutes. All that during the same race!

April training

2009-05-01T20:06:00.003-04:00

There we go, another month is done already.

Swimming : 13400 meters, yeah I should have push more on the swimming part
Biking : 550 km, not too bad since spring is not here yet
Running : 165 km, considering the taper last week of the month I am happy with that volume

Now off we go for May :)

Three days to go

2009-04-30T11:24:00.000-04:00

Three more days to go before the half marathon on Sunday, three mode days of taper. Three more days of wondering if I am losing too much fitness. This morning I went for a little 30 minutes run, just to keep the legs moving while tapering for Sunday. Only problem since I don't want to push too hard I ran slower that I usually do, and it made me wonder. Will I be ok on Sunday? Or will I be slower since I am running slower since a week or so.

I think I am starting to get nervous as the race approach, I know it's nowmal and I am pretty sure I will be fine on Sunday, but still I am nervous. As of now the weather should be perfect to run, a nice sunny 50 degree. There should have some winds though, nothing too much but still I would have prefer no wind at all, but I am not the one making those decisions.

Now I will go back into my head to think about how much fitness I am losing with that taper, see you all later. ;)

Last long run before taper

2009-04-24T09:04:00.002-04:00

Next week end I have my first half marathon for this summer. Yesterday I went for my last long run before the half and I am now starting my taper. This means that for the next 10 days or so my running and riding will go down to make sure that my legs will get stronger so I will arrive to the half marathon as ready as possible.

My goal for this year was to run a half marathon under 2 hours. Last year I ran my first half marathon in 2:14:04 and I wanted to improve that time as much as I could. But after last week end run, I now know that I can run the half under 1:55:00 if everything goes well next week-end. I might even get a little bit faster with the taper and the adrenaline of race day. But I don't want to change my goal as of now since it's my first race of the season and it's a C race. I also don't want to push too hard and injure myself right when the season kicks in.

Now I just have to make sure I take as much rest as possible during the next 10 days to make sure that those legs will be ready to kick ass on race day :)

One year later

2009-04-19T17:30:00.004-04:00

Last year around the same date I was getting my bike out of the basement, at that moment I had no idea that later on I would get into Duathlon and eventually Triathlon. I was just getting my road bike out of the basement in an attempt of getting back in shape.

I remember my first ride, coming back home after a ride of 20 km and I was really happy about it, telling myself that if I could ride 20km three times a week for the entire summer I would finish the summer with over than 1200 km and I was pretty happy about it.

Today it was my long run day, two weeks prior to my half marathon that will start the summer, my goal for this summer is to finish a half marathon under two hours. So as I said today was my long run day, I had a 1h45 run planned.

I left home this morning and walked for 2-3 minutes to get some warm up and get the legs moving. When I hit my Garmin 305 to start the session I realized that I had no HR data on it. I had two choices, either I was dead or I forgot my HR strap at home. After checking, I made sure that the problem was my HR strap ;)

Since I wanted to have my HR for this run I ran back home to get it. I grabbed the strap and put it on then off I go. I realized pretty fast that my pace was a lot faster than I was intending. I had in my mind to try to run today's run at a 5h45 pace or as close to that as possible. Since my goal for this summer is a sub 2 hours half I know that if I could complete today's run at 5h45 or so I would be close to my goal which requires a 5h41 pace to complete it in 2 hours. But on the other hand I didn't want to go out too fast and that's why I needed my HR strap.

After my first km I realized that my first split was 5:04 or so, no way I could hold that pace for 1h45 so I knew I had to slow down. Easier to think that than to do it I guess because my second split was around 5:10. Once again I talked myself into slowing it a bit, I got my third split around 5:17 or so and I stayed around there for 13/14 kilometers or so. After that I realized that my splits were more around 5:30. I came back home with 19.6 kilometer ran in 1:45:00 with an average split of 5:22. Which assure me that running my half under 2 hours in two weeks should not be a problem.

After that run I realized that I ran about the same as last year first ride and that's when I saw how much that my last year of training helped me.

I also had some weird idea after that run, since my legs were really sore I did try what is call a Ice bath, or in my book a new torture tool for triathletes. It was worst than running the 19.6km to be honest but I felt really good afterward.

I wanted to go ride in the afternoon, but I finally convinced myself that doing some stuff around the house wouldn't be a bad idea. So I cleaned the pool, yeah no more ice in it, and got the stuff out of the garage. Now I am ready for the summer, so please send them the memo so they know that they can send it out way.

A picture of my new Trek as promised

2009-04-19T17:01:00.002-04:00

Here's my new baby during yesterday's ride.

First ride with my new baby!

2009-04-15T20:03:00.006-04:00

Today was the day, I was feeling like we both were ready. The weather was nice, around 55F or so, and almost no winds. The only problem, I was at work. I was not too sure if getting out of the office early was a good idea since I had stuff to do still. But the weather was sooo nice I could hear the bike calling my name.

So at 3h45 or so I decided to take off, I figured I would work harder on another day, at least this is the reason I gave myself to get out early today. Jumped in the car, and tried to get home as fast as possible. I called my wife on my way home, to let her know that I would be late tonight since I had to go ride. She said she knew that I would call her to tell her that when she saw the weather. She's so sweet, she understand that I am a junky and that I really need my training fix.

When I finally arrived home I rush into my room to change clothes and get my riding gear on. Prepared some Cytomax and I was ready to take off. Got outside and jumped on the Trek. I did one quick ride once last week end to test the aero position and have an idea if the fit was good or not, I rode 7km or so so nothing to get really excited.

Today was the first real test, I went out for a 40km. A road that I like to ride on and that I do a lot so I knew traffic wouldn't be too bad, which was good because it was my first time in aero for a long ride. I rode the 40 in 75 minutes or so, stayed in aero the whole ride, so I am pretty happy about that. The fit seems to be really good, didn't feel any pain but my neck is a bit sore though, I guess it takes some times to get used to.

I am really happy with my new bike, it feels really fast. Today's ride was around 32km/h on a road with stop sign red lights traffic etc. So I guess I can get some really nice speed on a closed track.

The only thing that was a bit weird while riding was that I couldn't get as fast while going downhill that I usually do with my roadie. I am not too sure if it's because I am not used to the bike and the aero position yet, or if it is normal. I guess time will tell me :)

I need to take some pictures of the new bike and post them, tried with my cell phone but it didn't work out well.

Riding in the wind

2009-04-14T09:58:00.004-04:00

Since I had a four days week end I figured I would take advantage of the fact that I didn't have to work on Monday to go out and have a long ride. My initial plan was to have two long ride during the week end, but I had to cut my Saturday's ride because my friend was about to die, I guess he figured out pretty quickly that not doing anything for 3 months during winter was not his best idea ever ;)

Since I only had a 40k or so ride on Saturday I figured I could get something like 70-80k yesterday. So I tried to find a route where I knew I would be able to get those kilometers done without having to deal with snow or anything, yes we still have snow at some place around here.

According to the weatherman it would be a windy day, after being out for 3 hours I can tell you that calling this day windy was not strong enough of a word. It was probably the mother of all the windy day, the wind was around 30km/h with gust at 55km/h or so. And to make it worst it was a cross wind for the entire ride.

At first I wanted to grab the triathlon bike to go out and ride, but after looking at the trees around the house and seeing them almost break in the wind I figured that taking the roadie would be a better idea. I am pretty sure that with all those cross winds I would have drop the triathlon bike sooner or later and there is no way I would have been able to take any advantage of it in those winds anyway.

I took a couple of pictures or the river, which is probably still freezing even if there no more ice in it. Not sure I would go in there for an open water swim yet.

I finally finished the day with a 70 kilometers ride and with all those winds I can assure you that it was a really good workout.

HIM in 2009 or not

2009-04-11T07:50:00.005-04:00

I just can't make up my mind, I have been strugling with the idea of completing an half Ironman in 2009 for a while now. I know I have yet to complete a single triathlon, but still the half Ironman distance appel me. I can not really explain why, but I really want to complete one.

At first my plan was to complete multiple Sprints and an Olympique this year and then to go for the Half IronMan next year. But as of now, I am training to complete two or three half marathon and two 90 kilometers or more riding races this year. I also know that I can swim the distance. All those reasons make me wonder if I should tackle the half iron distance this year already.

I know I could complete a half iron this year, my actual training would probably be close to enough to do it. But the main question is, am I going through the steps too fast. Should I just take my first year to complete Sprints and Olympique and enjoy them as much as I can, then next year move to the half iron distance as I planned.

I see a lot of people who complete their first half iron and it seems to be such an experience, do I miss something if I don't go for it this year. One year from now I was not even thinking about training to do any kind of triathlon, and now I am wondering if I should go for the half iron. I even see a lot of people aiming the half Ironman distance as their first ever triathlon.

When I did my second relay Duathlon last year, watching those athletes doing half Ironman, Ironman and double Ironman is what really got me into the Triathlon world. I was watching them and dreaming that I would complete those distance one day, I know it may sounds crazy but it was so unreal for me that someone could race for 5, 10, 15 and even 30 hours that I felt like I had to train to one day be able to compete in those distance.

Before that single moment I never ever ran. I was just riding my bike and enjoying every moment of it. But those people really got me into a world in which I never though I would be. I then started to run and to swim later on. It's been almost a year now since I decided to head into this wonderful world, the triathlon world. And now I have got to make a decision.

I just don't want to regret the decision that I will make, so I need to really think about it. I need to make sure that I will feel good with whatever the decision I will make.

I just love running in the rain

2009-04-06T15:09:00.003-04:00

I can't really explain why, but I love running in the rain. Not the heavy kind of rain, but the light rain mist kind. This week end was probably close to the perfect weather to run, as far as I am concerned. It was 3C-4C with a little mist, I must admit that the perfect weather would be more like 10C with the same mist. But still I had long sleeves and pants and I felt just awesome. Lucky me I had two of those days with the same weather.

It was my first run over an hour since I hurt my right foot in February so I was a little nervous. I ran it mostly into zone 1 at a moderate pace and I felt great overall, I did feel a little bit of pain at some point during my run but it didn't stay for long. I made sure to put some ice as soon as I got back home and I have been pain free since then.

I do not want to push too hard on my right foot because I don't want to hurt myself for good and miss an entire Triathlon season. But I do have a half marathon in 4 weeks and I want to run it at a certain pace, so I have to balance my training in between pushing hard to get faster and just running to stay healthy.

By noon Sunday the rain stopped completely, so I decided to go for a ride outside. I am so tired of riding on the trainer that I accept all kind of weather to ride outside right now. Even if the pavement was still wet and full of sands I got all dressed up and went for my ride.

The weather was around 4C at that time and I was dressed perfectly for it. I was not cold at all, so I kept going on one of my favorite road. After around 30k I decided it would be a good idea to turn around and go back home. I turned and then stopped to have a gel and some Cytomax. While I was enjoying my awesome lunch I felt a couple of drop of rain on my skin, so I figured that it would rain a little bit but I had the wind on my back now so it wouldn't be that bad.

Here's a picture of the river next to where I stopped, you can see that there's still some snow here and there but we're slowly getting there. Yes it's a big river ;)

I got back on the bike and started riding on my way back home, first hill that I went down I could hear a weird noise. Like if my front brake were touching the rim, so I tried to fix that while riding around 45 km/h. After a little while the sound was gone, I was proud of myself since I fixed the noise. Well I thought that I did fix it. At the moment I realized that the noise was coming from the back tire, and it was more the air getting out that I could hear.

Yeah I got my first flat of the season, in the rain to make sure it would be pleasant. I changed the flat and got back on the bike, kept riding as fast I could to get back home. At some point during my ride back home the wind has been kind enough to turn around so I would have a headwind, nothing more pleasant when you're all wet from the rain ;)

I stopped by one of the lake where I am planning to swim during the summer, all I can say is that as of now the lake would be more useful to someone with ice skate than a wetsuit. I was a bit disappointed, I did imagine at some point that I would be able to see some water. Here's a picture of my pool, this is how the lake looked like when I checked it.

I finally made it back home, a nice 60k ride, not as enjoyable as when it's all nice and sunny. but still way more fun than riding in the basement.

Now if the summer can get around here that would be awesome.

What is up with car drivers?

2009-04-03T09:29:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I went out for my second ride of the year outside. I took my usual 40k road, I always do this road when I have to do a quick ride outside. The weather was gorgeous and I figured that leaving work early would be a great idea since it would give me some time to ride before diner. I left the office around 4pm, drove home and got dressed as fast as I possibly could. Around 4h45 I was on the road enjoying the weather while practicing a sport that I love.

All of a sudden a nutcase drove by me with his big Chevy truck and he almost hit me with his passenger mirror. He then stops at a stop like 50 feet from me, being who I am I passed him and then got right in front of him to show him I was there, like he didn't already knew that. I then went back to the side of the road and what had to happen happened once again, he did the same exact thing that before, even closer and he almost hit me while accelerating.

Being the intelligent guy that I am I should have shroud and keep going, but I decided to flip him off. Since he was already proving that he his a nut case I shouldn't have done that, but I couldn't stop myself to show him what I was really thinking of him. So he stopped and opened his window, we had a "conversation" that I won't write here since young persons could read this and it wasn't pretty. He then decided to get off his car, I was ready to show him that even if I wear spandex I can still defend myself when needed ;) but he didn't do anything. Just kept yelling at me and insulting. So I decided to just get back on my bike and get away from that nut case.

I can't believe why people keep doing this, it's not like the street is not large enough for both of us. But he had to try to get me off the road just to show me that he is a real man with his big Chevy truck.

After a while I forgot about this poor nutsy and really enjoyed that gorgeous weather that we had. I love riding my bike, even if there is some nutcase around here.

Feeling bad to skip a session?

2009-04-02T09:38:00.002-04:00

Yesterday a friend called me and asked if I wanted to go out tonight for a couple of beers. I told him I had no idea, but in the back of my head I wanted to tell him no because I had planned to ride my bike tonight. Either outside or inside I wanted to ride at least an hour. The summer is coming and I want to improve as much as I can on the bike. I finally told him to call me back today and I would have a better idea.

Now I am sitting here, thinking about it and I feel weird. On one side I want to go out with my friends, have a couple of beers and enjoy their companies. But on the other side I feel bad to skip a workout, I feel like I am cheating my training. I am so addicted to my training that I feel like I can`t skip a single session. Am I alone in this situation, anyone else ever felt bad to skip a session so he/she can go out and have some good time?

Or maybe I am just weird, and I just take all this a little bit too seriously. I always thought that you should give it your 100% whenever you participate into something, and this is how I am approaching my Triathlon training, and racing. I may not be the fastest person out there, but I know that every time I get home after a training I gave my 100%, and this is the same for every races.

I haven't made up my mind yet, so I don't know if I will go ride or go out tonight. I guess the weather will help me decide. If it`s nice and sunny I will go ride outside, and if it rains I will go out instead of riding in my basement ;)

I am spoiled now

2009-03-31T11:39:00.003-04:00

After last Saturday's ride outside I got spoiled, I have a ride to do today and I want to go ride outside. I am not too sure yet if the weather will cooperate though. We had some melting snow this morning, didn't look like a day to go ride. But it is supposed to be 4C this afternoon with sun, if I leave work not too late I could probably get an hour or so run in before the sunset.

If I can't get out then I will ride my new Trek on the trainer, which is not a bad idea either. But I am just tired of the trainer after 5 months on it 3/4 times a week. It is amazing how riding a bike outside can be so wonderful and doing the same thing in your basement can be boring :p

At least I do not run inside, I will never understand how people do to run on a treadmill. Even at -40C I always prefer to go run outside than on the treadmill. This remind me of a picture I took somewhere in January or February, that was a cold day to run ;)

Training is everything

2009-03-29T11:10:00.003-04:00

Today was long run day, well long for me since I had to cut my running after my right foot injurie. I had to run 20 minutes three times with a 1 minute break between each. As usual I walked 5 minute as a warm-up then started running, everything went really well. I tried not to push too hard since I still feel some pain in my right foot sometimes.

Here are my splits
20m 00s - 3.75 kms - 05m 20s /km
01m 00s - 0.13 kms - 07m 37s /km
20m 00s - 3.83 kms - 05m 13s /km
01m 00s - 0.13 kms - 07m 43s /km
20m 00s - 3.82 kms - 05m 14s /km

When I got back home I checked my times and realised that I beat my 10k PR during that run. I ran 10k, including two walking breaks of one minute in 53:25.

This made me realise how much training makes the difference. Last year I started running on July 7th and I ran my first 10k race on August 24th in 58:14 and I thought I was about to die. I ran a half mary later last fall and kept training during the entire winter.

It's nice to see that I improved that much over the winter, 5 minutes on my 10k time and I was not even racing. I know I can push a lot more then that during a race, I kept my heart rate mostly in zone two during my entire workout today.

Now the real question is, can this count as my new personal best even if I didn't do it during an official race. I will have to think about it.