Long run and ride

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

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

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!!

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

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

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

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 ;)