Huge Day of Racing!

June 21^st ended up defying the weather reports and turned out to be a beautiful day. The predicted thunderstorms turned into a calm, cool summer solstice. To the disappointment of the team, June 21^st was the date of 2 major races that we were planning to all tackle. The outcome was the team splitting into two squads for the day: one competing at the 76km Tour de Waterloo and the other competing in the Toronto Triathlon Festival Olympic Distance. With conditions of both events the exact opposite from last year, it was a successful day all around.

Tour de Waterloo (Ed, Parichit, Garima, Adam, Marcel)

This event last year made for an exciting day. Amongst the team, we experienced nearly every scenario imaginable from success, to mechanicals, to crashing, to bonking, to completely missing a turn and riding off course.

At 45km in to this 76km race, Adam and Marcel were dropped from the main group. They ended up in a chase group and finished side by side in 57^th and 58^th place overall, good enough for 4^th and 5^th in the 20-29 age group.

Ed and Parichit were able to hold onto the peloton but a late solo attacker broke away for a solo victory by over a minute. In the bunch sprint for secondary positions, Ed finished 21^st overall and Parichit came in 4 spots back at 25^th. They were able to secure 1^st and 2^nd in the 20-29 age group, respectively.

Garima competed in the 46km race and held on for an amazing third place finish, barely missing out on second in the sprint final.

It was a hugely successful day for the team given that we were able to saturate the men’s 20-29 age group and achieve an overall podium!

Well deserved meal!

Toronto Triathlon Festival (Tyler, Lucas)

The 2015 TTF was a race that I had been targeting for a full year. It is my favourite race to compete in – the fast, flat course in the downtown core makes for an exciting race. The weather held off to give nearly perfect conditions, a nice contrast to last year. On the table for this event were qualifying spots for the 2016 ITU World Championships in Cozumel, Mexico. This was the main target for my race as my attempts at qualifying in the past were shrouded in bad luck.

I felt pretty good going into this race. All of my pre-season tests had me optimistic. However, lack of available pool time at my local community center and a busy week at work seemed to have weakened my form and allotted me a less than optimal taper. A 50+ hour week doesn't leave much time to relax or even stretch the muscles.

As mentioned, the day turned out to be perfect, with the water completely calm and there was little wind. The swim didn’t feel too good though. I knew my swim wasn’t on ideal form and it took me around 750m to get into my groove. 400m in, Lucas literally swam over me and took off ahead. So the chase began. On exiting the water I just felt odd and like nothing was in sync. After an unusually long T-1, I ran up the hill to the bike mount and struggled to put on my shoes, having to stop at the side of the road so get everything secure.

The calm before the storm. This is the first time I've ever spotted myself in a mass start swim. Lucas and I are 4th and 5th from the right on the bottom row.

To make matters worse, for some reason my computer wasn’t picking up any signals from my speed sensor. Once I fixed it on the go, it kept sporadically cutting in and out. I had planned a target for my power and soon realized I would have to revert to good old feel. My legs felt sluggish and all I could do was press on and hope for the best. I kept pedalling away and 500m from the turn around, I saw Lucas headed back in the opposite direction. I caught him with 30km to go and we essentially got to T-2 together.

As in the swim, it took me a while to find my legs. It just didn’t seem to be my day. I was running on track to my goal time of a sub 40-minute run until my T.A. tendinitis began to flare up at the 5km mark. My pace dropped dramatically as I stumbled to the finish. My leg felt like it had gone up in flames. 

All in all I came in at 2:14.48, which was a new PB for myself. I averaged 1:45min/100 in the swim, 37.7kph on the bike and 4:10min/km on the run. It was good enough for 32^nd overall, 2^nd in my age group and a ticket to the 2016 ITU World Championships in Cozumel, Mexico. After some review, an elite athlete won my age group, winning the entire race in fact, and I was a little confused as to why he would be in the AG division. My best guess is that since it was a WC qualifying race it was a way for him to qualify? If anyone has any suggestions please let me know, I’m not too familiar with the pro-athlete system.

Lucas finished just 2 minutes behind myself, with a 2:16.59 finish in his Olympic distance debut.

Typically, I am a few races into the season by TTF so all of the kinks are worked out. With this race being pushed up to accommodate the Pan-Am Games, I don’t think I was quite prepared both mentally or physically. I wasn’t able to train due to work and I made some dumb mistakes with my race set up - things that by this point should have come second nature. It was 10 months since my last race so it wasn’t as smooth as I would have hoped. The main target of my race was to qualify for the World Championships so in that sense my day was a success. Qualification wasn’t graceful but I qualified and that was the main thing. 

Podium Shots 

One thing I should note is that I had a 9 minute buffer to the 3^rd and final qualifying spot. For years of tough competition, I was always caught out of a spot due to the high level of performance. It seems odd that on a day where I felt my worst, I was able to get in.

I am disappointed with my performance despite the huge PB. Cody Beals put it best in his 70.3 IMMT recap when he described his race referencing @Jackmott: "I was too slow and I was too dumb, but I'm not too dumb to learn from my mistakes!" I know I can do better and am hungry for improvement and that is a factor that will drive me to better myself come next September. In my 7+ years of racing I have never had a 'bad' race. The fact that I'm calling a PB race 'bad' may prove that I have a screw loose in my head, but now I'm just rambling. 

My goal for Cozumel is what I'm calling 40 up/40 down. I want to get through the swim in 20 minutes (not factored into the name), average over 40 on the bike (40 up) and run a sub-40 run (40 down). These are all goals that I believe I can strive to achieve, marks that I had planned to hit on Sunday.

As always, a huge thanks to our sponsors 3Sixty5 Cycling, DuTriAndRun, and Eagle Partners for their continued support!

Next up for the team is the Tour de Terra Cotta on August 3rd. 

Congrats again to the team on a killer weekend!

Contact:
On Your Left Cycling-

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Tyler Chuang

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Ed Cyr

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Alex Dos Santos

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• Twitter: @asotnassod

Adam Napiorkowski

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Lucas Shwed

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Parichit Bagga

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• Blog: http://parigari.blogspot.ca