Guelph Lake report.

The day started with me waking up a good 3 hrs before the race start. Had my standard race morning meal - 1 piece of light rye toast with honey, a couple of figs and a half cup of coffee. Did some light stretching and started to get in the 'zone'. We arrived with lots of time to spare - by 'we' I mean myself and my cheering section aka Sally, my wife. :) All pre race stuff went off with out a hitch. I was nice and relaxed.
Sally and I headed to the beach and on the way we passed the podium, she says ' hop up there and I'll take your picture'. So I figure what the heck, it's the only way I'll see a podium finish. :) I do some funky poses and we both had a chuckle.
We hit the beach and I get suited and warmed up. Official start is still 15 min away so I go for an easy swim and feel loose and limber.
Race start is approaching and now there are 350 of us crowding on the beach, the atmosphere is good. Wave 1 promptly start at 8:30. I'm in the second wave, starting at 8:32. Bam! We're off. I have a swimming background, so I might as well take advantage of it. Myself and and another guy take lead, I look over and say to myself ' hmm nice technique, maybe I can settle in and draft behind him..' Well that wasn't going to happend because before you know it we had caught up with the back of the first wave. So for the next 500m I was swimming around people. For the last 500m, the crowd thinned and I settled into a nice rhythm. Finish up the swim, exit the water and head off to T1.
Swim time was 21:35 or 1:27/100. I actually thought I'd be around the 1:23/100 mark - but I won't bitch.
T1 went fairly smooth. Had to sit and rassle my wet suit off, but other than that - no problems. T1 time was 1:13.
Onto the bike. Since I'm training for Iron Man I wasn't really sure what to do on the bike portion. I mean 38k is relatively short compared to some of the crazy training rides I have to do. So the plan was to 'giver', but not too crazy. Think of it like a speed work out. I passed perhaps 5 or 6 people on the bike course and I thought.. ' damn, maybe I'm going out to hard?' Shrug, I'll guess I'll find out. At around the 33k mark I passed the lead elite woman - what a sight, 110 lbs of muscle. Gave me a little boost and before ya know it, the bike portion is toast. Bike time 1:01:55. 36.8km/h. Would have been nice to be in the 37 range, but again, I won't bitch.
Ug. Run time. My worst part. I've been working on the run, let's see if there are any dividends. The, cough, " plan" had me in the 45min range. The legs were a little heavy at the start, but not crazy bad. The heat was starting to kick in, but at this point it was only about 10am so again, that wasn't so bad either. By km 1, I could already here clump, clump behind me, damn already passed by some of the people I passed late on the bike portion. By km 3 the elite woman I mention in the bike, flew past me. Wow! What a turnover! She was smokin. At km 6, I passed an elite male who was barfing his guts out - yikes I felt for him, didn't look like he was having fun. At this point I kinda lost track of far I had to go - but I could tell the end was near... but alas, no it was not. I totally forgot they make you run past the finish area, for another short out and back loop. Bonus! :) Ahh well suck it up and finish it. And so I did. Run time 41:59 or 4:12 km. While certainly not nearly as fast as some of the speed demons, I was happy with the run split. Still needs work though. :)
Total time 2:07:29. Met my goal and placed second in my category! What a great mental boost for my upcoming IronMan.
Cheers,
Darren