Not a very active blogger in the last year. My last triathlon was last years Victoria Half as my knees started bugging me shortly after and then things got in the way of my training for a few months. It was fun things though – I got back into coaching volleyball after 15 years away from the sport. I’ve just signed up to be the head coach for the high school team so will be a bit challenging to keep my own training going come August to October but this year I know about it and will plan.

Back to triathlon.

I’ve had an interesting off season with some nagging injuries and then after a Duathlon race my bike was stolen. I managed to get a new bike some three weeks ago and it is so much fun. I bought a BMC Timemachine TM02 which is a tri bike compared to the stolen road bike. Fast on the flats and a bit challenging on the up hills so far.

This past weekend I was back in Victoria for the Victoria Half Ironman and the goal was to get under 5.30 which would be little over two minutes faster than last year – doable even with the not so perfect season so far.

I felt like a newbie this weekend, transition station wasn’t set up as neatly as before, I kept forgetting little things during the morning of the race and I even put my wetsuit on backwards…

Everything felt great as I entered the water a good 25 minutes before start and did a swim and just got used to the somewhat warm water. Plan was to start fairly quick and get some clean water but I failed on that part and was caught in the middle of a stampede. Had to fight my way out of there to calm waters and lost valuable minutes and raised heart rate substantially. I was a little surprised I was in at about 36 minutes as I felt like I was just standing still in the water.

Transition wasn’t really smooth but nothing to worry about. Got on the bike and in the really nice weather there wasn’t much to do but get going and be prepared for almost 3 hours on the bike.

I did buy a powermeter for the new bike so had my plan to keep at around 80% on the bike. Technical issue right away, watch wasn’t picking up my speed nor distance.. I rode with only power and time for three hours and even managed to hit the lap button so had to reset the timer and as such also lost my total time.

Bike felt good and it was so much fun to ride fast … a bit too fast as by the end of the day I had ridden at over 90% of my threshold level. I came in at just under 2.50 which was about 9 minutes faster than last year so quick calculation in my head said I should be ok to beat 5.30.

Run was hard, really hard and my pace got slower and slower as my legs and back kept telling me how stupid it was to have so much fun on the bike. I will stick to my bike plan next time as this run was painful and ended up costing me little over a minute.

I finished the race in just under 5.32 which is a new PR.

All in all a really nice race weekend and after the long drive home my legs were still telling me that I am stupid. Now two days later I am back to normal and ready to go at it again.

Promise of more writing this summer and coming year as I share my time between Triathlon, Volleyball and Golf.

Brjann