Vancouver Triathlon Ramsey's Race report 4th overall

Hi Sean,

Race report:
Swim
I started in the front line with all the eventual top placers: Mike, Facundo, Nathan. The start of the swim was very shallow with some rocky outcroppings. When the gun went I was running behind mike. He dived in so I figured it was shallow enough to dive in. I immediately hit a flat rock on the bottom, scratched my hands and my feet and came to a dead stop. By the time I got going I saw the leaders about 10m ahead of me. On the first lap I couldn’t really see where I was placed. I could see some guys ahead of my but I didn’t know how many. My sighting was good and I felt like I made some good inroads by having better lines. By the time I came to the first lap turnaround I saw that I was in a 3 man group with Facundo and one other guy. I swam with them the rest of the way on the second lap and we came on the water together. 5th out of the water in 21:35.

T1
The transition went very smoothly. I found my bike easily and got my wetsuit off without trouble. I beat the other two guys out of the transition zone pretty handily.

Bike

Things got off to a poor start as I found that I couldn’t really feel my feet and my right foot was bleeding. I had my new shoes set up with elastics holding them horizontal. The right foot went in fine but I managed to pull the strap on the left shoe right out. It took me a while to get the strap back into the loop and by the time I got going Facundo had caught up to me. We rode together to the base of the prospect point climb. He was getting a little bit ahead of me but I was staying with him. Once we got over the top he accelerated away from me and by the time we got to the bottom of the hill I couldn’t see him. The rest of the ride was reasonably uneventful. Nathan (eventual 2nd place) caught and passed me at brockton point on lap three. I ended up using my powertap because I thought it would be useful to see what kind of power I am putting out in a race. The results are interesting and I have attached the file. My normalized power was 290W, significantly lower than my FTP of 315. I managed to break it down into the 4 laps and I really noticed where I had my lowest output (other than the downhill) was out and back to brockton point. I realized in retrospect that I was not pushing hard enough out of the corners, down the small hills and straighaways. I think I can make a lot of improvement by working at this. Tell me what you think. 9th fastest bike in 1:05:26.

T2
No issues here. Feet out of the pedals on the bike. Running shoes on with a bit of trouble thanks to the numb feet. Grabbed my watch and race belt and was off in 4th position.

Run
I didn’t make the same mistake as Kelowna and go out too hard. I settled into a rhythm of around 6 min/miles. I had a bit of a stomach cramp that went away but otherwise felt reasonably good. In fact, I might have felt too good. I found myself with a long gap to 5th place and thought it was a long gap to 3rd. I managed to convince myself that 3rd place was out of my reach and I should just continue at my current pace and I would run faster than I did in Kelowna. I finished where I had started the run, in 4th place with a run split of 37:09. I gained 23 seconds on Facundo but he still was 1:48 ahead of me. That is a long gap but I don’t think I was optimistic enough to think that I could close it. The run was hard, but I think I could have pushed the envelop a bit more to close the gap. If I got him within my sights then who knows what would have happened. Still the fastest I have ever run over 10km but I think I can do more.

Finishing time: 2:04:09