Penticton 70.3 Race Report
It has been a long time since I have written one of these, but since Ironman Canada and the 70.3 ended up being such a strange day and one that I had never encountered in my 30 years of racing I thought it would be a good chance to document how to handle a big change on race morning.
When we arrived in Penticton on Wednesday the weather was great. Water was warm (borderline no wetsuit swim) and the air temperature was perfect. On Friday afternoon a weather front started moving in bringing with it clouds, cooler temperatures and rain! It rained most of Saturday. Instead of doing our usual 20/20/20 race prep workouts we opted for just the 20min swim to avoid getting cold and taking our bikes out in the rain.
When we jumped in for our swim at 7am it was noticeable that the water had cooled some (not borderline on the wetsuit anymore), but in no way did the prospect of it being too cold to have a swim enter anyone’s minds.
For those of us doing the 70.3 it was more of a leisurely get up with our event not starting until 8am. When we did get up, the weather (albeit a little cool at 10 degrees) looked perfect. Our hotel was right on Lakeshore drive and our room overlooked the lake. The lake was like glass. With temperatures predicted to creep up into the mid 20’s this was shaping up to be a perfect race day. The Ironman athletes were scheduled to start at 6:30 and it wasn’t long before word had gotten back to us that they were delaying the start by 1 hour so that the air temperature and the lake would warm up. Apparently, there are rules that consider the air temperature and the water temperature and if they are under a certain number than they can shorten or (as we were soon to find out) cancel the swim.
At this point several of our HPR athletes who were racing the full had made their way to our hotel room to chill out (or get more stressed) and wait for the next announcement which was the swim for both the Ironman and 70.3 being shortened to 900m.
Just as everyone was getting their head around this change and how much effort to put into the 900m swim it was announced that the swim was being canceled all together and that athletes would now be starting on their bikes one hour and forty-five minutes later than planned. 2 athletes leaving the mount line every 5 seconds. To say this required a major shift in focus is an understatement.
I was very impressed with how our athletes handled the changes. Everyone had to improvise on their race morning nutrition. I had another half breakfast (bagel/peanut butter/banana) 1 hour before the 70.3 start at 9:30am. Since many of our long team ride/run workouts start at 9am on Saturday’s it turned out to be more like a normal Saturday than an Ironman race day and in the end that worked out well.
The race was started by your race number so being 3040 I was the 40th person to head out up Main Street. I did very little warm up before and told my athletes to simply ease into the bike and try not to get too excited heading out with all the crowds at the beginning. I felt I did a pretty good job of this and by the top of Main Street I was up to about 4th on the road and I was able to see the front of the race.
I knew early in the bike that my legs were feeling good on the day. I don’t ride with power, but by heart rate and it was right where I needed to be, and I was moving along quickly. One athlete went flying by me about 30km in and I knew that it was a pace I was not capable of holding for 90km so that was an easy decision to let him go. One of the things about a race like this is that you really don’t know how people are doing behind you and how far back they left. So, while you might be ahead on the road you could be well behind in actual race time. For this reason, it is even more important to ride your own race, pay attention to the little things (effort/ nutrition/ mind set) and follow YOUR race plan. I did all those things on this day, and it was paying off. I made sure that I stayed as aero as possible on the way out to Oliver and once the climb started up from Oliver, I dropped those that I had been riding with and rode pretty much the rest of the race on my own. Unlike the Victoria 70.3 where I was too cold to even open my gels or grab my water bottles, the temperature had climbed up into the 20’s and I was warm. The warmer day allowed me to follow my nutrition plan perfectly and I arrived in transition having gotten through everything I had planned on taking (2 bottles of Gruppo/ 4 Roctane Gu Gels/ 1 package of Clif Bloks). Another nice thing about the course on this day was the wind. We had a pretty good wind out of the south, so while it was a head wind on the first part of the bike it meant that the final 20km of ride back into town would be fast.
I was off the bike in 2:27.
After a quick transition (no need to put socks on since they were on right from the start of the bike) I downed another gel (PowerGel this time) and headed out onto the run. At this point it was well into the 20’s and you could feel the heat. Racing in hotter weather has always been an advantage for me so I was confident that I would have a good day. It wasn’t until the top of Vancouver Hill and running along the KVR that I had my first “uh oh” moment of the day. Cramps in both quads came on quickly. Again, I was running by heart rate and that was fine. I told myself to calm down and grab the salt pills out of my back pocket that I had packed for the run. Unfortunately, I was still a little far from the next aid station and I immediately found out I would need water to get the salt pills down. I tried to swallow it without water, but it came right back up. At this point I just focused on breathing and slowed my pace from around 4:05/km to 4:15/km. This seemed to help, and the cramps subsided. Once I was able to get to the aid station and take the salt, I was able to pick things up again. The rest of the run I just tried to stay steady and count backwards the km remaining. With 10k to go I tell myself that there is less than 45min of running left. With 5k, about 20 minutes. For me, this strategy works a lot better than counting the km.
Being out there on the run early meant that there were very few athletes around me and that was a neat feeling. It was almost like back in the old days racing Pro and being near the front. In fact, one highlight was getting caught, running with (for a very little while) and following Lionel Sanders on his first lap of the run. His run is as deceiving in real life as it is on screen. Running behind him, I thought we weren’t running that fast and then I looked at my watch and we were doing 3:50/km’s. Even with only 4km to go I was not ready to sustain that, so I just tried to keep him close and in sight. At the end of the day, I was the 3rd athlete to cross the finish having caught and passed one athlete on the run which ended up putting me 6th overall in the 70.3 and 1st in my age group. I ran 1:26 which I was very happy with on this course. Nutrition on the run was 1 PowerGel, 2 SIS Gels, 6 salt pills and water, Mortal, Coke as needed. They were also handing out ice at a few of the aid stations which was also a life saver.
Penticton and Ironman have been a very important part of the triathlon world for a very long time, so it was bittersweet to see it come to an end and have it finish without being able to put on the full event. With the threat of forest fires becoming more of a reality every summer I can understand how it is hard for both race directors and athletes to commit to the event and in the end, I understand that this was almost an inevitable decision.
Hopefully the triathlon community will still embrace races in the Okanagan and even if they are not Ironman branded events support the town and the entire region by going there for camps and to train on one of the most iconic courses in our sport.
To everyone that raced and all of the Human Powered Racing athletes that competed know that you took part in one of the most amazing races on the planet.
