Qualicum Beach Triathlon 2014 Post Race Report - PB by 5:11!

(I'm running so fast my feet aren't even touching the ground!)

This race was my introduction to triathlon last year, and it got me hooked. I can’t recommend it enough, especially for people who are interested in trying triathlon but are intimidated. It’s a pretty casual race, in a really nice little community, and it’s short. A 400 m swim, followed by an 18 km bike (4 loops around a circuit), finishing with an almost 5 km run that’s mostly in forest trails (2 x around a loop). People cheer you on from their driveways which feels great. Not to mention that my in-laws now live along the bike route, making it really convenient for the family to come out and cheer for me. (And they cheer for other people too. Just not with personalized signs.)

As I said, I did this one last year, so I had an old time to beat. Initially my plan was to try and better my time from last year by about 2 minutes. That seemed like a reasonable goal earlier in the spring. But my training has been really interrupted of late, so in the end, I changed my goal to one of just finishing in time to watch my son race in the tiny tri. (I didn’t know that they don’t start the tiny tri until the last adult runner has crossed the finish line.) The change in goal was good for me, as it released me from any pressure and let me just have fun, which apparently makes me faster...

So how did I do? Well, I started the day by biking to the race (I biked back too). It didn’t matter that it was somewhere around 1 km from my in-laws’ house to the race start – it made me feel really hard core and put me in a great spot mentally. This is a pool swim race, and they group swimmers by time, with the slowest swimmers going first. Last year I was in the second group of adults to start, this year I was in the third. I did the swim in 8:39. Not super speedy, but better than the 8:50 I posted last year. The bike timing includes both transitions (no chip timing in this race – they record when you exit the pool and when you exit transition on to the run). My transitions were likely a little faster, I now have triathlon bike shoes which are a little faster to do up and elastic laces on my runners, but frankly that’s not where I’ve been putting my efforts. I have been working on my cycling legs, however (mostly in the gym though). My bike time this year was 42:02 (again, that includes 2 transitions), beating last year’s 45:48 by 3:46! And I did the run in 25:44, shaving 1:14 off of last year’s run time. My overall time was 1:16:24, good enough for 78^th place overall (with overall placements including the relays) and 4^th in my age group, F40-44 (not including the relays). That’s 5:11 faster than last year, 1 place higher in my age group (I was 5^th last year at 1:21:35, same age group), and better overall by 32 places!

I checked to see how my last year’s time would place me this year, just in case the race was overall slower. My last year’s time would have put me at about 112^th this year, so about the same. Clearly, I need to work on my swimming, but in terms of pay offs, given that they’re much better on the bike, I think I’ll stick to focusing there for now.

Summary:

2014       Overall           Age Group              Swim                 Bike                   Run

1:16:24    78^th               4/14                         8:39 (101)          42:02 (81)          25:44 (71)

2013       Overall           Age Group              Swim                 Bike                   Run

1:21:35    110^th             5/13                         8:50 (112)          45:48 (125)        26:58 (91)

I felt really great at the end of my race. I was so much faster than expected, my family hadn’t yet made it to the finish line! And then I got to have even more fun and help my 5 year old son in the pool for his tiny tri. Watching him enjoy his race so much was the best part of my day by far.