Tri-umphant!

Week 23: August 4-August 10

Bike: 67 km (40 on road and 27 on trail)
Run: 6 km
Swim: 1800 m

The Yukon's crazy summer schedule leaves many weeks where your taper begins before your recovery can end. After the Yukon River Trail Marathon, I had only 7 days to recover, prepare and taper for the Long Lake Triathlon. The bulk of the week was spent recovering from knee pounding downhills that left me barely mobile on Monday. It took until Thursday for me to move into the training stage of my event preparation cycle. Because of the fairly consistent schedule of running and biking, I knew that the only real gap for the triathlon was going to be the open water swimming. Although I've been practicing at Marsh and Long Lake, I wasn't convinced that the 1 km open swim was possible, let alone a good idea. To help build my swimming self-esteem, I biked out to Long Lake on Thursday night to practice in the water.

I have already spent considerable time on this blog moaning about the stupid temperatures of Yukon lakes. What I haven't talked about it is the potential for catastrophe due to unexpected water animals. It is true, I don't have to contend with the possibility of fatal shark attacks like those in San Diego. That being said, Yukon Lakes may be more dangerous than anyone actually expects, with frightening creatures ready to pop out and attack at any given time. On Thursday, I was the victim of such an attack, which Tony graciously captured on video (while he could have been saving me). In a perfect world I could have edited this video to be faster with the Jaws soundtrack playing softly in the background, but it's not a perfect world, so this will have to do:

Post swim I was feeling confident about the open water and ready to move into the taper/madly cleaning because Tony's Mom is set to arrive in 48 hours phase of the week. The only training left to do was wetsuit stripping - a very technical part of triathlons that involves the removal of the wetsuit and preparation for the bike ride. I was very lucky to have Ms. Alexis back for a visit from Vancouver and ready to assist me with all my transitional needs. On Saturday night, I jumped into the shower with my wetsuit, and then we practiced stripping it off as quickly as possible. When we got it down to 30 seconds, I knew I was fully prepared for the weekend ahead.

Tony, Alexis and I arrived bright and early to Long Lake. While I got dressed, Tony checked out my bike and Alexis laid on my towel and read (which I'm sure was helpful in some way). With about 10 minutes left until start time, Alexis perked up and abandoned reading to make fun on my wicked triathlon outfit - boy, I miss that girl...

Finally, it was race time. I tried to set myself right in the middle of the swimmers, mostly because I wanted to get kicked a few times, just to see what it might be like in a bigger group. Unfortunately, Yukoners are much too congenial and I remained unscathed throughout the swim start. As I moved through the water I realized a few important points of open water swimming. First of all - it's good to know where you are going. Not just in the 500 m out and back way, but really know where the turn around is. Otherwise, you do like me and just swim in one general direction, taking a longer way than necessary. Secondly, it's good to de-fog your goggles before you start, because not being able to see the buoy (which you haven't bothered to scope out) can be tough through foggy lenses. Despite these minor inconveniences, the swim went swimmingly and I came out of the water near the back, but feeling strong. The training helped and Alexis had my suit off and top on in 24 seconds, getting me on my bike faster than some of the girls who had beat me out of the water.

The next part of the triathlon was a 15.5 km mountain bike ride. This ride would have been much nicer had it not started with a ridiculous climb up a gravel road, and transitioned into a constant climb up soft muddy trail. The mud only ended with the loose gravel/sand began (which was conveniently located at the ridiculously steep downhills). I have decided that before I race another mountain bike ride, I'm going to get myself some sport glasses. Not being able to see the trail ahead is a major problem when mountain biking and bound to lead to my early death.

Finally we were at the run, which was a hilly run by normal standards, but reasonable compared to last week's marathon. This is the part of the race where I gained the most time. Although my bike was not strong, I seemed able to maintain the most energy for the final portion of the triathlon. This is a big improvement over last year, where I was physically done before the run even started. I did two loops of the course cheered on by Tony, his Mom and her friend Lee who were down for the visit.

The big shock of the day came after I rolled into the finish line. The miracle of all miracles seemed to have occurred through some cosmic combination of fates. I had actually posted the fastest female time for the race! For the first time in history (actually this might not be true, I think I won a ski race when I was 6) I won a sporting event. While I don't expect this phenomenon to repeat, I am happy to have tasted the sweet nectar of a gold!

Sierra posted this on Aug 14, 2008 from the outside | | permanent link