You gotta learn how to lose before you can learn how to win

After last race season I was unsure of what I wanted to do in 2015. My goal for several years had been to win a medal at the ITU Age Group World Championships and after I did that in 2014, I wasn't sure of what I wanted to focus on. I had always resisted the thought of doing a Half Ironman race because I had never much enjoyed doing long bike rides or long runs.  I couldn't see how I would enjoy racing or training for that distance. I also figured that with my wonky shins I was guaranteed to suffer a stress fracture if I ran that much. As the winter rolled on

I was finding it harder to motivate myself.  I wasn't missing any workouts, I just didn't really have a purpose to my training and was going through the motions. Noa had suggested doing a Half Ironman. Some friends and training partners had been having success with it, so I decided to give it a shot and 'mentally' signed up for the race as a focus to the first half of my season.  I figured it would be a way to motivate myself in training to continue to get better and that I could use it a basis to see if Half Ironman racing at the Professional level was something I wanted to pursue for next year.

Having now done one Half Ironman, I'm not so sure what to think...

Race morning started off at the very very early (even for me) time of 3:30am. I was quite anxious for the race and wasn't able to sleep and as such had not slept at all during the night. This is abnormal for me as I am not typically nervous before races anymore. I guess that is because normally I know exactly what to expect and that I am well prepared to handle it. For this race, there were a lot of unknowns. Victoria and I got to the race site just before it opened and scored a sweet parking spot right near transition. I went through my usual pre-race preparation and all felt well. The race this year was organized into waves. I was in the second wave and I went down to transition just before my wave start and did a quick warmup.  The swim was the least of my concerns for this race as it is not much further than an Olympic distance swim and although my swim hasn't been very good lately, I figured I would come out among the first 3-4 athletes in my wave. The swim start was quite civilized from my perspective. I had lined up next to Ryan 'All Smiles' Smiley and he shot away immediately as expected, but other than that I experienced no congestion at the start and broke away from the pack fairly quickly. I started running into the wave ahead of us after about 200m and had to do some zig zagging and ended up cramping up quite badly at the halfway point, but otherwise the swim went quite ok. The time wasn't what I'd like it to be, but it wasn't terrible. I was 4th in my wave and 10th overall (out of 1600).

Heading out onto the bike I felt quite good and started trying to catch the guys ahead of me. This is where I think I made my first mistake in the race.  I like to be at the front and I'm not exactly the most patient person so I wanted to get to the front early.  In hindsight this didn't make much sense. In order to get to the front of the race I would have to make up the 3 minute gap due to the wave start on all but Ryan. But I would have to make up that gap on a group of athletes that are very strong cyclists themselves.  I was feeling good on the bike and managed to catch up to Ryan (who was riding with Jack Toland) at about the 20km mark. Looking at the file Jack posted to Strava, I can see that I made up 1min 10s on Jack in 20km!  To put that into perspective, Jack out-rode me in the Olympic distance race in Edmonton last year by about a minute and is a very strong cyclist. In short, I went out way way too fast. I rode through the two of them but knew that Shawn Wilyman would be out in front and proceeded to go about trying to catch him.  Along the way our group encountered Melanie McQuaid and my training partner Jamie Woodbury.  I was slightly confused as to how Melanie was riding where she was as the women hadn't started yet. I assumed she must be in a relay and continued on. Our group of now 5 headed out along the airport. I have to admit, I was not racing smart at the this point. I like to race at the front and it never causes me any issues in Olympic Distance racing. But I have now learned that half ironmans are different. Several times along the stretch Jack or Melanie or Ryan or Jamie would try to go out in front and instead of just sitting back and working with them I would get impatient and shoot right to the front again. Looking back this served no purpose as I was already 3 minutes ahead of all but Ryan at this point.  I was also burning matches needlessly to make the pass and even though I was feeling good, we still had a long long way to go. I don't race with any type of metrics - power meter, heart rate - and really just race off feel. All I really ended up accomplishing was to tow the group behind me along with me. 

We went past the airport and starting heading up the dreaded hill.  It's not much of a hill, it's just that Victoria's parents live at the top of it and every time I go to visit I have to go up this hill at the end every bike or run and I curse it's existence :) We finally caught up to Shawn, who at that point looked to be having a problem

with his chain, just past Panorama Rec center and just before Victoria's parents place. I could see a mild look of panic on Shawn's face as he saw the 5 of us riding up to him and he struggled to resolve whatever mechanical he was having and to get going again. As I passed Victoria's parents, I asked how many were in front

and Victoria's mom (mum?) indicated it was just Shawn.  I continued attempting to drop the group behind me (I dunno why) and we managed to catch Shawn as we headed back towards the lake and our group became 6. Shawn told me after that he thought we were pushing too hard and he didn't  think he'd be able to run if he kept going at that pace so he more or less let us go.  He was smart!  I really need to get a power meter instead of just racing haphazardly if I want to race at this distance.

We headed out towards the one lap mark on the bike and I made a move to go ahead again and to try to drop everyone. At this point we started encountering the older athletes who were just finishing their swim.

Things started to get a bit dicey at this point. I'm not sure what they can do here but when you have a train of cyclists coming by  the trailing edge of 60 year old+ athletes, it gets a bit hard to pass when the roads are not closed.  I had a few close calls with other cyclists and cars. As we headed back onto W. Saanich road, Jack came by me hard. I managed to stay with him until the aid station in Brentwood, at which time I tried to grab some water and nearly collided with an older gentleman who moved the wrong way as I tried to pass (I still don't understand why all of these athletes were going to the aid station.. this is 15km into the bike for them. Have they emptied all of their water bottles and gels this early??).  Although I still had Jack in site, he was making ground on me and it was getting harder to see him among all the athletes we were now passing.  I actually managed to get stuck a few times behind cars that could not safely pass the athletes on course who were riding 2 and 3 abreast and in some cases making chit-chat with one another. This was quite frustrating.  I also had to go outside the yellow line to make a few passes and thought I may have incurred a penalty when the official rode up beside me. Looking at Strava again, I rode the 2nd lap of the bike much more slowly than the first (about 2mins slower). But it looks like the wheels were starting to come off at the 65km mark and I ended up losing 1min30s from that same point on the first lap to the second in 20km.  Jamie and Ryan caught back up to me at this point and we rode into transition together. Ryan and I were technically in 1st and 2nd off the bike - despite Jack heading out on the run first as he started ahead of us.

In all my worries about doing a Half Ironman, I had never had much concern about the swim or bike. It was the thought of having to run a half marathon that scared me. I'd done many of them in training, but never during a race and never after a hard bike. Heading out onto the run I felt surprisingly ok at first and thought I was in a good position. I knew I was ahead of Shawn physically and Jack virtually and that both are great athletes but I know I can run with those guys. I also know I am capable of out running both Jamie and ryan as I train with and am friends with them.

 I started  out at what I thought was a conservative pace as per some advice from other athletes (thanks Jeff Symonds) and passed both Ryan and Jamie early on. The first 3 km's were in the 3:45 /km range but it was at the 5km mark I started to struggle. The legs got heavy, the cadence went way down according to my watch and the breathing was laboring. At the 5km mark, Shawn came by me and tried to stay with him for a bit. But that just made things worse.. I could feel myself notably slowing and knew that I would get caught soon. I don't really think I went out too hard at all. I am capable of running a sub 33 min 10k when fresh and have run 34:30 in Olympic distance races.  A 1hr 20 min half ironman run should be something I can do. In comparing my run to Matt Lieto's of the year before, I was ahead of his pace at the 5km mark. But things really went south from there. Sure enough, at the 8km mark, at the little out and back, Jamie and Ryan came by. I should not have let them go.. I probably could have kept up but mentally made the decision not to. Stupid things go through your head when you race and this was one thing I let myself listen to.

 That decision probably cost me a top 3 overall finish as Jack, Jamie and Ryan finished within 15s of one another. Things started to get messy after this and my turnover had gone way down. I just couldn't get the legs going at all. I came through transition after lap 1 and I could see on the faces of those watching - Noa, Ryan's wife Shirley, Fawn - that I probably didn't look good. They gave me pity claps and smiles :)  Heading out on the 2nd lap I was now running in the high 4 to 5 min km range. I just couldn't get my legs moving at all and had no energy. I thought about just dropping out because I figured I'd just keep getting caught by those behind me, but I also figured that would be super lame. I remembered a post by Dylan awhile back after his bike crash that related something Sebastien Kienle said after his disappointing 70.3 World Championships. That you need to experience a bad day like that when you do a sport like this. They all can't be good days and you have to experience that defeat and to own it and learn from it. I also remembered that Victoria couldn't even do this race last year after almost being killed by a careless driver the day before and that a guy like Travis McKenzie (recovering from a severe spinal injury) was there watching and would probably give anything to trade places with me in second if he could. It would be super lame to those people if I gave up just because I wasn't going to do as well as I expected of myself and wasn't able to do anything about that.  I started drinking coke. I also started getting passed by a lot of people doing their first lap. Boy do the km's tick off slowly when you're running terribly! I usually can't even run a 5+ minute km if I try to in training but I was ticking off several of these in the 12-17km range of this race. At about 17km something went off in my mind. I saw Ryan at the little out and back and I thought I might actually still be close enough to catch him. I got pissed at myself. I thought about Jeff's philosophy of getting ugly. It wasn't fast (4:10/km range) but it was literally all I had at this point. I made it a point to catch up to and pass everyone that had gone by me and managed to reel in most. I didn't have enough to get back up to Ryan but I made it a bit more respectable and at least broke the 4hr20min time standard required by Triathlon Canada to get a pro card. I also somehow managed to finish 5th out of 1600+ athletes despite running 15 minutes slower than I expected to. 

The guys that finished ahead of me - Shawn, Jack, Ryan and Jamie -are all amazing athletes and really great guys. They are all very dedicated and train very hard and deserve to finish that high and there is nothing at all to be ashamed of in finishing behind them. I realize now that 5th in my first half ironman is not a bad placing at all. But at the same time, it's not something I'm at all satisfied with because I don't think the placing, and more importantly the time, represents my potential and what I am capable of.

After finishing I immediately swore I'd never do this again. Nothing about that run was fun at all.. Olympic distance racing hurts. But you go fast and you still feel good and it's fun. This just plain sucked.  But then there is a part of me that is pissed off with not doing as well as I wanted to and for not racing well.  A part of me that doesn't want to leave it that way. A part of me that wants to come back next year and win this damn thing. And I know I can. Everyone I have talked to has related stories about their first half and in almost every case the run did not go well at all. So I'm not alone..  So we'll see.. right now I'm focusing back on doing short course racing and defending my title in Chicago! And having a lot of difficulty standing up and sitting down.

A thank you to the Volunteers and the race organizers that made this race happen. I think they did a very good job logistically given the challenges of the location and the number of athletes. The post race food can definitely be improved upon (Chilli???) but all and all it was well run. A couple of requests... can you make some type of Elite-Amateur wave start for the race? I believe all of us guys in the top 5 would concur that we would much rather have started together rather than 3 minutes apart. Even better.. bring back the Pro race for this event. Thanks to Victoria for putting up with me and congrats to her on her race (5th overall.. 4th non-pro) Thanks to coach Noa for helping me get through this one. Thank you to Ritch and Team Every Man Jack for all their support.

RJ