Race Report - Canadian National Championships, Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, August 15-17th, 2008

 

 

Coming to the end of my first month living in Canada and I've just returned from Kelowna, British Columbia and the 2008 Canadian National Champs/Pan American Games. It was a 450 km journey from my family home here in Whistler to the scorching 40 degree Okanagan Valley in central BC for my second main target race of the year, it was out here in June when I raced at the World Championships in Vancouver in 12 degree water and lashing rain so a slightly different challenge weather wise this weekend.
 

My family and I arrived late Friday afternoon to 42 degrees and blazing sunshine, after checking into the hotel I dragged my family out on an exploration walk to observe the circus that is pre-race activity and to have a sneak peak at the swim course. With over 1000 competitors racing today (Sunday) transition was almost World Championship sized so I thought it was important to get down early and check it out. Luckily I was number 502 and as one of the youngest racers had a bike slot down near the swim-bike entrance. After some dinner, serious pre bed hydration and watching the most impressive 100m Olympic fly final I have ever seen (Michael Phelps winning by 1/100th of a second!) I started resting up for Sunday.
 

Race morning came around and I was feeling pretty good considering the temperatures (29 degrees at 6 a.m with 24 degree water) and was just trying to keep the nerves down before my heat headed off with over 110 athletes (including my dad!) at 0715. Into the swim and I managed to quickly launch off the front of the field with another athlete from Ontario, 100m out from the swim finish and I picked up the pace to get a nice 5 second lead to claim the fastest swimmer prize. 

 

Out onto the bike and the trailing Ontario athlete was just behind, luckily my pre-race course cycle had uncovered a massive hill 2 km into the first bike lap so I just let the chasing Canadian triathlete hold on until the bottom of the hill where I put in a big push, by the top I had about 40m on him so just kept my head down and smiled at some of the 1000 volunteers Triathlon Canada had out there cheering us on! Two laps later and the lead motorbike peeled off to fire me into transition and out onto the run, unfortunately another young bike/runner had caught me and ran past about 100m out of transition 2. I was feeling really comfortable out racing in my new Adidas trainers but didn't quite have it in me to bridge the gap to 1st so just eased off and cruised across the line in 2nd.

Mike