“That was fun.”
-Geoff Waterman
I couldn’t agree with him more. Not simply because of the result (which was a nice bonus) but because of the competition. And I think it was written all over my face at the finish line.
As I said the day before the race, I had big expectations. After a couple of weeks of solid racing and training, I finally felt completely ready to race and for the first time went into the race with the mindset to win. Nothing else, just win.
With a swim that started with the fastest swimmers, I would be about 5th into the pool in my lane (an important fact later on in the race). The swim was rather uneventful, managing to avoid any big slowdowns with slower swimmers but also unable to find anyone the right speed to latch on behind to.
After a relaxed 1st half, I would work fairly hard in the 2nd half of the 740m and finish the swim in about 11 minutes. Immediately out of the pool I spotted Clarke just ahead of me and caught him in transition as we had racked our bikes near each other. I rocked my first transition, leaving Clarke behind me and headed out on the bike.
At the first turn around I tried to count how many racers I had ahead of me (it would turn out to be 4 I think) but wasn’t completely sure so I simply put my head down and rode hard to catch as many as I could (and leave Clarke even further behind).
With so many other racers on course after the first lap, it became almost impossible to keep track of where I was but with each turn around it seemed like I was putting time on Clarke behind me and ever so slowly, catching Geoff Waterman in front of me. Sure enough, just before transition I caught Geoff and would follow him in.
I finished the bike (including both transitions) in 29:27, almost a minute faster than anyone else (a fact which would get me DQ’d from the results for a time but was eventually fixed). Obviously, things couldn’t have gone much better on the bike.
Being right on Geoff’s heels into transition, I was right on them coming out of transition as well. And as soon as we crested the hill out of transition, I saw Ryan Smiley was just ahead of us. And so the real fun began when about 500m later we had caught him and were running as a pack of 3.
Geoff would later tell me he thought to himself “this is going to hurt” but personally, I was just excited at this point. After years of training and watching great ITU races where finishes come down to head-to-head battles on the run, I was finally in the midst of one. Every competitive bone in my body was just screaming “here we go”.
At that point I thought the three of us were the leading pack as I had heard my dad say I was in 3rd coming out transition. That idea would be shattered when a little later a spectator cheered us on to go catch the guy in front. Luckily, a couple hundred metres later we could see him and we were obviously catching him.
Knowing we would be running for the lead momentarily, a new thought occurred to me: I only needed to stay with these guys to win. With the staggered start, I knew that I had started at least 20-30 second after these guys and so had some time to play with.
At about the halfway mark, Ryan had fallen off the pace a little and Geoff and I were just about to finally make the pass for first place. I was at my limit as we crested a hill and made the pass and in a moments lapse of concentration I let Geoff put in a little acceleration and get a gap on me. As we sped back downhill I just couldn’t bring myself to try to catch back on as I knew in my head, I just needed to keep him in sight to win.
So I spent the final 2 km or so doing just that, keeping him in sight. And so when I crossed the finish line about 10 seconds back of Geoff, I knew I had won.
I finished in a time of 57:10 with a run that was definitely shorter than 5k.
It was a great feeling, after all the work that I had done the past couple of years, to finally see it paying off in such a tangible way. And to do it in such a competitive race made it that much better.
After the race, Geoff and I talked about how great it would have been had it been a mass start so that we had truly been racing for the win on that run. Even though it probably would have made the outcome very different, I wish it had been too. Mostly because I’m curious to know how I would have reacted when Geoff got a gap on me knowing that it meant the race win. I wonder if I would have had it in me to chase him back down or how a sprint finish would have turned out.
I guess we’ll just have to wait until August in Kelowna to find out, won’t we Geoff…
