The problem with comparing Half Iron races is that the length of the courses seem to vary so much. Take for example last Sundays New Balance Victoria Half Iron race. It had the standard 2 km swim however the bike was 2 km shorter and the run 1 km shorter than the most 70.3 races. What is obvious though when I do compare my race performance with a previous race is that my bike time last weekend really sucked big time. Yup, I had some major problems on the bike, including 3 stops for mechanical issues. The issue with the bike was that guides in the horizontal dropouts on my P2C were not setup correctly causing the tire to chafe on the bike frame. The chafing would become such an issue that it would stop me dead in my tracks and I had no choice but to stop and try to realign the wheel.
| Swim Distance | Time | Rank | Bike Distance | Time | Rank | Run Distance | Time | Rank | Overall | Rank | |
| Oliver Half | 2 km | 38:38 | 314 | 93 km | 2:44:26 | 191 | 21 km | 1:44:59 | 148 | 5:14:51 | 154 |
| Victoria Half | 2 km | 36:20 | 183 | 88 km | 2:59:38 | 158 | 20 km | 1:37:24 | 60 | 5:19:43 | 110 |
The great aspect of having so many forced pauses on the bike was that I was feeling pretty fresh when I got into T2. I racked that bike and just took off. A time of 1:37 might not be anything to brag about in a 20 km race but I tell ya, it just felt good. I just kept running strong and managed to move up 50 spots overall and had an overall ranking on the run of 60. That really made me happy and I finished off the race with a big smile on my face.
Big thanks to Coach Calvin who gave me some great pre-race advice which really helped me prep for this race. Also thanks to Trifunster to who tweeted my progress throughout the race. I also want to thank my buds Gregg, David, Mikey and Cheryl for sharing their race day with me.
I am now going to take a weekend off of racing and prep for the Subaru Vancouver International Half Iron which is on July 04. Oh and also get some run/hiking time in over the next couple of weeks so that I am better prepared for next months Canadian Death Race.
Happy Training
Congratulations Don. Even with some mechanicals you are still lightening fast as always. I admire your ability to competitively race numbers of long course tris throughout the season.
Thank you Al. I am not where I might want to be from a numbers perspective however I am exactly where I need to be on a satisfaction level.