Edmonton World Championships

I can't believe that I haven't posted anything on this epic race.  It was really a lot of fun and of course it was a World Championship race that I finished in 15th place out of 90 world class competitors in my age group.

To put this in perspective, I qualified for this race in the National Championships in Milwaukee a year earlier (2013) as the 18th man on a 18 man team.  Let's face it, Olympic distance is not my forte - my swim is sub par and I knew I had a lot of work to do in that area.

We flew into Calgary the week before the race and headed up to Banff, then Jasper.  Wow, talk about beautiful country.. everywhere you look - and a lot of hiking...

 and some very cold swims...

We went with a group of 6 and three of us were racing.

First there was a big parade and athlete dinner on Thursday, then we watched our friends race the sprint world championships on Friday, then watched a couple of days of professionals race - Gomez, Brownlee bros, etc.

Then I was up on Monday - Labor day - time to see where I sat against a world class field.  Not really knowing the competition, but knowing that I was low man on the US team, I was hoping for top 50% - 45th place in my AG or better.

My wave started later in the morning after it warmed up to 50F, but of course I had to be there early to set up my transition area before the first wave went off.  

It was a fun start, They walk you to the starting line with bag pipes playing, then you get in line and watch the wave in front of you go off.  There was a big gap between the old women wave and ours, but there was a two loop swim course, so we still had to swim through a bunch of racers on their second loop.  

It was an on-beach start for 1.5K, but it was just one row of 90 racers going in all at the same time. I tried to go out hard, but went into oxygen debt as I saw the first big group pulling away.  I got into a rhythm and got stronger as I went.  I finished the swim in 34th place in 0:24:40 - that was 5:07 off the fastest swimmer in the AG.  Ok, not it was time to get to business.

I ran as hard as I could manage to T1 and had a 19th place transition - only 13 seconds slower than the fastest transition in my AG.

I had a pretty clumsy mount, but then got straight into it and rode really well for the 40K course in 1:00:23.  Looking at pictures later, I realized that I could have been in a much more aero position.  It was a very hilly course and by the end, I was fading, which surprised me a bit.  I passed a bunch of guys in my AG and was the 7th fastest bike split - about 0:01:35 off the fastest guy.  

Now when you're racing, if you don't come out with the first pack of swimmers, you really don't know where you are in the field.  You figure all this stuff out later. I had a little snafu in T2 when an official was telling another racer that they were going the wrong direction and I though he was talking to me, so I turned around and started going the wrong way.  No big deal, just hate to loose 10 seconds like that. 

So now it was time to get my 10K run on.  I hadn't been running that great going into the race, so I wasn't sure what to expect.  I started out feeling really great, but after a mile, I started going into oxygen debt and had to pull back.  There was a guy from NZ that caught me and I just tried to stay with him. Every time I tried to surge a little, I went straight into O2 debt and had to ease off.  I passed a couple of guys in the AG and got passed by 1 guy (grr). It was really great to pass one guy in the AG in the finishing chute.   I ended up running the 12th fastest run split in my AG, losing 0:02:22 off the fastest guy in the AG.  

In the end, it was a great experience and I finished 15th in the world in my AG.  Glad to have done it with friends and have my wife cheering me on.