St Lambert race report
I drove to Montreal on the morning of the race expecting a solid race (given the talent on the start list) but was hoping to keep the effort to a controlled level. With an ITU race coming up the following weekend I didn’t want to go too far into" the hole". But sometimes you have to expect the unexpected!
the swim turned out better than I could have hoped for. It was a pool swim and we were assigned 3 per lane which means there is a risk of getting caught up with others in the lane. As luck would have it, one of the guys in my lane didn’t show up (I heard later that he is injured, which isn’t so lucky for him), so Alexi Ascah and I swam comfortably side by side. I was able to take the swim out in a nice controlled pace and swim comfortably for the whole 750m. As I got out of the water I saw that I narrowly missed the swim prime by a few seconds but was happy to be out in second which allowed me a few more seconds in transition.
The bike also went well. We got organized pretty quickly into a pack of 5 and were working pretty well together. I thought we had a chance to stay away from some of the others but just over half way we got caught by a group being led by Chuck Perrault and Andrew Tanner - two solid bikers! We came off the bike in a pretty large group and it was clear that a few guys were going after the second prime (1st out of T2). Before the race I came up with the plan to put my shoes on after the transition in hopes of gaining an edge and winning the prime. It turned out that I wasn’t the only one who thought of that plan - Andrew did the same and beat me by a second or two. That meant I was 2nd for both primes!
The run started out pretty hard. I began in 6th (after putting my shoes on). I had a bit of ground to make up to get back up with the front guys. It took me about 2km but I got into a group with 2 others - Andrew and Francois Hogan. The 3 of us ran well together - each km seemed to get faster and faster! I knew that I couldn’t outsprint Andrew and Francois was an unknown so my only option was to try and push the pace as best I could. I could hear Andrew breathing really hard and I knew he must have been hurting a bit so I tried a few times to pick up the pace and hope that he dropped back. No such luck! Finally with about 600m to go Francois started sprinting and Andrew jumped right on his feet. I went with them for a while but didn’t have the legs to win a sprint. In a 3-way race for 2nd place I finished 4th.
I am really happy with the race - it was solid from start to finish. Despite loosing a sprint I am still really happy with my run. The split on the last km was 3:13 which is pretty solid for me! It was a good confidence booster heading down to Geneva NY. But the race definitely hurt a lot more than I was prepared for! Lesson learned: always show up ready to put it all on the line!
