Monday, April 15, 2013

Week 29 Summary and Paris to Ancaster race report

418TSS on 5.2 hours

It was a light week, mainly short, intense sessions (20-45 minutes, IF ~0.9) on the bike getting ready for Paris2Ancaster on Sunday.

10 days of rain/freezing rain/snow preceded this race, creating conditions so poor that the organizers had to chop 10k of off-road sections out (reputedly they were mostly still underwater).

Online discussions regarding tire / pressure selection were mainly "it's not going to matter; the mud will make it irrelevant, just put enough pressure in so you don't pinch flat, and make it easier to get through the road/rail trail sections."

I left Waterloo at ~6, stopped to get a coffee en route, and arrived at the Ancaster Community Center (the finish line) to park and put my bike on the shuttle van to the start line. I had my race kit already thanks to a generous friend who was picking them up en masse for other riders, so the only standing around was waiting for the shuttle van guys to show up.

I lucked out with my clothing choice, it matched the weather well: cotton undershirt, jersey, wind vest (plus a foldable jacket to wear waiting at the start line), arm warmers, cap, cycling gloves, wind mitts, tri shorts underneath bibs and knee warmers (plus my new XC30s, which probably still don't know what hit them).

Race start in Wave 1 was smooth, and we were soon blasting down the rail trail beside the Grand River, dry and fast. I was glad to have glasses, I took a couple small stones off them.

Heading into some of the single track sections, there were actually a few rideable lines left, which shows that starting as close as possible to the front really paid off. I've seen some video from later riders and it quickly turned into a quagmire


Speaking of quagmire, I managed to ride down all the mud chutes, which left my arms burning from throwing the front wheel around as I bounced off all the rocks buried in the mud.
My poor bike


Hooked up with a few small groups on the roads and shared pulls, which was nice. In summary, the weather was ideal (I started on my jersey tan lines), the fast sections were dry, and I managed to make it up the last hill, though I ended up looking like this after the finish line.

I remember thinking I'm hearing a camera
Finished in 2:25:09 (23.6k/h avg) (40:52 behind the winner), 275 O'all, 105/447 in M40-49. 











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