Saturday, March 26, 2016

Try the Tri, Do the Du - UBC Tri/Du RRs

Yup, the double.

Photo Cred: Jensen Tung

I was inspired from both of my current roommates, as I was the last (ehem i.e. underachieving) roommate to attempt the double, which was doing more than one individual multisport event at UBC Tri/Du. A few years ago, Jon completed the Olympic and Sprint in style and also beating me in the Olympic event. Last year, Brendan signed up for both the Olympic and Sprint events! He finished 2nd in the Olympic but then got too caught up chit chatting with friends to start the sprint.

Now it was my turn
.

Left: Standard, Photo Cred: Steven Durfee
Right: Duathlon, Photo Cred: Vickram Sidhu


The Standard Tri



I knew I could finish the standard in around 2 hours 15 minutes. My concern was finishing before the Duathlon start at 11am. To add to the excitement, parked cars on the run coursed delayed the race start by 45 minutes (we were waiting for the cars to be towed). That meant about a 15 minutes buffer time.


I started in the second heat in order to make the duathlon heat. I painfully watched the first heat begin swimming inside the 50m pool.


Photo Cred: Jensen Tung




Standard results:
- swim, pretty much same result as usual
- bike, 2 minutes improvement from same course last year
- run, 2 minutes improvement despite a slightly longer course.


Here's a update to the graph:


The Duathlon



After crossing the finishline from the standard event, I had about 14 minutes to get ready. I ran to get my bike moved from the standard rack to the duathlon rack. I also ran to get my race bibs switched and ate a Sweet Potato Cliff jel.




I paced myself pretty much the same as the standard. I was running on pretty tired legs. The bike I felt no push, and then a big cramp just getting off into T2. A few athletes were just behind me including my good friend Kevin, luckily I was able to run off the cramps and held on the last 5km without any more people passing me (I was 3rd overall as I got off the bike).


Good news sometimes come with some mishaps, I managed to squeak out a 9th in the Standard and 3rd in the Duathlon before being told that I wasn't allowed to race the two multisport events in a period within 36 hours by a TriBC Official.


Oh silly gee whiz, I wished somebody told me earlier, as I didn't have a clue.


Here's a little snippet from the ITU rules updated very recently...









Regardless, I was pretty happy with both of my results. Nobody can take that away from me at least. The double DQ is something I never would had thought was possible. A DQ for being a little too awesome. Ironically, the official was feeling generous and let me DQ an event of my choosing. Next year, maybe I'll just stick to something simple and just TRY sticking to DOing one multisport event. ;)





Well, keep on being awesome! :)