Tripleshot Cycling

Just got back from watching. Josh was on a relay team, their swimmer was 2nd out of the water and Josh managed to hold it on the bike. Peter was on a few minutes behind Josh finishing the bike. I saw Michael as well, maybe 30 minutes behind Peter. I didn't stay to watch the finish of the run.

Norm Thiabault, who runs the island cyclocross league, did Test of Metal yesterday finishing 14th in the men, and then today did the bike leg, finishing top 10. Insane.

Oh my, Josh's team dominated. 4:01, beating the next relay team by almost 7 minutes and the elite winner by 3 minutes. Peter's team was 14th.

Michael (who stole Peter's TT bike) finished in 5:38. Quentin was 5:04.

Results:
http://www.raceheadquarters.com/results ... f2010.html (Overall)
http://www.raceheadquarters.com/results ... 2010R.html (Relay)

Anybody else take part?

Fun race.
My garmin fell off my handlebars a few weeks back, my backup speedometer broke yesterday, so I rode the entire thing strictly on heartrate. I think that worked out really well. The course is 88km with approx 1100m of ascent, so it's not even close to being flat. Two laps of this http://connect.garmin.com/player/36270940 + brookleigh to and from elk lake. I pegged the heartrate at 165BMP on flats, 160 on downhills and allowed it to drift up to 172 on climbs. The exception was this one wall midway through the loop near the airport that suddenly climbed 100m vertical at what must have been 15-16%. It was a detour they added this year due to McTavish construction. That section was basically just try to keep your bike moving. I saw over 180 heartrate up there on both laps.....no choice there, brutal.

The best part of the race was following the lead pace car by myself around the course. Our swimmer was 2nd person out of the water, and I passed the cyclist for the other relay team before even getting to oldfield on the first lap, so I was by myself in the race lead for 1.5 of the two laps, before finally getting passed by the guy leading the elite mens race, who I then sat about 20 seconds behind and paced off of. It was funny watching all the volunteers scrambling to get ready at the controlled intersections and water stations as the lead car approached. The other highlight was actually the brutal little mid lap climb. They had music going, and quite a big crowd cheering the racers on in that area, as the cyclists slogged up the hill at 10km/h. Felt a bit like a mini tour de france mountain stage, despite the pain of the climb itself.

I finished the bike 30 seconds behind the race leader who passed me, and then our runner overtook him, so we ended up beating the top elite male finisher by about 2 minutes in a time of 4:01. My bike split was 2:24:06, 36.2km/h average.

some pics of Me, Peter and Quentin:

one more. Our swimmer basically fell over when he got to the transition area

on the bike: