Lakeside Showdown-Post Race

The final race of the Multisport Triathlon Series was held this past sunday (september 16), with all of the top series contenders in attendence.  This included: Richard Pady, Cody Beals, Mark Lieseman, Alex Van Der Linden, and myself, all of who were in posistions to walk away valuable series points to determine our overall series placings.  The way I saw it, Pady and Beals were going to be one and two in the series, but the next three spots were still up for grabs.  Van Der Linden and Linseman were both fighting for a third place, which would knock me down to fourth or fifth.  After the mess in Wasaga, I just wanted  good race to finish off the season.  Heres how it went.

Drive there: My dad decided to take an extra 20 min to get ready, so we were running behind  schedule off the start.  So much for hypermiling.

Pre-Race:  Due to my determination to ignore the GPS telling us to go different routes, we arrived right on time.  Everything went pretty smooth in setting up my gear, no where near to as hectic as in Wasaga (where I had to change out my disc wheel 5 minutes before the race and then forgot my timing chip).  John Salt did a special presentation with us EAG guys, and intoduced us to the rest of the racers (Yes! My first big break!).  After this just headed to the water.

Swim:  Swim starts havn't worked out too well for me this year, no exception here.  After getting a few blows to the face, I get some open water, but drop 2 min behind the leaders

Bike:  After a disapointing swim, I run into the tri a tri transistion area before looping back to go to my bike.  Now I just want to ride.  It's not as fun as you think having to rip it to catch back up, but it is probably less fun watching me blow by you and not slowing down.  Turns out the bike legs showed up, and I put together the fastest bike split, grabbing a nice 10 extra points away from Linseman.
On a totally irrelevant side note, I find a fun way to play the catch up game is to talk to yourself with different accents.  Sometimes I break out the chinese accent, or in the case of this race, the Australian accent (Inspired by Jim Sunners, another super biker).  I find this tends to be better then beating down on yourself for being so slow, and keeps things pretty light, getting you in a grove and helping you rip!

Run:  At this point it was only Pady and Linseman ahead of me.  I was maybe a minute back from Linseman, and I was able to catch up with him at around the 5km mark.  This is when Beals caught up and moved to second.  After a painful run in Wasaga, I was still feeling some shin pain, so I didn't push my luck too far, only hard enough to secure a third place.

Post Race:  Overall, I had a good race, and was able to secure the third place spot in the overall series standings, earning a pretty nice $500!  Even better then this though was the anticipation of a draw prize in the final post race prize draw.  After watching everyone else I knew win a cool prize all season, I was convinced I would finally win a prize.  As John read the first name out, I hear "Andrew..........(is this really happening?)......Kennedy.  Ohhhh, so close, but maybe today was not to be.  I continue to listen to the names being called, but now only half heartedly.  As name after name is called, I think back to my Statistics course last year.  I keep telling myself my chances are only getting better, but as John calls out that there is only one more prize to be claimed, I don't have much hope.  But then, as if one cue, I hear "Andrew.......Bolton"....!!!!!  Oh baby, here we go.  I run up to the front to claim my prize like a crazy contestant on the price is right.  I come to the front expecting some expensive sunglasses or a fancy watch, but of course, this was not the case. The guy right before me was just walking away with the fancy $150 sunglasses, and John hands me my "awesome prize": a washed out, super small tri top.  Come on, wheres the super prize.  I'm told I can go exchange it at Multisport Zone for the correct size.  I walk over telling myself to count my blessings and that at least I got something.  I show the top to who I assume was the manager, and he takes one look at it and sighs.  He tells me that I'm stuck with it, and he won't exchange it for anything he has (this guy seemed more like a duck than an eagle).  I guess he was giving away the stuff he never wanted to see again in an attempt to look like a good local sponsor.  Anyway, I head back over to John to see if he can do anything for me, and of course, being the eagle he is, he found a better then average solution (watch the video for the duck and eagle thing to make sense).  He takes my shirt and gives me back a super nice MSC jacket, which I have been eyeing all season.  Now i'm pumped and feeling like that was the best end to the season I could have hoped for.  Thats why the MSC series are the best races in ontario.  Special thanks to my Dad for tagging along to the race (and for being possibly my only blog reader so far).

Beginnings

After racing in the Elite Age Group of the Multisport triathlon series this year, you may recognize my name from awards presentations (possible), my race bib (less likely) or Sportstats (my name is close to the top, so quite possible).  If you are still trying to link a name to a face, it is far more likely that you would remember Francesca, who is far better looking than myself (yes I have a name for my bike).  After my second full season of racing in which I saw a huge improvement, I have decided to start blogging about my triathlon endeavours.

Unlike many of the other EAG triathletes who started out in one of the three sports, I grew up playing baseball, and then switched to jumping mountain bikes in high school.  During my final year of high school, I was influenced by some of my teachers to pick up cycling, and I took to riding my grandfathers old road bike.  

Not that long ago...

Soon after, I bought a specialized carbon road bike, and never looked back (I still ride old blue, but just to commute).  I had a great 2012 season, and am hoping to train hard and do well in the future.  

Hopefully I can talk about something interesting and get at least a few people to read my posts and (maybe I'm pushing it here) get some comments (apart from those other EAG guys trying to get the inside edge on me).