A Mohawk, a Moustache and a lot 'o fun!

I have a feeling this one’s gonna be long, but it’s 6:30PM now and I start prac tomorrow morning.

As my taper week drew longer I started to get all the usual self-doubt and nervousness that goes along with tapering. Then I went to pick up our car on Saturday morning and the one they showed me had a brutally small trunk. 4 people and a bike are travelling to Canberra and you give me THIS?! It all worked out though, I just had to take off both wheels and the seat. I should mention that Friday evening the Mohawk was carved, and the following morning Jared carved himself one fine moustache, and the theme for the weekend was created, M&M. Anyways, we got to Canberra with no dramas this time! Straight up 3 hours with like 4 pee breaks and 1 stop for directions (but we WERE on the right track anyhow). We got into Canberra and went straight down to the race site so I could check in and get my bib number and cap (had to do that between 12 and 2). Then we went back to the hotel for just after noon but we couldn’t check in til after two so we went to the Australian War Memorial (museum). Real cool stuff actually, lots of real artifacts (no shit) and we saw some soldiers’ journals from I believe December 14th, 1914, during WWI. Crazy, not unlike grampa’s. After the museum we headed straight over the Australian Institute of Sport for a guided tour (by a paralympic swimmer) of the facilities. That was pretty awesome too to see where all these elite athletes train. Wouldn’t that be the life, genetics are a bitch. J So anyways, completely random but when the guy was asking where everyone was from a couple of other girls in our little group (like 15 of us total) were from Ottawa! Nuts, didn’t get their full story though. Oh well. After the museum we headed back and checked in, pounded some pasta and then went out for groceries, drove up to some lookout, that sucked ass, and they wanted to charge you for the good views. After that we drove the bike course real quick to give me an idea of what it was all about (2 x 40k loop, so we only had to drive 40k to know it). Got back to the hotel, ate a little more and watched some home alone 2 and retired for the evening. Out like a light around 9PM. Up to take a pee at 2:45AM and couldn’t get back to bed, crazy race thoughts going through my head. I laid there til 4AM when my alarm went off and got up to do all the normal race morning pizzazz. The morning was pretty uneventful and we got out only 5 minutes late! Well done Lee and Julia!! J

Got to race site at 7AM and got all my stuff into transition and set up. Went out for a quick ride on the bike, and a quick jaunt in the runners. All is good. Got the wetsuit on and headed down to the terribly cold water to figure out this poorly marked 2.2K course. Got a half decent idea of the route and figured I could follow some other people as well. I know some people switched to the duathlon (we had the option because of the water temperature being so cold) but our group wasn’t too too big, but hopefully I could find some mediocre swimmers to follow. J Well we got to goin’ and soon enough the fast guys were just GONE. I followed their splash and the yellow buoy way off in the distance as best I could for as long as possible. Finally I noticed a couple more guys around and we pretty much worked the rest of the course together (turns out there were 4 of us total, one just hung at the back the whole time). Out of the water in under 41 minutes! Wicked! This is s low budget race so they just have the dudes with stopwatches and look at your bib number, and he was sitting halfway up the shoot to transition. I was on my bike and on the road by 43:xx. AWESOME! My goal was 45 minutes to on bike time. The guy who was racked right beside me was in my group and we had a quick chat about cold water, numb feet and arm warmers, wished each other good luck and ran out of transition together to each start our 80K ride. Well he went off ahead and I just sorta kept him in my sight. Eventually I got into a rhythm, despite freezing cold muscles, and started picking up my speed and caught up to him and passed him, he said something to me (not sure what) but I just kept on goin’. After about another 5K on an uphill he went by again, but not with much conviction, so I knew I could keep him in my sights for a while and pace off him. Long story short we did this together for 80K of riding. Couldn’t have asked for a better situation, but I GUARANTEE you there was no drafting on either of our behalfs so don’t even go there! I heard his wife tell him he was 15th out of the swim, so I was 16th. Anyways, on the course there’s this sick downhill (a nice longy) where I hit 60K!/hr! And then you have to hit the breaks towards the bottom of it because you go kinda sharp right, cross a bridge and climb a Muskoka-esque hill. Not too bad, but gets ya outta the saddle for a few mins of grindin’. Got up that and there’s a few more rollers on the way out. The rest of the ride is just ROLLIN’ ROLLIN’ ROLLIN’. I definitely underestimated it, thought it was a lot flatter than that, but it was still achievable. It was a mixed bag of country road, city road, city highway and nice parkway, over brides, under bridges, shitty pavement that makes your whole core rattle and pavement as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Long story short (well it wasn’t really short by any means) we moved up to 7th and 8th overall!
It was great to see Tunes, Jerry and Bingy again! A nice little pick me up before 20k of running. The first few k were dedicated to getting into a rhythm and finding the running legs, or something that resemble them. My swimming/riding buddy went out pretty fast and I figured he was just a really good runner so I let him go and before I knew it he had about 200m on me. After a while though he wasn’t getting a bigger lead, we were pretty much just goin’ the same pace. Soon I was AROUND 4:30s and just got in a groove. Caught him after the first lap (10k) and we ran the second lap shoulder to should ALMOST in complete silence, Mark Allen and Dave Scott (sorry to say I was the Mark Allen of the early years). Incredible feeling to just run literally shoulder to shoulder the whole way (almost) for the second lap. We got passed by two people (I think, results aren’t up yet) on the run, but then there was NOONE for a long time after us, and we just pushed each other. I think we just paced each other and kept each other honest the whole way. I felt terrible a couple times and just keeping him on my right shoulder kept me goin’. At 15k I was almost ready to let him go, but just shut my brain up and kept goin’ with him for as long as possible. On a short in and out I saw a guy who was about 350m behind us (that was around 17k). We continued on and at about the 18k mark I just said “I can’t hang with you man, I gotta let ya go”. Bad idea? Maybe in retrospect, but I was feeling kinda terrible and couldn’t hold his pace, and didn’t wanna blow up and lost to him AND have the guy catch me from behind in the last couple k. I let him get away and slowed down a wee bit and just kept checking behind for the next guy. My buddy went out about 30m ahead but again, at 19k I felt good for a second so just “hammered” and slowly reeled him back. As we approached the finishing shoot he had about 10m on me, turned right into the chute and looked back at me sprinting at him and he sprinted down the chute and beat me by about a second! Unbelievable experience to have swam, biked and literally ran the race with him. Again, it was great to see the three amigos at the finish! They were proud of me! Hahaha.... had some water and banana and orange and watermelon. I was 3rd in the 20-29AG! Dunno how many were even in my group, could’ve been 3, but the winner of the race was 20-29 so there were some fasties in my group for sure. It was pretty neat to get a trophy!
After a few minutes I grabbed my stuff from transition, we packed up the car, I changed real quick and then we were on the road, homebound.

I must say the entire weekend was just awesome. Great friends and my best friend in the whole world were there to support me and just have a good time. Can’t thank Jared, Lee and Tunes enough for their support this weekend. Have to thank Michelle Majovsky who always supports me too in these sort of things and have to admit that i thought of her a couple of times out on the run when it was tough, didn’t wanna disappoint her! Thought of mom and dad a lot too, who are probably my biggest supporters apart from of Julia. Definitely gotta give a big shout out to Marco also who was the inspiration for both the Mohawk as well as the overall mental attitude for the weekend. The man sets the bar pretty damn high and I look forward to getting my ass smashed all over Muskoka and Peterborough next year!