GymSkinZ at Peach Classic Triathlon

GymSkinZ at Peach Classic Triathlon

Hey Folks!

Tav and GymSkinZ reporting from sunny and scorching Penticton BC.

So I participated in the Investors Group Peach Classic Olympic Triathlon today - note how I said "PARTICIPATED" as opposed to "RACED". Here's my report...

So I arrived here yesterday afternoon after a rough week trying to get everything squared away on the home-front, at my real job, and with GymSkinZ stuff - 5 hours of sleep in the last couple nights was definitely not a good way to start the race weekend. Upon arriving, hit the race package pickup and pre-race meeting and I knew the planets weren't in aligment when I got my race number - 333.... Hmmm, so did that mean things were only going to be HALF as evil as they should be? To add more anxiety and undue stress to the day, the first thing Steve King mentioned to start off the meeting was "Do NOT expect to do a PB on this race course!!" Oh great, that's a way to instill confidence in the 400 or so people in the room. I looked down at my race-bib in my hand and thought, well how bad could it be ? Since I usually have a pretty laid-back and positive attitude towards this kind of stuff (after all, racing is supposed to be fun right?) I thought at least the swim is gonna be flat ;)

Well, that's as positive as it got. Suffice to say I ABSOLUTELY sucked the donkey today... and that's being pretty generous. First off, I swim like a brick - I could barely swim 25 meters at this time last year and today I may as well have been towing an anchor. I knew things were gonna be bad as soon as I got in the water this morning - Despite the water conditions being absolutely fantastic, I felt TOTALLY out of my element - and I feel out of my element at the best of times when I'm in a nice warm pool where I can see a line, and I know there's a wall nearby. All I wanted to do was float around on my back and sleep, not have to swim out that little fleck on the horizon which was supposed turnaround buoy... Anyway, starting gun went, and off I went... never got into any comfortable rhymthm and basically did my own thing waaaay off to the side, but at least I made it back and didn't come out of the water last... I did that on my very first olympic tri about a year ago and I vowed I would never do that again (what kind of an idiot-stick does an olympic tri as their first attempt when they can't swim 100M?! oh yah, that was me me July 2005....) Today was damn close to that experience... Once again, noticed the number painted on my arm and realized that the dark lord and all that is evil was going to be my pace-buddy today....

In any event, I dragged my arse out of the water and high-fived my buddy for making it out alive... at least I CAN ride a bike (or so I thought - that's foreshadowing BTW) so I was happy to strap on my helmet and hop on my bike hoping to get into my happy place nice and quick. Well, the bike course may as well have been taken right out of Stage 15 of the Tour de France - just when I got my legs spinning and feeling good, I was faced with this 4km climb which could have been a Category 1 climb and felt like I was ascending from the depths of hell for crying out loud - at least I was passing people but whoever came up with the term "mildly undulating" and applied it to this course needs a good swift kick in the beets as there wasn't ANYTHING resembling a flat spot on this damn course. Things went from bad to worse when I went to take a drink and lo and behold - not my water bottle.... My buddy grabbed the wrong bottle this morning!!! The ride concoction that I use is a combination of Cytomax / Carbo-Power and dissolved E-Caps which is like the nectar of the Gods - I ended up with some watered down Gu2O mixture that I could have used as cleaning solvent for my bike. AGGGHH... So at this point, I decided I was gonna go and chase down my buddy and retrieve my water-bottle (and my buddy was out of the water 12 minutes ahead of me - yes, I am THAT slow in the water). At least I had a focus now, so I dropped the hammer and off I went. I managed to catch up just before the turnaround and as I rode up from behind I said "Hey, you notice something different about your water bottle"..... We made the exchange after some cursing and back to town I went. Of course, at this point, I had gone out WAAAAY too quick to catch up and I didn't exactly back off on the way back into town, so I would definitely pay the price on the run (if I made it.... more fore-shadowing).

Ok, so now it gets interesting.... I managed a pretty half-decent time back to town and I *would have been* in the top 25 or 30 overall for bike splits... BUT.... remember that colossal climb I mentioned at the beginning? well we obviously had to come DOWN that so I came SCREAMING into the stretch leading into transition at some gong-show speed, and as I was coming to the dismount line, I prepared to do my regular "running dismount" where I unclip my right foot, swing my leg over from behind, slow down enough to unclip my left foot at the same time and run off the bike - sound simple right?! I've done it a bazillion times, but since I was riding with the mark of Satan's half brother - it wasn't going to happen today! As I tried to unclip my left foot, my hammy decided to cramp JUST at that moment which didn't allow my foot to turn far enough to unclip, I took that first step with my left foot still attached which resulted in a cirque-du-soleil style cartwheel with a half-twist while driving my head into the 120degree concrete in a spectacular display of splintered carbon fiber and composite materials as my bike pin-wheeled into the crowd and probably killed some poor innocent spectator and his two kids.... Of course, I also took out the poor guy behind me as he didn't expect carnage while he was dismounting and ended up piling into me... As I lay there staring at that bright light which I thought for sure was the portal to heaven (I later realized it was the sun I was staring at), I swore I saw vultures circling above ready to swoop down and start pecking at my jugular, I could also kinda of hear Steve King announcing (and pronouncing my name wrong of course like he always does at every race) - "Rider 333 is down, Tavis Yeung from Vancouver has crashed coming into transition!". I recall a bunch of volunteers gathering and as I got up to assess the damage, at least was coherent enough to ass if the other guy was ok - Thankfully he had already picked himself up and was long gone into transition. My head was throbbing, I was bleeding, and everything was a nice shade of blue (which was kinda cool) and when the spectator wheeled my bike back to me from about 50 yards away, I thought to myself this sure is FUN!! Well, I figured I better suck it up and dragged myself into transition whilst overhearing volunteers and spectators yell "Are you ok?!" and "Hey man, you're bleeding!"

After about 10 minutes in transition trying to figure out how to tie my shoes (which is kinda funny since I have speedlaces), and thinking how nice it would be to just lie on my towel and go to sleep, I told myself to suck it up and headed out onto the run course concussed, bleeding, tired, generally pissed off and feeling as if a small leprechaun was standing on my shoulders with a jack-hammer. When I thought things couldn't get any worse, the run course was just as bad as the bike course - after 2 km of a nice and flat stretch out along the lake, say hello to a 3km climb complete with switchbacks all the way to the turnaround. Did I mention whoever designed this course needs a kick in the beets? Thank God coming back consisted of that downhill but I barely noticed considering my legs were like lead and I did most of the run with my eyes closed since my head was pounding and my vision was blurry and everything being blue was really tripping me out. Perhaps the only saving grace to this whole race was as I was coming down the final stretch, I managed to run down the poor guy I took out coming into transition and as I passed him, apologized again which he probably didn't appreciate too much ;) I knew it was him cuz he was about 7 feet tall and looked like a mutant smurf in blue running gear - oh wait minute, I think that might have been my weird bluish vision...

In any event, chalk this one up to a "character building" race. I now get to look forward to a weeklong training camp for the rest of this week which is gonna be interesting since all I wanna do is crawl under a rock and die.

Anyway, for all those doing Ironman Lake Placid next week, best of luck and keep your head off the pavement!

cheers and catch up with ya'all soon!

Tav@my.head.freakin.hurts.com