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First Open-Water Swim of The Year

I kicked off the Memorial Day weekend with an early morning swim/bike/run session at Hagg Lake with Sven. This was the first open-water swim of the year and I’m glad to have it out of the way. Everything I’ve learned in the pool over the past months went out the window as soon as I stepped into the cold water and I struggled through the first half of the swim.

As I settled down, things improved, but it’s still a completely different experience from pool swimming and I’m nowhere near where I need to be to put in a decent swim time during a race. So, the struggles in the water continues. The good news that is I’m ahead of where I was last year and there’s still time to work on it.

After the swim, we biked a lap around the lake to simulate the race and this is what I’m really excited about. This is a recovery week for both Sven and me, so we went at an easy pace. When I got home and analyzed the data (see picture below), I learned that I was only 7 sec/km slower than my race pace last year. This almost seems too good to be true, because this was a light-medium efford ride and I feel there is lots of room to improve on the bike still. This bodes well for Hagg Lake 2008, which is my A priority race.

After the bike we did a quick 2 km-run. That’s approximately how long it took me to get my running legs going during last year’s race. The transition from a hard bike ride to a hard run is always tough (especially when you start the run with a tough hill), but my legs feel strong this year and I expect to place high in the run.

Posted in Biking, Running, Swimming, Triathlon | No Comments »

Vancouver Triathlon Bike Course Map

What do you get when you combine a techno-geek with a triathlete? A detailed course map is one answer.

Before the Vancouver race, I played around with Google Earth and mapped out the bike course in Stanley Park to get an idea of the terrain. I produced a couple of jpeg-versions using the “Save Image” function. Both are stored in my Picasa Web Album.

The first one is at a zoom level that shows the whole course. Click here to see this version. For a more detailed view, click here for the large version. This is a composition of four closeups that I merged.

Note that there is a zoom button inside the album that allows you to zoom in to get the full resolution. Maybe in ten years we’ll have Google Earth in HD, which would allow us to spot the rough pavement, including the enormous pot hole to the north…

Some clarifications might be in order: I’ve marked my checkpoints with yellow push pins. Each one shows the elevation above sea level (as per Google Earth). Between each checkpoint is an “i” showing the distance between each point as well as the grade. A green path indicates negative grade (downhill) and red is uphill.

Finally, anyone with Google Earth who’s interested in the real deal, can download the kmz-file here: www.fxtn.net/misc/vancouver.kmz.

Posted in Biking, Triathlon | No Comments »