Muskoka Half...Recap by BCC Rider Quentin Broad

News from Quentin Broad:


Maximum Elevation - 395m
Minimum Elevation - 287m
Ascending - 359m
Descending - 363m


Tough day, the night was interrupted by a constant downpour making sleep in rented cottage a bit difficult. Got everyone up and at 530, but only got to the transition zone at 715 and they were clearing us out at 735. Again, travelling with families always make these difficult to prepare properly. Lesson here is to stay on site so they can sleep in and I can do my stuff. I also need to go through my check list in detail as I left my gel flask at home with my gels. While I bought a flask, I couldn't put the velcro on it so it sticks to my top bar. So I had to improvise, not something you want to do on these races.

The swim was done in waves with just over 300 swimmers in most waves. The swim was solid although not blindingly fast – water was about 67 degrees and there was only a very light chop, probably more chop from the swimmers. I was pleased with the sub 2:00/100 avg time. I started at the front and off to the right of the group and went out quickly, had good sighting all the way around, got on some feet at 300 or so and held them to the first turn, problem was a guy came from my right was squeezing into make the right turn and hoofed me in the chops. A rude awakening. The field didn't really thin so there was little in the way of open water. After the kick in the head I managed to get focused and just worked a good pace. Managed to catch a couple of feet here and there but nothing sustained. With 300m to go I had the second rough ride, this time from the group ahead who we had caught. I was dead on the exit buoy and all of a sudden this guy goes 90 degrees in front of me and hoofs my googles. I take on water in the goggles, tread water for a second but figure it is not worth clearing them out given the short way to the exit so I swim in with limited visibility. I got out and used the wetsuit strippers (definitely the way to go if it is available). My transition was probably a couple of minutes slow given I stopped and talked to maddie, corbin and dianne. The 300m climb to transition didn't help either but everyone faced the same issue. I exited the swim in 68th in my group, a decent position in my view.



I decided to ride with arm warmers and not a vest, hoping the temperature stayed constant at the 18 degrees. The good news was that it did and I didn’t get a chill. The bike was excellent when one considers the conditions. With a constant drizzle, it made attacks on very tough downhills very treacherous so I had to dial back the speed and increase the concentration. I will down load my times from the garmin but it looks like the splits were consistent despite a tough course in my mind. The wind was up in some spots and the climbs were pretty relentless, didn't give you the ability to settle in for long stretches. Of course throw in the constant rain and rooster tails spewing off the wheels - definitely needed windshied wipers on the glasses. From a nutrition perspective I got two gels into me and one bar and two gatorade. At the last station they only seemed to be giving out lime Gatorade and I couldn't bring myself to drink it fearing I was changing one more thing. I came off the bike in 19th position in the age group as I had moved up 50 places on the bike and feeling pretty good when I looked around and saw very few bikes in transition. By this time drizzle was a steady rain that would only get heavier on the run.

While I thought I made some very good progress this year with my running it is clearly the weak link and something that needs some material amount of work in order to allow me to be competitive at these longer distances. Like the bike, the hills are quite relentless including the start as we had to climb out of deerhurst for the first km. It was a bit of an eye opener as I am going out on my run, Craig Alexander is just hammering it coming back in on his run. I didn’t realize at the time, he still had almost 6km to go, but nonetheless, it put some real perspective on how good these guys really are. By 3km I started cramping and heart rate was running at high zone 3, low zone 4, which gave me pause for stopping. I couldn’t get myself to gut this thing out. My feet were turning over but it was very slow going, the hills were again relentless. It was rare on this course to run flat, we were going up or coming down all of the time. Even here with all of the rain I was cautious on the downhills. By km 6, I was walking for 45seconds at every km mark, it was just brutal. There is not much more to say on this run other than it was a slow wet grind – squish, squish, squish. This was a mix of running and walking, and proved to me that while I believe I can be competitive now in the first two aspects of this sport, my running needs to improve materially, to give me a shot at finishing these races in good form.



Overall time of sub 6 hours is heartening at 5:57 – 69th in my age group of 166 starters and 383rd out of 1289 total athletes, given my ironman time of 14:26:31. While ironman is more than twice the 70.3 in terms of effort, I think a focus on the run, could enable me to achieve a 12 hour ironman.



qb