Training Log Archive: Relentless

Pentathlon Des Neiges. My first time doing this event and what an event it was! After a huge warmup the day/night before the race and some rain, freezing rain, and snow overnight, the course was in surprisingly good shape. Sun was shining, temps around zero celcius but there was a very stiff wind of 30-50km/h blowing on the Plaines d'Abraham. Getting ready was a little chaotic, but it was due to my own organizational challenges - the race organization was very dialed in.

Start was a 300m LeMans run to bikes. Bike course was ~15km (5x3km loops) on pavement - some completely dry and then other section all or partially covered in snow and slush. I held my own and even gained a little ground on the snow and slushy sections against the cross bikes, but I was no match for them on the bare pavement sections that were mostly downhill. I was pushing very hard right from the start - likely due to almost no warmup and also just from trying to keep pace with the cyclocross bikes (pedaling on the downhills!). Was getting quite worried early on about blowing up at this pace, considering there were still 4 more disciplines to come! 38:20 (leaders in 33:11)

Run - this was a ~5km (3 loops) run on almost all bare pavement. My toes were numb coming off the bike and for about 1.5 laps of the run. But I generally felt good and had a pretty solid run, considering that flati-ish road runs is certainly not my strength. 24:12 (leader in 20:17)

Ski - I haven't been skate skiing much in the past month, having done the CSM and the 51km classic at the Gatienau Loppet. I was a little shaky getting onto the ~8km (3x~2.75km loops) ski course and sure enough on the first downhill with a hard left turn, the guy in front of me wiped out and I crashed trying to avoid him, this cost me a fair bit of time and energy and it looks like about 3 spots in the overall ranking. The rest of the ski was ok, but this was probably my weakest of the events on the day. 29:06 (leader in 20:58)

Skate - was on a 420m oval. Ice was pretty smooth though getting a little beat up. Lots of traffic as the laps wore on. Part of the biggest challenge was accurately counting the 20 laps we had to do (close to 20 of the ~80 competitors failed at the counting test!) I actually really enjoyed the skate and felt quite smooth and fast, although my back got quite sore and my calves would occasionally spasm or something (never felt that before). I managed to count to 20 properly :-) 22:52 (leader in 20:58)

Snowshoe. This was ~5km (3 loops) mostly on single track. I was pretty wiped by this time and wasn't really sure what to expect on the first loop, so the first loop was a little slower. Once I had an idea of how much pain (climbing) there was was to come I was able to manage the second and third loops better. Ran the last loop pretty hard and managed to pass a few people in the final few hundred metres of the race.

Checked my stats on my Garmin and apparently I averaged 93% of my max heart rate during the race... so a bit of a redline type race for me, but I was happy with my performance overall.

Final result - 5/23 in my category, 14/73 overall male