Mont Tremblant 2012

My finishing time was  approximately 11 hours 36 mins . I had said to myself that my goal was around 11:30 so I have to be happy with that. I did 11:38 at Lake Placid on a slightly harder course but that was also 4 years ago.

Swim:

I do a lot of swim training because I enjoy it and this swim time of 1:13 and change was my slowest Ironman swim time to date. I am not exactly sure why other than I seem to be generally a better pool swimmer than open water swimmer. But, I have done a ton of triathlons and you would think by now that I had learned to be good at sighting. I think I was a bit off course in this race after the turn on the way back. I found this to be the least stressful IM Swim that I have done. I had a good attitude and once I got going, felt good. In hindsight, the fact that I was not being pushed around as much might have meant that I wasn't completely on course.

Bike:

I was not worried about the bike as I felt I had done a sufficient amount of training on the bike and I had done the half ironman there in June. It is a nice bike course where you get a lot of speed on the first out and back part. I like the Lac Superior hilly section because I feel like I do a lot of hill climbing on PEI. I was hoping to be a bit faster than 5:51 but was happy with that. My bike computer battery died on me. What are the odds. Its not something I would have thought to check and it was fine all summer. On the one day I really wanted it, it didn't work. I did the entire bike section without a speedomter and just kind of went with the flow. I had to resist the urge to get off and fiddle with it. Also, I got a new chain a few weeks ago and it started slipping and missing gears when shifting toward the end of the bike course.

Run:

In hindsight, I feel like I could have run quite a bit faster but during my training, I told myself I would be happy with anything between 4 hours and 4:30. So, I am happy with 4:19. I felt like I had done a lot of running in training and of the three disciplines, felt I was the most prepared for the run. (But, maybe have more natural ability at biking) I was paranoid about dehydration having had a bad case of that at Ironman Canada in 2009 and having had some problems this summer. So, I drank alot of fluid in the days before the race and during the race. I had to pee once during the bike and early on in the run so I knew I was hydrated. Also, the weather was perfect in terms of hydration. Not too hot and overcast by the time the run started. I felt good for the first 10 k and then started to slow down I think between 15 k and the half marathon point. You get a mental boost at the half-way point because you going through the finish area. I had a muscle cramps fairly early around 8 k and that scared me a bit becasue I knew I had a long way to go and it was early to get cramps. I started eating bananas and that seemed to help. I think I had about 3 muscle cramps thoughout the race which caused me to stop for second and walk a few steps but they went away and I was able to keep running. I kept telling myself that when I got to 32 k I was going to pick it up no matter what. With about 7 k to go I started to feel great and started to run as opposed to shuffle along. I passed alot of people on the last 7 k and made up quite a bit of time. when I finished Ironman Canada in 2009, I felt like I didn't want to do another one (and it took me 4 years to get over that) After this race, I have a more positive feeling and am thinking about doing Ironman Arizona in 2013.