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| View from one of the hotel's restaurants. Penticton is written on the hillside with gabion baskets of white stone. |
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| See the C-swoosh used as the o in Penticton? It's covering the mis-spelling of the town name as Pentiction. They had miles of signs to fix. |
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| The red mark pointing to Penticton obscures the name of the neighboring town of Keloona. |
-- Getting to Penticton is a challenge. This location in British Columbia is about 4.5 h from Vancouver (267 mi), 6 h from Seattle (345 mi), 5 h from Spokane (225), or 8 h from Calgary airports by car (428 mi). Alternatively, for an exorbitant price it was possible to fly into a neighboring community (Keloona, 1 h by car (45 mi)) and now it seems possible to fly into Penticton itself (via Jet West), but I can't imagine the cost. I guess this isn't very different from Lake Placid, which is also remotely situated relative to large airports.
My plan was to fly Southwest to Spokane so I wouldn't have to worry about flying internationally with my bike, rent a car and drive to Penticton, then fly out of Calgary with a one-way car rental. Tickets booked months in advance, I thought I was all set until I sat down to book the car. Despite being able to select various pick-up and drop-off locations via the websites, it is not actually allowed to rent a car in the US and drop it off in Canada. Doh! We booked new, last minute flights to Vancouver on United and re-booked the SW flights for a future vacation. Unfortunately, United charges $200 for an over-sized bag on some international flights after applying the 2nd bag charge of $35. Thankfully the bike bag isn't also overweight, or I might have needed to sacrifice a kidney to cover the bag fee.
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| We stopped to see Bridal Falls (nearly washed out of the photo by a sunbeam), up a short walk that gave us a chance to stretch our legs. |
-- Our Itinerary went like this. Wednesday afternoon flight to Vancouver (via Chicago) had us landing at 10:05 pm. Getting through customs was a snap, as was baggage collection and shuttle transport to a near-by hotel. We grabbed late night 'snacks' (read wine, beer, & ice cream) and got to bed ~12 p.m. local time, which was 3 a.m. E.D.T. In the morning we shuttled back to the airport to pick up our rental car, and after brunch headed over to Penticton. We did some sight seeing on the way and ultimately spent some 6 h traveling to the host hotel (Penticton Lakeside Resort Convention Centre & Casino),
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| Penticton Lakeside Resort sits between transition and the finish area. Our room overlooked the lake and the very end of the run course. |
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| Lake Louise, ~7 p.m. on a rainy day. |
Short recap: Penticton is a lovely place, but damned inconvenient to get to. The whole trip had lots of beautiful scenery, which we saw either through the haze of smoke due to near-by wild fires, or through heavy clouds and rain.
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| I don't understand why every 140.6 doesn't provide this kind of map. It's helpful for the racers and spectators alike. Note - I never would have entered the finish chute at Lake Placid prematurely if they'd bothered to share one. |
-- Bike Pre-amble. I had trouble airing up my front tire when assembling my bike. The Zipp valve stem has a weird shape/size that wouldn't fit my travel pumps' fitting so I had to find a bike shop (strangely, the expo did not have any bike service). The bike shop was able to air the tire up with a compressor, but not a hand pump, so it seems the fix-a-flat goop I put in at home messed stuff up. I traveled with new brake pads, intending to install them when I unpacked the bike. But I didn't realize they required an allen wrench size I didn't have with me, so I bought another allen wrench set, bringing my collection now up to ~1 million of them. I also purchased rim tape (in case I needed to change my tubular tire on course), tire irons (same reason), and 3 x CO2 cartridges (since you can't fly with those). Next morning, the front tire was still rock hard but the back was flat. This is sorta normal tubular behavior so I aired the back up and rode/scouted the run course with no problem. The rear tire was low again when I racked which was mildly concerning since only ~7 h had passed. Race morning, both tires needed air. I pushed 105 psi with a pump in transition.
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| After my newly-installed tubular tire flatted in Boulder last year, and then confirming the difficulty for finding 650 tubular tires at the last minute, I vowed to travel to A races with a pre-stretched tire in the event I’d need another last minute pre-race fix. But I had not yet committed to carrying it during the race since I’d never changed one of this kind out before and figured I’d be fucked if I really needed to. But at the bike shop in Penticton I realized I’d better carry all that was needed because without it, the in-race bike support wouldn’t be able to help me either. Conceptually, I do know how to change the tire, but I did not know how much trouble I’d have finding the spot where the tire wasn’t glued so I could begin to pull it off, or how hard it was going to be to rip off a glued-on tire. Then there was the issue with the new valve extenders, that I was also carrying with me, which I straight up did not know how to install. The black bottle contains my rim tape, caffe latex, tire irons, CO2 and adapter. The tire was folded in half then thirds around the rear bottle cage mount and secured with two velcro straps. All told, I found myself at the last minute with too much weighing on my mind regarding the readiness of my bike for this race. |
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| View of Okanagan Lake from our room. Top, sunset through a light smokey haze. Bottom, daylight through heavier smokey haze. |
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| Held in Okanagan Lake, the course was a single loop askew triangle with the starting line maybe chest deep, which saved us the long shallow run in from shore. The smaller triangle was for the half. At swim start winds shifted from 5 mph NNW to 8 mph S with gusts to 20 mph. |
-- The Swim. At the 6:30 a.m. start, the water seemed calm and the 70-71 F temp felt great, being warmer than that of the air (56 F). For the outbound 1600 m I found myself between two lines of swimmers. I didn't want to veer to try to join either but found myself crossing them anyway. There may have been a slight cross current, and I ultimately felt like I was zig zagging here. Rounding the first turn for the short 450 m segment put me closer to another swimmer that I could easily keep up with. This tells me I missed the window for latching on to faster swimmers. I got on and off this guys feet repeatedly, finding that I couldn't hold him unless I stared at his feet, which put my head up higher than I usually keep it. This both changes what I think is my best body position and also makes the wetsuit touch my throat more, which leads to a sensation of being strangled. After the last turn for the 1800 m stretch home I settled in, got over the wetsuit-on-throat sensation and locked onto those feet. I thought about how hard I was (not) working and took a look to see if anyone nearby seemed to be moving faster, but stuck with the same guy who was now on someone else's feet. I was definitely not working hard here and whenever I took a look to see if we were any closer to shore, it really seemed we weren't. Eventually another swimmer latched on to me and I finally got that experience in a triathlon of both tapping feet in front while being tapped from behind, but in a calm pace line. The swim exit was over some rocks that were luckily not sharp. Don't know how I missed these getting in 'cause they were a surprise. Afterward, Ed tells me the wind was pushing the water away from the shore all day, which would have made the inbound trip against a current. I had my Garmin set to record 800 m laps and the early lap paces support there being a current away from the start area. S: 1:25:53 (2:16/100 m), rank 121/176 individual starters. My prior best time was 1:33:27 at IMMT in 2013, so I started the day feeling pretty good about hitting my first goal, mostly. (Let's be honest, I wanted to go lower 1:20's).
-- T1 was smooth. I finally swam with a good enough time for the tent to be crowded when I got there. I found my pony tail position was too high and it really fouled with my helmet fit. I stared at my long-sleeved top and decided against wearing it - this was a mistake. T1: 5:39, achieving my 2nd goal of <7 min.
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The single loop course with 5470 ft elevation gain had only a very small out-and-back segment near mi 69 to see competitors ahead of and behind you. Between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., temps ranged from a low of 58 to a high of 65 F, and the winds ranged from a steady 5-11 mph (S) to gusts of 17-26 mph. Verbal reports cite gusts to 40 mph at Penticton's airport but I can't find confirmation.
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| Taken on Eastside Rd, along Skaha Lake. |
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| Same road as above, taken during course scouting. |
-- The Bike. Oh dear god, the wind. No lie, worse than the first year at CAC. The bike course follows the shoreline of Skaha Lake with almost no shoulder and no guardrail, and the hilly coast line's twists & turns seemed to shift the direction of the wind in an unpredictable manner. This was the first time I'd felt the wind strongly grab my helmet and blow my head sideways. There were cross-winds at CAC this year, but this action on my helmet didn't happen there. The wind and direction shift of gusts was so bad that I was under eating and drinking b/c I was literally afraid to take my hands off the aero extensions and didn't want to sit upright at all. It was also raining lightly and I was cold, and to top it off my bike was making a weird clicking noise, like maybe something was hitting a spoke, and a vibration sound that I determined was rattling coming from my right brake lever.
South of the lake I was passing people consistently which required crossing a rumble strip to join the auto traffic, as the shoulder was only wide enough for single-file riding. By the time I made the turn from Osoyoos to start climbing up Richter Ascent (1/3 of the mileage, 60 km) I was already at 2.5 h. Say it with me, oh dear!
The climbs on this course were fine, no problem at all. But the descents were a big problem. I needed much better course familiarity to compensate for the proximity of fast moving traffic on this open course. We drove the course but the shoulder, where I did the bulk of my biking, was not the same degree of smooth. Coming down the first big decent I was literally scared so got out of aero and moved to a tuck on the bars, and I don't know what I hit but felt a hard bump on the back wheel. After this I felt slower in places where I don't think I should have been moving so slowly, let alone for my target wattage. I kept looking and didn't think the tire looked flat, but the ride felt jarring. I guess it was windy here, too. There was a period of maybe 20 min (?) where my right hip was really feeling terrible and my pedaling fell off then as I tried to stretch it out. Luckily this passed. I started taking the big descents in the smoother car lane but, in general, the bike felt a little squirrely on descents and I was concerned about the potential for sudden cross gusts.
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| Along Hwy 3, taken during course scouting. |
I finally stopped to check the wheel at the 115 km turn around, and found it really low. Like, I was worried I may be trashing both my rim and tire, low. I pulled out my CO2 and aired up to seriously firm as the cartridge seemed to put out a higher PSI than I've experienced before. Got back on, rolled maybe 200 yd before a pop and hiss. Now I had a hole I could see. I put my finger over it to meter the air flow, rolled the hole to the ground hoping the tire goop would pool there (following what I read on ST about how to deal with flats in tubulars), rolled it a bit but it still seemed to be leaking. I pulled out my caffe latex and tried twice to put more goop in, but it just sort of detonated everywhere instead of going into the tire upon which the child volunteer who was watching exclaimed, "Cool!". (Uhm, yeah..., awesome.) I wondered if the tire already had too high a pressure in it for the product to deploy correctly but couldn't bring myself to intentionally deflate the tire. At any rate, I decided to roll on with a soft-ish tire. I figured
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| Taken by a spectator and shared on FB! |
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| The run course had 2 legs of out and back. The first turn-around was at 7 km, the 2nd at 27.7 km though it was reported by folks on SlowTwitch that the location was not correct, and I observed the cone to be beyond the spray-painted turn-around mark on the road. By this time of day, temp was 64 climbing to 69 F and then dropping to 66 with steady 8-12 mph winds (S) and 17-26 mph gusts. |
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| This run path along the Okanagan River was used for the shorter, western out-and-back run segment. There were a bunch of horses on it during my scouting ride. |
-- The Run. I came out a little too fast and over slowed down as I turned into the wind. I checked all the bib #'s of women coming toward me (they would have been up to 7 km ahead of me) and saw none that looked close enough in number to be in my AG. I figured that with the flatting there was no way in hell I could place, but I felt really good. Fatigue started to get me at the 10 mi point, and now the bib #'s running toward me had me convinced I wouldn't place. I won't say I gave up, but knowing I wasn't going to PR also kept me from giving that extra effort and I'm not proud of that. Garmin data shows I dropped ~1 mi/min around this time :-( I thought to increase my foot turnover and people told me I looked great but somehow my pace was slowing anyway.
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| Not yet 1 mile into the run, I was feeling like a million bucks. Okanagan Lake is in the background. |
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The fist pump followed my
enthusiasm over NOT wiping
out from doing cartwheels
after >14 h of racing.
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-- Results.
S: 1:25:53 (2:02/100 yd)
T1: 5:39
B: 7:44:42 (14.5 mph)
T2: 3:33
R: 4:51:59 (11:08/mi)
Total time: 14:11:34
I was 89/176 individual starters,
147 of whom finished within the 17 h cutoff and
151 of which are listed with a finishing time.
I was 4/11 in my AG but got bumped to 3rd for the awards since 1/11 was the 3rd female to finish the race.
Overall, I get that it was a hard day and I'm totally fine with not having hit my goal time of 13 h. But I still wish I had manged to do a better job and nail the run. I also think I made a tactical mistake on the bike by not putting out more effort in the first 60 km of wind and by not eating enough. Of course I'm thrilled to have placed (!!!) and should probably point out that I only beat the woman behind me in my AG by 1 min 52 sec, which might be less time than it would have taken me to scope out the porta-potty for cleanliness and to use it. ;-)
-- Additional
Observations of the event, in no particular order:
- I was surprised the expo had no bike mechanical support. The two represented bike shops weren’t far away, but still – unusual.
- The transition bags aren’t the plastic things I’ve gotten at every other race. These are nylon, I think. I get that Challenge is not Ironman and wants to distinguish itself, but can we please agree that Red is for Run and Blue is for Bike?
- The race bag ‘gift’ for registering (for the full) was a solidly
constructed evocsports 55 L transition bag with plenty of pockets and various ways to use it: duffle
or back pack, stuff from both sides or from the top. It actually looks too nice to use in a race
but might be good to use as a carry-on while flying? (Presuming everyone can stomach the smell of the
running and cycling shoes contained inside...
Come to think of it, it was probably my cycling shoes that set off
airport security in Calgary, not the bike.) The race swim cap was silicone instead of latex and I will continue to use it regularly.
Ye old bag give-a-way happens to be a really
well-made-looking gear bag with pockets and
content access points almost everywhere. It
also has a folding out transition mat (on right). - Penticton is known for its army of volunteers, and everyone I encountered was friendly and helpful. However, hotel staff were overhead making fun of some guests – not cool.
- Race tracking
was abysmal, with race staff overhead saying to one another that it
was a complete failure and no data was being captured. Apparently the
only mats that worked were at transition and the finish line.
- Participants were announced as they came out of the swim, back in from the bike, I think when we passed by transition on the run, and of course in to finish. That was seriously thorough, which I guess you can pull off with <250 participants doing the long course. The take home for me is to use Philadelphia as my town name since almost no one seems to be able to pronounce Conshohocken (Con-sho-hock-en, just like it’s spelled) and no one knows where it is anyway.
- There were 11 aid stations on the bike course. Eleven! I was wondering if people just took cups from each station instead of carrying water bottles? Also plenty of aid on the run.
- There was a turn on the run course that could have used a volunteer to guide people, which wasn’t a big deal. However, neither out-and-back turn around point had a timing mat, which seems surprising given the high-profile incidents of cheating discovered among BQ’ers and KQ’ers alike lately. The 1st turn had people recording bib #’s by hand but the 2nd one was a ghost town, with the diss'ed porta-potty my only witness to having honestly completed the course.
- After-race: post-race massage was nice, food was sufficient, but so far no one touches Mount Tremblant on this point. No one took my timing chip, which I discovered when stripping for my shower.
- Finish line atmosphere: they were aiming for it to be festive, they just didn’t have enough people. The music was too loud - not b/c I’m too old but b/c it was over amp’ing the speakers. The lighting was enough for me to see where I was going as a participant, but not enough to see the finishers as a spectator. The 17-hour mark came with no fan-fare as participants were still out on the course and they were going to let them finish. After 15 or so min I gave up. Last recorded time was 18:06:09.
- Participation by numbers: both of the Challenge races I did this year had few participants and appear to have possibly suffered from poor environmental conditions: smoke in Penticton and harsh preceding day wind/rain in Atlantic City. AC also took a hit when the Prize purse was killed. Penticton is moving to the international triathlon union long course format of 1.9 mi swim, 74.6 mi bike, 18.6 mi run for 2016 and hosting the ITU Multisport World Championship Festival in 2017, which as a 10 day event should hugely increase the number of athletes going to the area to train and race in the near future. Meanwhile, we wait to hear what'll happen to the race in AC.
Penticton Individual Relay AB Total Bib #'s 208 45 1 254 Started 176 41 0 217 Finished 147 <17:00:00
151 ≤18:06:0939 0 186 DNS 15.4% 8.9% 100.0% 14.6% DNF 16.5% 4.9% 100.0% 14.3%
AC Pro Indiv Relay AB Total Bib #'s 30 214 31 58 333 Started 4 155 26 52 237 Finished 3 138 25 47 212 DNS 86.7% 27.6% 16.1% 10.3% 28.8% DNF 25.0% 11.0% 26.7% 3.8% 10.5%
-- Lastly, in a race of this length there's plenty of time for several kinds of thoughts to enter one's mind. How my training went, what could have been different. The hours spent in multiple pools trying to get as fast as Denise and Emily. Remembering the excellent preparation obtained through Cadence's June training camp and the miles spent biking in gnarly headwinds with Mark. The dedication to getting it done exemplified by Emily biking for hours inside a hotel room on a trainer and by Ashley under more weird traveling circumstances than I can wrap my head around. The kick-ass results thrown down by all my team and training mates at Challenge AC this year. Trying to channel the strength of Jill or Isabel and the perseverance of Kristy on the bike. Remembering how lucky I am to be able to do this when others have health conditions that make simple daily living a challenge. Hoping Ed was off doing something fun and not standing around for hours trying to find me when all my time predictions were so far off. And I tried to wear a smile all day long, thinking of the grace and joy with which Leroy approaches everything, ultimately 'having fun while getting it done.' Thanks for reading!
