Canadian Sprint Triathlon Relay Report: Form, fun and follies!

Posted In: Triathlon | Uncategorized September 3rd, 2013 divider No Comments »

My friend Tania casually mentioned it would be fun to do a triathlon relay last summer. Well don’t plant a seed in my head unless you want to see it come to fruition!

It didn’t work out with timing and logistics last summer but we made it happen for the Canadian Sprint Triathlon. It was just a matter of who would do what. It’s funny but I got the swim portion, my worst discipline after cycling and running.

I was a bit foolish, hence the follies. I was out the night before for a beer or two (or three) at a friend’s charity boat cruise. The one nice thing about a relay is that you don’t have to bring as much gear. No bike or running shoes for me this time. And you don’t have to show up as early either.

So I got there to meet up with Dion, our cyclist and Tania, our runner, to distribute the bibs and get organized. Then slowly made my way to the beach to test the water. Who needs a warm up?

And then the race starts! It was a bit of chaos like most tri’s to start and then we got settled down. A few more strokes and some thoughts (I wrote this blog post in my head while swimming) and we were done. A quick run to the transition about 750m away and I passed the timing chip to Dion.

He had the longest leg, doing a 30k cycle along the parkway. It seemed like a good day though with minimal wind. And he took advantage. And there was Tania off to do the 5k run. You can even see her in action (and in a wonderful double float phase) above.

As I was spectating waiting for my cyclist and runner to get in, I got to see the bad, the good and the ugly when it comes to form. I’ll probably never win a race but at least I have efficient A great by-product of teaching form and mindfulness. And the focus on form helps tremendously as I can still perform relatively well with minimal training while not having to worry about injuries as well.

All in all, a great morning for a race. And so much fun to do a race with friends, even if I lost them after. We finished third relay team overall so not a bad result either!

***
I often get asked about breathing. Well here’s a great look at breathing for runners from Danny Dreyer, the founder of ChiRunning.