Triathlon du Saguenay - Race Report :(

On Saturday morning, I participated in the Olympic duathlon of the Triathlon du Saguenay. Notice that I said participated, not completed, because sadly after 5 years of racing, I had my first DNF (did not finish). How did it happen? First, I'll tell you about the race itself and how it ended so disastrously. I wish I could say I crashed or I got a flat tire or something easy like that, but no.
An Olympic duathlon consists of 10km of running, 40km of biking, followed by 5km of running. In previous years, the Triathlon du Saguenay run course has been very difficult, with several steep hills and one really long one. This year, they announced that they changed the course, making it easier, which I was thrilled about and this factored into my decision to try the Olympic distance instead. As I discovered Saturday morning, yes the course was easier but easier is a relative term. There were still a ridiculous number of hills and with the 28 degree heat at 10am, the first 10km were absolutely brutal (1:04:44). I basically counted down the steps until I could get on my bike, while dreading the fact that I still had 5km more to do at the end.
The bike route consisted of 5 laps of a hilly 7.7km loop (for a total of 38.5km). I have done this race twice before, plus practised on this loop several times, and I HATE IT. I don't know what it is about this route, but I absolutely detest it. (As a sidenote, if they don't change the bike course next year, I'm not doing this race again. That's how much I hate this loop.) The first lap out of transition is always the most difficult as your muscles adapt to the change in sport. There was a fair bit of wind on the way out to the turnaround, which made the ride challenging, but on an out-and-back loop like this one, it meant that the wind was with me on the way back. The first 3 laps were okay and there were still lots of other riders on the course, but by the fourth lap, I got the feeling I was one of the last ones left. Which was true. On the 5th lap, one of the race volunteers was creeping along behind me in his pick-up truck, cleaning up the course and picking up pylons. By this point, I had been going for almost two and a half hours and I still had ~5km of biking plus 5km of running to do. Timewise, it was close to noon and the temperature was well over 30 degrees. Up until now, my mind had been telling me to stop but I kept talking myself into continuing, despite being completely embarrassed that I was in dead last by a huge margin while they were cleaning up behind me. However, a couple kms into my 5th lap, everything started to fail. You name it, it hurt. My calves started cramping, my hip flexors were shot, my hamstrings were exhausted, my back seized up which sent shooting pains into my right knee and I started having difficulty breathing. At that point, I decided it was in my best interest not to continue. So I signalled to the guy in the pick-up truck, he stopped, put my bike in the back and he drove me back to the T-zone. I was so humiliated - I didn't know how I was going to face Chris and the other people who came to watch my race. I also had to give back my timing chip and explain that I couldn't finish. At that point, I think the emotional pain was worse than the physical, which is really saying something.
So what went wrong? Here are the factors I think contributed to this disaster:
- first, I have never attempted an Olympic distance race before (up until now, I have only done sprint distance races) and while I can easily do each running/biking leg separately, I have never done them back-to-back-to-back; I also anticipated finishing in ~3 hours, which would have been my longest race ever
- second, I have done the bike-run transition a million times, but I never practised the run-bike transition (I was working on the assumption that my strength in biking would carry me through - wrong!)
- third, it was freaking hot and there was hardly any shade on the course, so I'm going to work on running/biking in the heat to build up my endurance
- fourth, it was my 4th race in 4 weeks, with only 6 days to recover from the Staircase Challenge, so I think I was perhaps a bit burnt-out and not in peak form

After a couple days of beating myself up, I have accepted my DNF and I'm going to try to take what I learned from this experience and apply it to my future training. Even the best athletes have DNFs on their record. Looking back, I probably should have taken the safe route and tried the sprint duathlon instead, but Chris is proud of me for challenging myself and taking a chance on this race.