Sprung.

Boom! A long winter.....over! Chalk up a win at the UBC Tri on Saturday. Tara and I had been looking forward to this race all offseason; it's always a great kickoff to the racing year, with a bunch of fast BC athletes looking to knock off the rust.

Since Challenge Penticton last August, I've been putting the work in on the swim and run to erase the deficiencies that led to my blowing to pieces at the 15k mark on the marathon while trying to hang with the leaders. I've been on a steady diet of Humble Pie, bringing up the back of Lane 6 (Tara, a former Olympic Trials swimmer, is the "next slowest") at Patrick Waters' swim group. With a 1500m pool swim to start things off, UBC would be an excellent test of an off-season's worth of work.

Since it was a pool Tri, the race sent us out in a staggered format, 10 seconds apart. Tara proceeded to do what she always does in the swim: take everyone to school. Fortunately I was able to use her zipping by in the other direction as constant feedback----and motivation to NOT GET LAPPED!!!!

After a nice long transition run with a healthy little uphill (practice for Wildflower maybe?), it was out on to Southwest Marine drive for one of the fastest bike courses in B.C. In the lead after an improved swim, I was eager to get to the first of 7 turn-arounds and see where Justin Birks, Chris Young, Brendan Naef and Graham Hood were. All were charging hard. Speaking of charging hard, I got a huge boost from a pair of Energy Lab VC90s that came during race week.

-Cut to a quick review: WOW!!!

(More in-depth review coming soon).

Needless to say, they provided both a performance effect and a psych-up, and led to more time gained.

The run was what I'd been looking forward to, as it was my Achilles heel in 2014, and I'd put in some solid winter work to rectify that. The long and the short of it is that there's much more work to do, but the groundwork is definitely being laid. It felt great to be back in the Saucony Kinvara (5) for this race. Every triathlete has that shoe that just feels magic when you need to put down a strong run after a hard bike, and the Kinvara is mine.

I booked it home on the run, trying to thank as many of the awesome UBC Rec volunteers as possible while racing. I hammered up the approach to the finish line and sprinted across in first place. The finish area and its lead up were in a much better area than last year, allowing spectators to string out and cheer us up the final hill through to the line.

Congrats to Brendan, Justin, Chris and Graham, also HUGE congrats to Jen Annett on a third straight win and a 6th overall finish, and to Tara for the swim clinic and F-25-29 age group win.

And a big thanks to my sponsors! This was my first Tri as part of the Saucony Hurricane Canada team, as well as my first race for Energy Lab. Thanks to Patrick from Waters Wellness for the swim workouts leading up to the race, and to Chris Elliott RMT for thwarting all my attempts to injure myself in training and racing. And lastly, thank you to RB Piping and Save-On Foods for helping me through a very challenging winter to start the race year off with a bang!

More to  come in the near future. Getting better at this "timely" thing. Thank you for reading!