Last race of the season.

I really like this race. It is right in town and supports the youth cycling team. The course winds over a huge number of private properties and it is so wonderful that the land owners allow us access to race.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the Triple Shot this year was that Steph was joining me on the start line. We haven’t raced together since Ironman Canada in 2007. It as been a long journey for her and I am so happy to see her able to take on events like this again.

For reasons I don’t understand I was righting off this as an easy course. I raced here last year and had memories of the course being mostly flat. Certainly, nothing like the total vertical on the gravel races through the summer. I don’t know what I was thinking. There is a lot of uphill on this course (and last year as well). The thing is this course is punchy, there isn’t any extended climbing, just continuous ups and downs. It sneaks up for sure.

It has been really dry this fall so unlike last year’s mud bog we had dusty and loose. The day was hot, really hot considering it is the middle of October. Also, smoke from wildfires came in so the air wasn’t great. I was happy about the temperature, not so much the smoke.

Because I under estimated the difficulty of the course I started strong. The hardest climbs were stacked in the last 10K (I didn’t know this at the time) so this maybe was a mistake. Compared to the Burnt Bridge I didn’t feel the opening pace was that hot. I am pleased with how I generally paced the race, my splits are very even, save for 30-40K split. I had a very hard time there. Not only was that section of the course the most difficult, with lots of punchy hard climbs I felt the work I was doing on my hips and low back to increase my range of motion was working against me in the moment. My low back and the hip flexors were just screaming from a little after 30K. Far more than I have experienced in past races. I am proud of myself that I was able to regain focus and get back on track from a pace point of view, my split from 40K to the end was only a touch lower than the solid opening effort.

Even with a really hard 10K in the mix, where I wasn’t feeling tired, just the engine room wasn’t responding, I finished 30m faster than last year. Overall, this was a great way to wrap up my racing season.