Well I survived the 6 1/2 hour trip to Penticton (including a nice long chat with Helen the nice Canadian Border Control lady), 3 days of sleeping on the ground, a long wet night of cheering on the 2008 IMC participants and a 6 hour drive home. It was a great weekend and I did register for the 2009 IMC.
I arrived late on Friday evening and managed to find my camp site at Lake Skaha Tent and Trailer Park. Chatted with Pete (Reid), Clint (Lien), Ian (Dewars) and a few their friends before setting up my tent and hitting the ground (hay would have been much better). The park looked more like a refugee camp with tents piled into camp sites and we ended up with some crashers in our site, they were eventually dispatched.
Things got going early at Camp Skaha with people rousing to head to swim, get food, get some bike rides in. I spoke with Shawn on Friday evening and chatted about riding the course. I headed out about 7:30 am without breakfast towards Osoyoos along Lake Skaha. It's a great intro to a bike course as almost completley flat (feels amost downhill) which may be a problem if you push too hard because at Osoyoos you immediately begin the stair step climb for 7 miles up Richter Pass. Richter Pass has some pretty solid grades broken up by flat and downhill sections. At the top of Richter Pass I dropped into the aero bars and rolled down to the bottom of Richter having to dodge two large bovine that were standing in the middle of the highway...Doh!! The next section is "rolling" all the way to Keremoes this section has the potential to be really fast as well. I was averaging well in excess of 20.5 mph through this part of the ride (and I wasn't exactly flying up Richter). At Keremoes you head back to Penticton (there is an out and back section that I didn't ride but it's right at Keremoes but I suppose this could be a leg zapper as it's more of the rollers). The next section is gently rolling hills before you start the climb up to Yellow Lake in earnest. Just as I approached the climb a bee hit me right above my glasses and the stinger impacted into my brow....Ouch!! I stopped and tried to make sure the stinger wasn't still in there man it hurt and I hadn't had glasses on it would have been right in my eye. I'm not blaming the next part of the ride on the sting but it didn't help I'm sure. I bonked and bonked hard on the climb up to Yellow Lake. As I hit the lake I started to recover and the road here is sketchy with no shoulder and it's a pretty busy highway. The descent is a flyer. As I hit the bottom of the 3A and swung back onto Hwy 97 for the final few miles back to Penticton I was ripping along at 30+ mph riding a serious tailwind. I was glad to be back at camp and quickly changed into my run clothes for a quick 25 minute t-run out on the run course along Lake Skaha. This is not an easy run course there are some "rollers" on the run and it can be windy on the way out of town. That was it for workouts for the weekend for me.
I spent the afternoon chatting around camp and then headed out to a dinner hosted by Specialized. It was a great evening. Chatting about racing, training, what's been going on in our lives and enjoying a great dinner at Theo's. We hit our sleeping bags early as Sunday would be a long day. I got a late start in the morning and rolled down to the start on my bike and arrived just in time to see the age groupers get sent off. I spent two hours watching the riders head out on the course before making my way to cheer on the last swimmers (several didn't make the cutoff).
After some food I headed out to take pics of riders coming back into town after about an hour I headed over and set up camp at the 35K mark of the run in front of Camp Skaha. From here I could watch the runners head out at approximately 7K and come back at 35K. It was great to be there to cheer on the athletes but it was exhausting. About 4:30 the rain started falling and falling hard. Our group consolidated here to cheer on some of later athletes and we finally had to go get food at about 11pm. As we were headed back to the campsite we saw the last runner heading into town with about 5K to go unfortunately they weren't going to make the offical cutoff.
In the end, Bryan Rhodes and Belinda Granger won the mens and womens race respectively. It was a fast day overall with lots of fast times not unexpected being an end of season race with cool tempeatures, pack riding early on the bike and a nice tailwind to sweep riders back into town. Rumors were rampant about the peletons on the bike from Penticton to Osoyoos most likely a result of the big pro fields tha kept the referees busy for the first couple hours of the bike leg and probably contributed to the pack riding.
After a very wet night on the ground we rallied for breakfast and I headed over to sign up for IMC 2009. This is the only Ironman that I plan to race in 2009 but you know, never say never. I'm looking forward to it and would recommend a trip up to Penticton for IMC 2009 or just a nice vacation. Here's a link to IMC 2008 pictures.
I'm into my final hard training weeks, I've got a sprint tri in two weeks and the Grand Columbian Half Iron in 3 weeks so we'll see what my fitness looks like at that point. Less than 7 weeks until Kona.
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