Muskoka Subaru Triathlon

On the road to Huntsville, Muskoka region

We all got up bright and early Sunday morning for our drive north to the Muskoka triathlon. It was a beautiful and warm day, perfect for some swimming in the lake, then biking on elevated terrain, and then running 5k. That was our triathlon challenge, swim 750m, bike 20k, run 5k. And it was a relay, which added to the fun! Another friend of ours signed up to do the triathlon completely solo and we will forever admire him :). 

I volunteered to do the swim portion of the race and had been training very hard, swimming at least 1k everyday for the past week up until Sunday. I guess the problem was, I never really timed myself accurately so I didn't know my pace. But then I figured "meh, it's a race, just go as fast as you can at a comfortable pace, because for you, 750m is long distance, NOT sprint distance. So Jen, just swim COMFORTABLY". So I reasoned with myself that it was OK to not know my swim pace.

Swim course transfer to bike course

So it was with great surprise when I found out that I had actually signed up our team for the Sprint Triathlon, thinking that it was the same as the Try-a-Triathlon (which didn't exist for this event). And because it was sprint, if your swim is over 30 mins, you will be stopped and disqualified. WHAT??? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

Ok. No problem. Just swim your best and we'll see how it goes!

So that's exactly the advice I took, and in the end we actually did fine! Our end time was a respectable 1hr34mins, sitting right in middle place meaning we made average time with respect to all our competitors!! What more could we ask for considering this was our first Sprint Tri!

Relay team, pumped before the race

Swimming like we were born with fins

Bike course transition to Run course

Running to the finish!

Almost there... go team!!!!

Somebody's car in the lot had this Darwin fish :)

We had a great experience :)

Afterwards, we were given plenty of fluids and lunch/fruit/chips and even a water spray tent (it's like standing inside a tent with a built-in sprinkler system - it's great!).
It was such a great experience that we're already looking for the next triathlon. For anybody interested in upcoming triathlons in Ontario, Canada, here is my list:
http://www.somersault.ca/triathlons.htm
http://www.trisportcanada.com/home.php
http://www.msctriathlon.com/ms/events/race_schedule.cfm
http://www.cornwalltriathlon.com/sunday.shtml (selling out fast!)
And just for the fun of it, I found this cool run: A midsummer night's run around east downtown Toronto!