A victorious day of racing for both GymSkinZ / Powered by Peak Centre mixed relay teams at the 13th Annual Squamish Triathlon…

178 Individuals / 38 Relay Teams

After some “team roster juggling”, we put together 2 forces to be reckoned with in the Open-Mixed division.   With a *bit* of friendly trash-talk over the last couple weeks between our team members (and other people at Peak, ahem), we all expected a close race between Teams 1 and 2.   Considering none of the 6 members on either squad are currently training specifically for the “Olympic distance” (we had a mixed bag of sprint specialists, half iron / ironman wannabe’s, ultra-marathoner, bike road racer),  it was one of those “throw caution to the wind and everybody just give ‘er and see what the hell happens”.    For incentive, we put a pitcher of beer on the line and prepared to just go out and have some fun.

We did some pre-race math-a-matizing and historical results analysis and we figured one, if not both teams might even have a pretty good shot at hitting the podium if the planets aligned.  Actually,  when I originally planned for us to do this race, it was pretty much WIN was the only option – aint gonna lie about that despite all of that “do it just for fun” and “for the spirit of triathlon and good sportsmanship / have some fun with your friends”… whatever, I play to win… ahem.

Anyway, the race had a 4 wave start with the relay teams hitting the water 9 minutes after the starting gun.
Shannon ripped off an impressive 24:03 swim time which set the tone for the day and got us into T1 in 3rd position for the Open Mixed division.  Tara hammered through for Team 2 and set them up for 7th place.

So the gap between our two teams started off with a precarious 7 minutes 6 seconds coming out of the water.    For an Olympic distance swim, that seems like a bloody eternity – especially for Roger as he stood in the relay transition area preparing to chase me down.

Suffice to say that I pretty much felt a “disturbance in the Force” for the entire duration of the race knowing Roger had a big target on my back.   Given the fact Roger kicked my ass all winter long during the Peak Race series, it was a given that he would close the gap we had on the swim – it wasn’t an IF, it was a matter of WHEN and how much.

The bike course is 4 loops with a “wonderful” 2.9km climb up the Squamish highway varying from 2% to 5.6% grade along the way – let’s just say “Tav don’t do grade”.    Otherwise known as the “muffin man”, I can descend like a bastard since I have momentum on my side, but compared to Roger, I am pretty much screwed in terms of watts/per kilo and sustained power output.   I’d probably give him a good run for his money in an arm-wrestle or one handed  push-up competition, but alas these disciplines were not on the agenda today.

Anyway, longer story short – I was no match for the twin colossal entities known as Roger’s quadriceps as he closed the 7:06 gap down to a mere 38 seconds…  I might have saved another 10 seconds on either transition considering getting the damn timing chip off of Shannon’s ankle proved to be some sort of feat of extra-terrestrial intelligence and required Cirque du Soleil like skill.   The reverse was the same transferring the chip from my ankle over to Greg as I tore the thing off, strapped it on Greg’s ankle – then he undid it and put it back on again since I must have cranked the thing on so tight his foot would have turned blue and had gangrene before the 10km was over.

So after the bike leg,  Roger cranked off a scorching 58:07 to my 64:35 and the cushion I had left for Greg over Hoz was only 38 secs leaving T2.    Original calculations, I was hoping to be around 63mins which would have left a *little* more time for Greg before Hoz chased him down.   In the grand scheme of things, if we had a way to do some better run course scouting and knew we were going to be 1st and 2nd coming into the finish, Hoz *might* have waited for Greg for the last 300M leg on the track, but unfortunately it was too damn close between 1,2,3,4 that they couldn’t cross the line hand-in-hand…

So at the end of the day,   Team GymSkinZ #2 prevailed by 1 minute 41 seconds over Team #1.    Team #1 was edged out of 2nd place by a mere 51 seconds so it was definitely a close race all around.  Considering the second place team was only behind by 7 seconds after the swim (again my fault that it wasn’t a bigger gap since I couldn’t unstrap that damn timing chip) and their cyclist actually beat Roger by over 2 minutes (WTF?! – he had a BC Biathlon jersey so he was undoubtedly some sort of human cyborg aerobic engine hybrid to be able to take 2 minutes out of Roger), I don’t feel so bad relinquishing 2nd place overall to them as they definitely deserved it.

All in all, a fun day and be on the lookout for us in future relay races!   Perhaps next time I’ll put a team (multiple teams?) together for each of the mens’, womens’, AND mixed relay divisions and see what kind of podium domination we can come up with – tryouts start now – apply below in the comments section :P

Full Race Results HERE

Position  No.
  DIV   OA  Bib  Team Name
  ________________________________________________

    1    1  373  Team GymSkinZ2.com / Peak Centre2
    2    2  386  Callaghan Winter Sports Club               
    3    3  374  Team GymSkinZ.com / Peak Centre      
    4    4  375  The New Incredibles
    5    6  366  Paddle,Pedal,Pound
    6    8  354  Just for K.I.C.S.
    7   10  384  Team Republic
    8   12  372  Team '91
    9   16  368  ISL Langley - The Sustainables
   10   20  377  Reinerians
   11   21  381  Go Man Go
   12   23  370  Mtn FM
   13   28  380  Two Nurses & A Scientist
   14   29  358  The Runaways
   15   33  376  Babs and Co.


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