ITU Cross Triathlon World Championship Race Report

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On the day of my son Nico’s second birthday I was miles away getting ready for a 1:30pm race start at the ITU World Cross Champs at beautiful Oak Mountain State Park in Pelham, Alabama. But it was time to focus because celebrating and eating the Thomas the Train cake would just have to be postponed one day! This race was also the Xterra Southeast Championship, one of the US Pro points series races, so a two in one race, with a fun change up in the time and format (multiple laps and elite men and women separate starts, the latter would be great to have every race!)

The heat and humidity weren’t bad at all, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Without the usual early morning start, it was a very relaxing race morning. It was exciting to have our very own race as the elite men started after the women at 4:00pm. It was also great having our Luna team mechanic, Chris at the race to get our Orbea 29er bikes working perfectly and to have a relaxing shady place under the Luna tent to chill out in beforehand.

LUNA teammates pre-swim, L-R: Shonny, myself and Suzie

After some formal introductions, we dove into my favorite kind of open water swim, a calm lake at 76 degrees, just right! For less than 30 women it was a really rough start but we finally settled in and I worked hard to get on some feet, and stayed on them until just near the end of the second lap. I exited the water in 13th position.

Elite women mingling before the start

The bike course was three 10km loops and I knew it wasn’t a great course for me, almost entirely flat and constant cornering. My fitness has come a long way since Vegas but my power on the bike isn’t quite there yet. My back was sore by the end of the first lap from the constant accelerating out of corners but it was still a super fun course to ride, and mainly in the shade which was nice!

I went out onto the run in 11th position and had some serious catching to do!! As I left transition I heard Conrad’s voice over the loud speaker saying I would probably run through the field – hmmm, guess I better do that then, ha!! I was hot and I was cramping a bit at the end of the bike but tried to find a good rhythm right away. I caught Emma in the first lap, and halfway through the second lap came upon Renata, Shae, Brandi, and Michelle from Mexico. I got by them and kept up the pace knowing the finish wasn’t much more than a kilometer away. I came across the line in 6th place with the second fastest run behind Lesley’s, the race winner. Not the overall result I’d wanted but I’m still confident in my fitness and looking forward to improving over the next few months of racing as summer finally comes to Calgary!

Here are the results for the top 10 women:

1. Lesley Paterson GBR GB 02:24:39
2. Melanie McQuaid CAN CA 02:27:15
3. Carla van Huysteen RSA ZA 02:28:34
4. Suzanne Snyder USA US 02:29:13
5. Shonny Vanlandingham USA US 02:29:15
6. Danelle Kabush CAN CA 02:33:03
7. Michelle Flipo MEX MX 02:33:14
8. Shae Vaughan USA US 02:33:27
9. Brandi Heisterman CAN CA 02:33:50
10. Renata Bucher SUI CH 02:34:56

Over the weekend I was back for the third time at a wonderful homestay, at Jerry and Kathy’s house. They opened their large home to seven of us for the weekend including my Coach Cal (who unfortunately didn’t make it far into the bike portion of his race before flying into a tree and injuring his shoulder bad enough that he had to stop, big bummer!), and Brandi Heisterman, another Canadian racing in the Elite race. Brandi and I first met running track against each other at 12 years old. She is also a mom of two now so it was great fun catching up on each other and all the people we’ve known in common over the four days we were there!

Do your acting skills help or hinder your athletic performance?

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As an athlete, when you enter a competition, do you ever think of yourself as giving a performance? In a great little classic book called, The New Toughness Training for Sports, the author, James Loehr, makes the connection between great acting and “performing on demand”, a common catch phrase in sports these days.

When the best actors and actresses show up for work to do a scene, if they feel off, tired, have a headache, or are just under the weather, they still have to bring all their physical presence and emotions to the part they need to play! Great performers can act their way to the precise emotions they need to portray. There is plenty of research showing that by simply moving the muscles of your face in the direction of the desired emotion, genuine emotional responses can be elicited.

I’ve personally experienced this when mountain biking. As a beginner, I would often tense up when riding something that scared me. While I didn’t feel like it, if I forced myself to keep smiling while riding, my body would soon follow by beginning to feel genuinely more relaxed and happy and in turn ride more smoothly and more confidently! In other words, the physiological changes from acted-out or faked emotion are the same that occur in spontaneous, genuine emotion!

As an athlete, you may have many descriptions for how you are need to feel to perform your best such as confident, energetic, relaxed, excited, positive and challenged. If you are a bad actor on the athletic stage you probably just act out whatever emotions you happen to be feeling at the moment even if they are detrimental to your performance such as anger, frustration, disappointment, helplessness or high nervousness. On the other hand, if you have worked hard at mastering your “performer skills”, you can act out the positive emotions you need bring to the performance regardless of circumstances. And this takes practice, as James Loehr writes, “Emotions respond much as muscles do. The ones you stimulate the most become the strongest and most accessible.”

Just remember if you feel like doing this…

Act like this, and you will feel AND perform better…

Finally an acting quote, that highlights peak performance, regardless of the arena:

The difference between nailing a scene and turning in a mediocre performance is all about “being present in the moment” while “really being outside of yourself.”   – Judith Light, Actor and Activist

Loving the Paradoxes of the Athletic Life!

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Listen to your body but don’t listen to your body. This is the paradox every one of us who strives to discover our potential as an athlete must live.

In the last month, despite the fact that I actually enjoy swimming the majority of the time, I had to spend a lot less time in the pool due to a sore shoulder, it was the kind of pain that was saying something is wrong here versus just “feeling it” due to the usual muscle aches or soreness from training fatigue. After making time for some physical therapy I have been back on track, fingers crossed for a little while longer! Being sidelined, even temporarily, from my normal training routine got me thinking about the fact that no matter what your sport or your goals, if you are trying to go faster, stronger, higher, or longer than your previous best, consider that you have to be smart enough to deal with the many parts of the athletic life that are paradoxical….

1. The Physical Paradox: You need to learn and know the difference between when to push through your training and when to back off if you may be edging dangerously close to injury or illness. You need to be open to pushing your limits so you’ll improve, but also how to pace your overall progression over the long-term to avoid over training or injury. There are times when you need every ounce of focus and mental detemination to overpower your body’s screams to slow down and stop like during full out interval training or a race, and other times when you can just let your body decide on and set the pace such as recovery workout or a long, easy distance training!

2. The Recovery Paradox: You need to know how to eat well enough so your muscles can recover and rebuild after training. If you are a cookie monster like me it takes the ongoing goal to practice awareness of the difference between my muscles’ need for increased calories and my body’s craving for unnecessary fat, sugar, and salt – everything in moderation is my motto! It is also being able to read your body well enough to know it is okay to push it close to its limits for training volume, but also being disciplined enough to throw an occasional training day out in order to avoid injury or sickness and recover properly!

3. The Mental Paradox: You need to know the difference between temporary (normal!) slumps in motivation and feelings of burnout. Sometimes you just need to kick yourself out the door and get going and other times you need to be aware that you need a serious break with activities that are restorative mentally and physically,things you find relaxing and fun! And ultimately perhaps the toughest point for some athletes – being aware enough to recognize when the competitive fire has burnt out and it is time to move on to something else in life and/or change direction in some way!

4. And of course I can add The Parenting Paradox: Listen to your kids but don’t listen to your kids: give them unconditional love, listen to their needs etc but don’t give into every demand and want for candy, toys, or every outburst for attention!

Of course, navigating all of the above apparent contradictions takes plenty of trial and error, patience, and self-awareness but the better you become at perfecting the balance, the more fun you’ll have discovering your potential while staying healthy!!

Thinking of getting active again? Thoughts on getting back in shape after having kids

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Reasons not to start exercising again:

I’m not getting enough sleep yet, my baby might need to nurse while I’m gone, I might miss a critical developmental “moment” in my child(rens) life, I should really take the little extra time I have to clean the house, do laundry, cook etc instead, it will be depressing to see how much fitness I’ve lost as compared to pre-kids, what if I still don’t lose the baby weight, I’ll feel guilty taking more time to myself on top of work etc, I might not fit in my workout clothes yet, I’m a mom now and my priorities have changed, I want to be available to my kids and family 24-7, I can’t afford a babysitter, I can’t afford a gym pass, I don’t have time, I’ll wait until the weather improves, I’ll wait until the kid(s) are just a little bit older, what if my body has not fully recovered from childbirth, it might hurt my milk-filled boobs, I feel guilty leaving the kids with anyone else but me, what if I can’t keep up to my previous training partners, kids take every last ounce of my energy, when it comes to exercise its all or nothing for me, baby steps are for babies, I’d rather take a nap

Reasons to get out the door and exercise again:

I just want to get moving! ! Healthy mom = happy mom = happy family!

My Xterra West Championship Race Story

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With the kids once again well taken care of at home by Papa and Grand-mama, I flew down to join a house full of Calgarian fun at Lake Las Vegas on Thursday! Lake Las Vegas weather has not been good to me on race day – there for my third race in 12 months, all three times the temperature has dipped well below normal to brrrrr racing temps!

Before the race I got in a few laps of the bike course and a short run. With the water temperature at 59 degrees and the air being cold and windy, I wimped out of a pre-race wetsuit swim and instead got in a few laps of our rental house pool, heck I could do 4-5 strokes across and flip turn at each end!

On race morning we woke up to rain and 7 degrees Celsius outside! I was sure the swim would be cancelled, especially once I heard the water temp had dropped to 57 degrees with all the heavy rain overnight! I felt like this kind of weather might send me into early retirement – why am I doing this again?! Either way, I decided I would ride down to transition in my wetsuit just to keep warm and noticed the 8:30 start half-distance sprint race was underway and racers were indeed in the water!! When I racked my bike with 25 minutes to start time, I figured I’d better start getting out of swim denial and get my head in the race and the water! Thanks to my new Luna teammate’s request, our team mechanic, Zak met me at the water’s edge with a big pail of hot water which we poured down my wetsuit front and back….ahhhhh!

Lingering on the dock until the last possible second to get in the frigid water!

With a few minutes to go I plunged off the dock and put my face in the ice bath as I paddled over to the deep water start. The Pro men and women started together in the first wave. I successfully got on some feet and was able to draft for the first two-thirds of the race. With my lips feeling blue, I tried to imagine the feet bubbles in front of me as hot tub jets relaxing my muscles….it helped for a while but the cold eventually caught up to me and the last five minutes were a bit of struggle as I lost the draft and the first group of yellow caps from the next wave were plowing through me. But finally I was on the dock and running on my numb feet to transition.

Exiting the swim feeling like a popsicle!

With no feeling in my fingers I really struggled to get my wetsuit undone, but was finally underway on the bike with wet tights I had worn under my wetsuit and an added jacket in transition - a great call as I was never cold on the bike!! I was near the back of the Pro pack and at least 2 minutes down from the leaders after the swim so I had a lot of work to do….

Heading out onto the bike course on my Orbea 29er

I thought I was feeling pretty decent heading out onto the two-lap red dirt moonscape course, but as usual in the early season, I struggled a bit to find the extra gear and power necessary for top speed on this fast rolling course, with a few sustained and steep climbs, and crazy fast open descending. With only a temporary stop of the bike to yank out some major chainsuck I made my way up to 6th place by the start of the run.

Nice start to the run course!!

I was feeling good from the start of the run and was determined to catch some people! After chasing down some men, I eventually caught up to my new Luna teammate, Suzie Snyder (who had a solid day finishing 6th). Then I caught Melanie McQuaid in the last mile to finish 4th. Meanwhile, up ahead the reigning Xterra World Champion, Lesley Paterson ran down Renata Bucher with about 200m to go, and they had an incredible sprint finish which you can watch here

Thanks to our Luna team mechanic, Zak, who drove out from California to support Suzie, Shonny (who opted to just ride the relay as this race due to a sore knee), and I for this race. He takes most of these photo credits! And thanks to him, my bike maintenance for this race was a dream, and I was able to fit in a shower, some food, make it to the podium, and get my bike packed all in time to get to the airport after the race and catch my flight home to Calgary!

Podium (L-R): me (4th), Lesley Paterson (2nd), Renata Bucher (1st), Emma Garrard (3rd), Melanie McQuaid (5th)

Team Luna Chix Week!

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Every year at the end of March, my racing team, the LUNA Chix, gets together for a week, and between eating, sleeping, and random blocks of training, this is roughly what we do for the week:

1. Meet any new teammates and catch up with the ones we don’t see so often…

New team members Teal Stetson-Lee (L) and Suzie Snyder (R) with Georgia Gould

2. Get new gear for the year and break it in (Christmas is actually in March, not December, if you’re on this team!), thanks to our team mechanics Chris and Zak for getting our bikes ready to roll, and team manager Waldek for all the rest!

3. Admire the new decals and team vans…

4. Take some photos (usually in freezing locations) for the media guide etc…

5. Go visit Clif Bar in Berkeley, CA, the coolest company ever to work for….

6. Finish the week with the Luna Chix summit – What is this?? Watch this 2min plus long video for the best explanation…

Kicking off the LUNA summit on stage at Clif Bar, team members L to R: Shonny Vanlandingham, Katerina Nash, Jane Kibii, Catharine Pendrel, Terra Castro, Suzie Snyder, Teal Stetson-Lee, Georgia Gould and Moi

Watching our big boss rock it out on the trumpet

Limited by your number??

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When I first got serious as a competitive runner back in junior high, I remember saying to myself I would compete until the age of 30. I’m not sure why I chose that age, maybe because I’d read somewhere that runners peak around that age, or maybe I figured that was the age to stop, and focus on other things like a family. Either way, competing as a runner on the track only lasted until I was 24 years old due to an injury. With no regrets I switched to mountain bike racing, and then Xterra triathlon racing at age 29.

In my late twenties I thought I would race seriously until I felt it was time to try to start a family….of course slowing down after a baby didn’t happen thanks to the support of the LUNA Pro team….and then I thought maybe I’d want to call it quits after two children….but here I still am training and about to start another competitive season! It helps to be inspired this week at the LUNA team camp surrounded by my amazing teammates, most of us all in our thirties now, still pursuing our athletic goals, among other things!

I also read an interview with Clara Hughes, a multiple summer and winter Olympic medallist, this past week. She is about to compete in cycling in her fourth Olympic Games this summer in London just before she turns 40. In that interview she talks about being in her prime physiologically as an athlete, and how she is still improving and stronger than ever. One of her goals is to show women and girls what is possible and to “bust the ridiculous imposed limitations”.

I know now I will always have training and competitive goals as long as I am healthy enough regardless of my age because I love physical exertion, pushing my previous limits in some way, and working towards new challenges. One day when I stop competing at the professional level my training and racing goals will move down my priority list but that day will come when I stop having fun, lose my competitive fire, or my body tells me it is time to slow down. And that’s the important part – to listen to yourself, be true to yourself, and follow your dreams, no matter what your age, and no matter how many children you have - physical limitations, imposed by yourself or the status quo of society will only get in your way if you let them!