Cayman Islands Triathlon 2014 (Sprint)

As of the time of this writing (March 2017), this was the last proper triathlon I’ve raced. We were scheduled to move to Toronto at the end of 2014, and I had just returned from a visit to Switzerland, mostly to prepare some immigration stuff for Canada (and see family and friends, of course).

Training in the weeks leading up to this was, uh, close to non-existing. I hopped in the water the day before the race to see if I’d drown immediately, and had my bike fixed to make sure that at least my material was doing okay.

The race started with a little challenge for the organizers: one of the large yellow swim buoys got blown away and travelled southward along Seven Mile Beach. It was so fast that the jet ski eventually sent to get it had a hard time actually catching up with it.

After a few minutes of deliberation, the organizers decided to have us swim around a specific boat instead of the buoy. Good enough!

After a blistering 19 minutes swim (at least it was pretty!), I was in about 30th place of the 45 men doing the sprint.

Cycling was better: I averaged 33 km/h on the 20.7 km bike leg, which was good enough for 8th male. Overall, this moved me into 11th place.

The run was a shuffle in the heat with a 4:11 min/km pace, but still good enough for fastest of the day.

There was some confusion as to what the final rankings were. I was ranked fourth overall. There was a guy who had no times recorded for transitions but would have placed 150 seconds ahead of me without them; I’m not actually sure how that was handled. The official results have him at the end of the rankings.

Thanks to a peculiar way of handling age groups where the overall top three were taken out of the age group rankings, I was handed the age group award for men between 30-34, as the fastest guy in that age group was second overall. Alright then! A glass disk for me.

The shirt from this race is a favourite of mine, because who else has a “Cayman Islands Triathlon” shirt? And it’s bright yellow!

Summer 2014: running trails in the Cranbrook Community Forest

I didn’t participate in any races in July and August of 2014, but I did run a lot: we spent that Summer in Cranbrook, a tiny place in BC (Canada). I took full advantage of staying right next to a massive forest with tons of marked trails and went running almost daily.

There were trail maps on signs in the forest, but Google Maps was largely unaware of any of the trails, so apart from running, I enjoyed getting my GPS traces into Google Map with the (soon defunct) Google Map Maker, and behold, they’re now all there!

The oh-so-controversially named “Suck it up, Princess!” trail was even rejected at first – photo proof of me not being profane was enough to get it into the system, though.

I got some good mileage in during these two months, even though my IT band flared up a bit towards the end. In September, we headed back to Grand Cayman to spend the rest of 2014 there, before moving to Toronto at the end of the year.

Try-this-tri 2014 – Sprint distance triathlon

The Cayman Islands Triathlon association runs a few races each year, among them the duathlon I participated in.

The Try-this-tri is a free(!) sprint triathlon with an 800 m pool swim, a bit over 20 km bike portion and about 5 km run.

The swim must have been one of my best pool swims ever at just about 2 minutes per 100 metres, placing me in about mid-field.

On the bike (two out-and-back along the Esterly Tibbetts Highway), it became clear quite soon that I was competing mainly against one fast guy, and he didn’t seem to come any closer. I averaged just a bit above 35 km/h on the bike segment.

I managed to make up some ground during the run, which took place on the same course as the Cinco de Mayo 5k and the Discovery Day 5k, managing a 4:12 min/km pace, but I was still a few minutes behind the winner in the end.

There wasn’t actually a ranking as the event was – the name gives it away – about trying a triathlon, but it was certainly a neat and well-run event.

It also marked my last race for a few months as I went to Canada for two months shortly after.

Flowers One Mile Sea Swim 2014

The Flowers One Mile Sea Swim is a pretty large event for Caymanian scale: more than 1300 swimmers did the one mile race, and a few crazies did the 5k and 10k races the day after. The ability of participants ranged from “Olympian” to “doesn’t drown”.

The race course was along Seven Mile Beach, ending directly in front of our place. I could walk to the start and basically swam home.

The race was a pleasant experience, not as hectic as open water triathlon starts, and just pretty nice with the crystal clear water. I found an okay rhythm quite soon and swam next to somebody of similar ability for most of the time. Until they dropped me.

My time of just a bit over 40 minutes was not exceptionally fast or slow (for me) and put me just into the first half of the field. Among many very leisurely swimmers, to be clear.

But certainly a unique experience I don’t regret, and my only pure swimming race so far. It’ll be a long time until the next, I suspect.

South Sound Stride 5k 2014

Grand Cayman is a tiny place, so even relatively small events get tons of media coverage. The South Sound Stride is a 5k run hosted by a school and attracted about 270 runners in 2014. Unlike most other races, it started in the afternoon, making for a very hot run.

Despite being small, there was a proper YouTube trailer for it, and the organizers were even invited to a TV show to promote the race. That’s Cayman for you!

The course was a simple out and back:

I managed fourth overall in just below 19 minutes, and because the race had age groups, I actually snagged a trophy for third place in my age group. First ever podium in a running race!

That time is still my 5k PB, even though I’ve run 10ks at a faster pace (like this one) – but that was in 2013, and I’ve not managed to get back to that level of fitness quite yet.

Anyway, the South Sound Stride was a neat little race!

Thanks to ideal setup with respect to our apartment (one minute away), this race is one of the best documented of my career. After watching this again, I remembered two more things:

  • The guy in blue dropped me, see start of second lap. Pretty sure I didn’t catch him again.
  • There was a lot of traffic in Camana Bay! See bus at 1:23…

Cinco de Mayo 5k 2014

Yes, yes, it’s been forever… but I still haven’t given up on chronicling all my races! Luckily, I took it a bit easier recently, so those 20 or so reports will be written in no time. Let’s go, then!

After the Cayman Island duathlon marking my return to racing, the “Cinco de Mayo” 5k was the perfect first pure running race. The course was two laps through Camana Bay and the Cayman International School:

course

I wasn’t too sure about the turnaround point at the North end of the course, so I asked and double and triple checked. Still not quite clear. Anyway, off we went:

start

This is about half a kilometre into the race. As usual, a lot of people went off way too fast and had to pay for it later.

1stpass1

Running through Camana Bay:

1stpass2

1stpass3

The view of the support crew with their well deserved liquid snack while waiting for the runners to return from the first turnaround:

wine

There was a bit of confusion at the turnaround: the guy who was supposed to mark the exact spot stood in the wrong place, and the leader didn’t see the traffic cone, so he (and everybody else) turned around about 50 metres early. That much for asking about it ahead of time!

Returning, about 800 metres in:

return2

return1

I don’t remember if the guy dropped me or the other way around.

return3

Here we come back past the start for the first time, after about one kilometre:

1stloop2ndhalf

The loops around the school were hard: long straights and not much going on. Each kilometre was slower than the previous one, except for the very last one, where I managed to reel in one guy.

Coming back past the start, after the first lap:

1stlapdone

And finishing:

finish1

finish2

There was no official timekeeping, but a ranking. Because it was Cinco de Mayo, 5th place (me!) got an award as well:

awards

And this handy t-shirt:

shirt

With the support/film/photo crew:

withkara

And the loot: five bottles of mayo.

mayo

I think we gave most of those to friends. Who needs this much mayo?!

As for the race, I was quite happy! I averaged a bit below four minutes per kilometre (see Strava). The course was short, so no 5k PB for me – but at least an okay performance.

Cayman Islands Duathlon 2014 (Sprint)

After a considerable time away from running due to IT band issues after Berlin Marathon, I started my year in the Cayman Islands with physiotherapeutical exercises and a very slow buildup back to normal mileage. At first, I was allowed to run for just five minutes per day, and it took three months to get back to relatively normal!

volume

During that time, the closest I came to racing was watching a cruise ship 5k as my first taste of the local racing scene.

By the time I was ready to get back to races, the local competition calendar told me that it was duathlon time! I’d never done one before, but having just recently acquired my TT bike, it was a good fit.

With close to zero intense mileage from my long buildup, I was prepared to be slow and suffer for it. The duathlon is an event of national importance in the Cayman Islands (as is every other event – there just aren’t many events!), so it featured prominently in the newspaper.

newspaper1

If one looks very closely, I can be identified right at the start, behind Mr. Broad Shoulders:

newspaper2

Even though it was 8:00 in the morning, it was already hot and humid. Some people took off like crazy, but many of them were part of relay teams and could look forward to a break after the first run.

The course consisted of two out and backs with only slight confusion as to where people cross each other:

run1

Despite a semi-conservative pace, my legs were definitely not fresh for the bike, but at least the flying mount didn’t end in the ditch. The bike course took us along the East-West Arterial Road, which has a convenient wide shoulder, and there wasn’t much traffic to begin with. We had to do two out-and-backs, one to the east and one to the west:

bike

I felt okay on the bike, but didn’t make up much ground on anybody. On the way back from Savannah, I passed one guy with whom I’d end up playing back-and-forth for almost the rest of the bike leg, but never properly got away from.

The second run was almost the same as the first:

run2

Just after I started my run, the overall winner was about to finish. The heat was relentless by now and I felt like going at a snail’s pace. I got passed by DJ from the locally famous “Flashy Nation Sports Club” shortly before the end, and there was no way for me to try and hang on, I was just happy to finish.

I think I got 8th overall, but the results database is not showing pre 2015 events at the moment, so I’ll update this once it does. As a first taste of Cayman racing (and being able to participate), this was an awesome event, and the Cayman Islands Triathlon Association crew around Trevor did a great job. I even won a pizza voucher at the raffle after the race, a welcome element of most Cayman races! I think it went unused, though.

shirt

Time to start proper training, it was!

Update: found the race results. Yes, 8th overall. The 2014 race page is now being built up!