by Kristin Hilger

Last weekend was an exciting and fast trip up north for the Subaru Vancouver International Half Ironman. I flew out of San Luis Obispo in the early afternoon on Friday and traveled to Canada for my first time. The area was beautiful with fantastic weather, and I shamelessly enjoyed the early sunrise and late sunset.

We started off at 6:30 Sunday morning at Locarno Beach. After two laps of refreshing ocean swimming, I took off on my Scott bike. The course was four laps consisting of three out-and-back sections. Each lap was 13.8 miles with an elevation gain of 948 ft, according to the map I created on veloroutes.org. At the start of each loop there was a nice climb that was close to a mile long and gained approximately 275 ft in elevation. Below is a graph of one entire loop, including the first 1.4 miles from transition to the u-turn.

I really had fun on this bike course. The multi loop aspect was totally new to me and allowed me to see the girls I was chasing as well as any close behind. In most of my races this year so far I’ve been on the bike alone almost the whole time, so this was a great difference. Below is my basic data from the whole ride.

In addition to the basic data that is provided such as averages, maximums and peak power values, it’s fun to explore some other interpretations of your data. Therefore, for comparison sake, I looked at my percentages of time in different power zones for this race compared to my last half ironman, which was the Bosie 70.3 on June 1st (my power zones were determined by the PowerAgent software and remained the same for both races). The primary difference between the courses was that the total elevation gain for Vancouver was more than 1100 ft greater than in Boise. However, most of my data (average speed, maximum speed, average power) was pretty similar between the two races, taking into consideration the time difference due to this course being slightly long. Below is a graph depicting the appropriate percentage of my time spent in each zone.

There is an obvious difference between the percentages. Time-wise, I spent over 29 minutes at or above threshold at Vancouver and just over 21 minutes in the same zones at Boise. I had more recovery time at Vancouver from the descents, which also probably enabled the bigger pushes above threshold. With this bike course being more challenging than Boise, I was happy that my effort was harder. Even with those bigger efforts, I was able to finish with a similar run time, which tells me that I’m getting stronger.

Overall, I loved this race, and I would highly recommend it. The course was fun and scenic, not to mention challenging. I had my first top ten finish of the year, and I am looking forward to the second half of my season. My mantra remains the same – believe in yourself.