Welland Sprint Duathlon

By Jessy Deroneth

OMG! Did I ever said how much I LOVE Welland! I LOVE #MSCWelland! The Canal is quiet and peaceful, and it looks like melted crystals… I have grown very fond of my accommodation there. All this romance to say that #MSCWelland is probably my favourite race. But being the first race of the season for me, it is also the one I am the most nervous for. However, I get to reconnect with my love for the sport and chat with people from previous year and considering that I HATE the winter and spend most of it on my STAC Halcyon in my basement, this is my first social event of 2019 also.

After years of racing duathlon, this is also my first year as an ambassador for MultiSport Canada which also allows for me to give back to my triathlon community. See, the triathlon sport has been tremendously generous to me. True enough that I have been somewhat successful at this sport (okay, always room for improvement, right?) including going to the Worlds in 2018 which was an amazing experience in itself and I have learned a lot about myself -mainly, not take the wrong route and get DQ’d. And yes, I can laugh about it now. But part of me doing not too bad for myself is based on the wonderful support I’ve got from the people I met at MSC races, the CBY tri club. I guess participating in races that focus on great experiences makes a difference,and attracts positive and supportive people.

In the last 3 seasons, I have been plagued with hamstring tendinopathy and VERY slowly recovering from it. But being now at the verge of recovery, I am impatient for this injury to go away… for good. After discussing my frustration and training limitation with coach Ryan Power from BPT I have decided that instead of competing with specific results in mind, I would compete to have fun this year which changed my focus for this first race. After all, I had strong training this winter on my STAC trainer and running on the track, so his suggestion was to trust my training.

The running course for the sprint du is 2.5km on the path along the canal which is quite a beautiful and relaxing run other than my brain repeatedly asking WHY, Oh WHY are you doing this again!!!! Those thoughts quickly stopped at the 1k mark.

I am sure everyone was intimidated about the 5 loops of 4kms. How would we count? How would we remember? Would a few of us get a DQ from not doing as many loops? Fret not, my dear friends. Of course, MSC had a mat a few meters from the dismounting line counting the amount of loops we each did. What a reassurance! So I knew that someone would yell at me when I was done to enter transition just in case I was off.

I am so grateful for closed traffic race despite my cornering lowering down my average. But I know what to keep working on.

So there you have it: not my fastest race but my strongest and my most confident on the bike. The STAC halcyon had got me onto a solid base of understanding my speed and powder, how my legs feel and with the help of weekly tailored programming with Ryan Powder at BPT along as being within a traffic safe course, I have never raced that confidently.

See you at Lakeside! (and Gravenhurst… and Bracebridge… and Wasaga).