Henry's report: "This past weekend I competed in an ITU Pan American Cup race in Kelowna, Canada. It also happened to be the Canadian National Championships, so it promised to be chock-full of stellar triathletes!
Competing in one of the biggest ITU fields of the season (nearly 75 males) did not intimidate me in the slightest. In fact, being my last ITU race of the season, I was excited to toe the line with the likes of Simon Whitfield, Kyle Jones, Steve Sexton, Felipe Van de Wyngard and many more. Another great challenge was that it was rainy, windy and cold - a great equalizer!
Being a weaker swimmer than most of the athletes I come across on the ITU level, Im constantly fighting my way up from the back of the field. However, like in New York, I was determined to kill myself in the swim! Halfway through the first of two laps, I lost the couple sets of feet of which I was drafting, but soon found them again at the start of the second lap. My being able to bridge that gap, as minor as it may have been, was a major confidence booster for me. So much so that I in fact swam right past them heading into shore! I came out of the water in 48th (out of 72), my best swim result yet!
I headed out onto the bike determined to make up ground on the other competitors. Over the course of the 6-loop bike course, which included a tough hill, our group of 5 riders grew to roughly 15. While we were able to work our way slowly but surely through the field ahead of us, our group had trouble working together and really diminishing any part of the lead the main guys had on us. I came into T2, having done most of the work, in 41st , ready to explode out onto the run.
As it is always, my run consisted of nothing but desperation push as hard as I can, and swallow up as many competitors as possible. By the time I crossed the tape, I had passed 14 other racers and finished 27th (7th American) in a time of 2:03:19. My 31:59 run split was good enough for sixth on the list.
Despite not achieving my goal of top-20, based on the size and quality of the field, I was nonetheless pleased with my result. After careful analysis of the results, it really comes down to the swim. In this race in particular, if I had come out of the water in the main pack, which was roughly 2:30-3:00 ahead of me, at the very least I would have finished in the top 10."