Cobourg race report by Ken Scott

About the only thing that went the right way for me at this event was my decision to switch from Tri to Du the week before, a decision that was prompted by the admission that my swimming was not where it should be for a one-loop swim in Lake Ontario. Imagine how wise I felt when it was announced that the water temperature was a balmy 13C, followed by a ruling that wetsuits were mandatory. That was followed by recommendations to use multiple swim caps. In 10 years of Triathloning, I had never before heard of wetsuits being mandatory.

I had some trouble finding the race site on Friday, as my Garmin didn’t seem to know about Victoria Park, It wanted to send me to a trailer park some distance away. When I finally found the park, my first impression was that race day parking was going to be a challenge, as the surrounding streets all were equipped with parking meters, operating 7 days a week and limited to 2 hours. This was solved when one of the volunteers doing set-up advised that there was free street parking on near-by residential streets “if you get there early”. Which I did.

Saturday morning was bedevilled with a low fog, which made the water invisible from shore. It was obvious that the swim could not proceed in the conditions. The organizers decided to wait out the fog, and eventually succeeded after a number of postponements and reconfiguring the swim course to bring it close to shore. The race finally started around 9, almost an hour late. By 10, the fog was rolling back to shore, so there was only just enough time for the swim.

My race effectively ended before it started. During the long wait, I took a swig from one of my water bottles and got a nasty surprise. I had filled the bottle with my usual mix of Carbo Pro and a NUUNs tablet, a mixture I have used successfully for 5 years. That swig tasted like battery acid, my throat instantly becoming raw. Worse, my stomach immediately rebelled, but wouldn’t chuck the offending mixture. I once made the error of running shortly after eating a slice of pizza. This feeling was similar, but worse. I started, but by half way though the first of the 2 5k loops that started the Du, I knew that it would be useless to continue. Pity, as the run course gently rolls through residential neighborhoods.

I previously noted some organizational deficiencies. I did not mention that aid stations set up at 1k and 4k on the run loop were not manned for the 10k run at the start of the Du, nor that when I struggled off the course after 46 minutes (for 5k!), well after the Du leaders were on their bikes and swimmers were streaming out of the water, that there was nobody, repeat nobody, at the first aid tent. The organizers were fixated on counting bikes left in transition as a means of determining if they needed to drag the water for bodies. There was nobody checking on who took a bike out of transition.

I would think twice before attempting this event again.