Tara takes Toronto!

July 26, 2012

First Place! It was an unexpected highlight to this inaugural race in downtown Toronto at the Toronto Triathlon Festival. This was supposed to be a training race for me, to prime my race skills pre-Ironman, so my expectations on time and placing were low. I hadn’t even considered placing in my age group, as I usually do in short course triathlon. I had a good swim in the Ontario Place harbour, and then grabbed my bike and headed out for my bike on the Gardner Express Way and DVP. Despite a chain malfunction at the start of the race, it was a great experience to ride those highway’s without cars! The run was 10k along the Martin Goodman Trail, and after such a short bike (40k is a warm up now for Ironman training) my run felt great and I was smiling all the way. When I crossed the finish line I was 7 minutes faster than my coach had projected (2h27 min) and I smashed my old PB by 11 minutes. It wasn’t until I checked the results that I saw that I was in first place in my new age group! I was shocked and ecstatic, having spent all last year chasing that first place podium position, and to do it here in this brand new event was fantastic. That race gave me the confidence I needed going into my first Ironman race on Aug 26th, especially after my disappointing finish in Syracuse 70.3.