Motor Tabs sponsored athlete Chris Foster at it again, adding another victory to his already long list of accomplishments. We are proud to provide him with our one of a kind portable sports drink! Chris Foster is definitely an expert in the realm of endurance racing and understands the importance of electrolytes and keeping hydrated! Here is what he has to say from his latest adventure.
"This last weekend, I pointed my bike north and headed to Canada for a medium-sized race called the Tecumseh Triathlon (formerly Windsor Triathlon). Tecumseh is a small town in Ontario, Canada just a few miles from Detroit, MI, so it's not exactly in the heart of the Yukon, but the people were friendly enough to make it quite...Canadian. The race featured a solid amount of pro athletes and a $5,000 prize purse, and with money only going to the first three spots, the battle for the front was going to be close and fast.
The swim was in Lake Huron, just before the Detroit River, so the water was very shallow for the first and last 150+ meters. Because it was so shallow, when the gun went off, instead of taking off swimming like everyone else, I dolphined (jumping forward, diving, pushing off the bottom, repeat...) the first 150m to try to conserve energy. I didn't necessarily gain any ground, I stayed mostly even with the leaders, but I was less tired for the effort. The lead swimmers were very good (a couple of them are in the front pack of ITU races) and pulled away a little bit, until the water became shallow again with like 200m to go, and I started reeling them back in by dolphining again! Soon the others saw what I was doing and started following suit, but I had started getting close to the leaders and exited only 10sec. down off the lead pack of three!
After a quick transition onto the bike, I settled in a little bit behind the two leaders (one guy dropped almost immediately) and had a strong ride despite having very strong head and crosswinds most of the way. I pushed pretty hard to stay with the two in front of me and ended up averaging 360 watts for the 30k pancake-flat bike course (averaging almost 25mph). I didn't have a great transition into T2--the dismount line must have been drawn in pencil on the road, as no one saw it until the last minute.
Heading out onto the run, the two guys in front had about 25 sec. on me and the temperatures were rising into the upper 80s as the sun came out and the wind died down. Fortunately, I found my legs pretty quickly on the run (good thing as it was a short 3.5 mile run!), and I was able to catch both of the guys in front of me in the first kilometer! After passing them, I more or less maintained a moderate pace (especially in the tough heat) and cruised it in for the win!!
Even with shutting it down in the last half of the run, I was still able to win by almost a minute over the next guy, and from what I could tell had one of the fastest times (greatest margin to the winning female athlete who has won six years in a row) at this event in many years.
I was very happy with each of my legs--swimming with some very fast front pack guys who have been *minutes* in front of me at races in past years; having a solid bike, despite hurting due to all of the hard workouts I had done in the days leading up to this race; and being able to have a fast run despite "shutting it down" a little bit in the heat of the afternoon.
I'm proud of this race because it was a good showing despite having a very hard training week leading up to the race, and I feel like I competed well against some strong Canadian competition!
I have also included a few pictures from the race to be used for whatever you want. Please don't be frightened by the mop of hair covering my head.
Thank you as always for your support and encouragement in all of my racing and travels--each race, no matter how big or small is just a building block to get to the top in the years to come!"
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