Coteau-du-loc ITU

This past weekend Lance and I headed up to Montreal for an ITU continental cup to try and get some more points on the chase for a world cup start. We decided to try something new and took the red eye overnight on Thursday night and got into Montreal on Friday morning early. The trip wasn't bad, slept most of it, except the security people in Calgary are way too strict. Apparently, they think we Americans take our security too lax because while going through security there they took my pedal wrench and both of Lance's multi-tools, which had all made it through DIA 4 hrs prior. But once we got to Montreal, we were picked up by our homestay, the Lachapelle family, and everything was smooth sailing from there. Got to there place and took a quick nap in our camper, which turned out ot be a great homestay. It was just a pop up in the back of there house, but with full access to the house it was as good as we could have asked for.

Friday we did some recon on the course, which was fairly contained since it was a 6 lap bike, and 4 lap run and took a little dip in the canal. They had a really nice pontoon set up which I was psyched about for the swim start. They we headed back to the house and had a nice lasagna dinner with the family and spent some time playing around with the families three boys. Early to bed and got to sleep in since our race wasn't until 3:30 on Saturday.

Saturday was a lazy morning and took our time getting ready and got to the race site about 1:45. Got checked in and set up and then had a nice long warm up before putting on the wetsuit and hitting the water for some last minute warm up. The water was 19 degrees celcius so it was just barely a wetsuit race, which was too bad, but the race organizers did a great job with the whole race. I had a good swim start, and jumped out to an early lead. When we came back to the dock after the first loop I had a bit of a gap but with the flat bike course and no one to break with I settled in for the second loop and just wanted to make sure I came out first. Once we hit the bikes we got rolling but never really got organized and no one wanted to work consistently. Eventually the chase group caught us and about 20 of us rode together into T2. I think I went out a bit hard on the run trying to stay with everyone instead of settling in, but after a couple laps started to feel better and was able to finish strong and make sure I scored some points. Ended up 15th, which isn't great, but it scores some much needed points and after racing 6 days earlier, 3 time zones away it was a solid effort.

Thanks again to the Lachapelle family for their generous hospitality, and congrats to their three boys, Marc-Andre, Jean-Francis, and Laurent who went 1st, 2nd, and 4th respectively in their age groups. Keep up the good work guys!