"I gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today..."

I went to Canada. It wasn't as different as I had expected. They drive on the proper side of the road, speak a mildly understandable dialect of English, and real estate agents still smatter their pictures everywhere, but it also just wasn't right. It was too similar to the United States to be exotically interesting, yet different enough to just be annoying. But in the spirit of fully embracing the "culture" of Canada, I made a rule that while in Canada we were only allowed to listen to Canadian artists (thanks Matt for the suggestion). When I set about ensuring we had music to listen to in Canada, I bought a Bryan Adam's record with hits like "I Want to Be Your Underwear" and "The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You".


Also in the music quiver: Alanis Morisette, Celine Dion and Tanya Twat (Shania Twain). As it turns out this was unnecessary since even Canadians don't like Canadian music, thus prompting their queen or emperor or whatever they have to make a law which necessitates that fully 1/3 of the music played on the radio be that of Canadian artists. Capitalism fail.


In any case, on to the races. On this trip I was accompanied by Elliot (who fell asleep), and special guest Christopher Cordingley of www.chriscordingley.com. The trip was great! We had a sweet camping spot right next to the race, thanks to Elliot, and there was even a hot tub. My usual routine is to swim a fair amount the day before races. This didn't go so well. The water was 15.9 degrees. Apparently they use different degrees there, too. I got a brain freeze and really couldn't put my head in the water. It felt like chugging a milk shake, just without the good flavor. I quickly realized there wasn't much to do about it this close to the race except double cap it and hope for the best. The day started cool and overcast when Elliot, triathlete tracker extraordinaire, came up to me and said "Tom Evens is here," and I said "Who is Tom Evans?" Elliot then said, "He's never passed anyone in a race." This is not an uncommon occurrence for swimmers, I have probably only passed 2 or 3 people in my entire racing career, but then the other shoe dropped "and he's won 3 Ironmans." Hmm, this would be an interesting day. Tom Evans was out of the water a full minute ahead of me, so I just put my head down and went to work. There was a ghastly hill about a mile into the ride and the hills didn't let up. The ride was actually very scenic, through the wine country of Canada. Then it began to rain...in Canada's only desert. I slowly lost places on the bike, but then I went from 5th to 9th in 30 seconds as an unapologetic paceline flew by me. Lame. There were no officials at all watching the lead of the Olympic distance race. I was really pretty happy with my run, I dug deep and tried to keep my form together and managed to only get passed by one person. I finished 10th overall and went 2:10. All in all I had hoped to place higher and to have gone faster, but given the competition there and the course I was really happy to be within 6% of the winner's time, who, as it turns out, was not Tom Evans. Elliot, managed an extremely solid 2nd place finish in the Sprint distance race, fully 4 years since his last race, and Chris Cordingley, of www.chriscordingley.com, placed 3rd in his age group, but was unfortunately outsprinted by a girl; a girl who was very angry because I yelled "Chris, you're being outsprinted by a girl." She then gave many angry looks to me and Chris.

As an uninteresting side note, on the way to Canada we retraced a day of riding from the Habitat Bicycle Challenge, Spokane to Grand Coulee. It was much faster and more comfortable in a car, but made me reminisce about the good times on that trip and the worst laser light show in the history of the United State (sorry J).