The Quick Version
How can I sum up this thrilling event in one paragraph? Let’s just say that this year’s world championships in Géel were an occasion when all the pieces came together at exactly the right moment. Obviously the good wishes and support from friends and family around the world all helped. My 6-day trip to Belgium went smoothly for the most part, with only minor mechanical glitches and a few hours of rain. I had the honour of being named captain of the Canadian women’s team, and thoroughly enjoyed getting to know my fellow Team Canada duathletes over the course of the weekend.
My race took place on the morning of Monday, May 31st. I felt surprisingly relaxed and strong, and took the lead halfway through the 10-km run. My beautiful blue Temple stood me in good stead on the 3 flat loops of the bike course, and I was able to push through to a strong finish on the final 5 km run. I ended up winning the women's age-group race overall, in a time of 2:03:16. I had the fastest run and bike legs of the day: 37:36 for the (slightly long) 10-km run, 1:07:18 for the 40+ km bike, and 16:51 for the final 5-km run (while this final leg was somewhat short, my time ranked me 62nd of the 700+ age group athletes, male and female, who competed today).
For those of you who are curious--and patient!--I have posted a recap of my trip and the race.
The Blow-by-blow
I set out for Belgium on the evening of Thursday, May 27th. Travelling with a giant bike case is never fun, idling in Memorial Day weekend traffic at the Lincoln Tunnel is never fun, and waiting in line at the airport for more than an hour only to be told your flight is oversold and you won’t be assigned a seat until you get to the gate also tests your patience a bit. However, I did have a sweet Brazilian taxi driver who shared lemon cookies with me in exchange for the $80 cab fare, and in the end I did get on my flight, which was full of U.S. Navy veterans heading to Europe for the 60th anniversary of D-Day. I spent the uneventful trip chatting with Frank and Bob, who told me I wore my 28 years well. I’m not sure how to take that comment from an octogenarian!
After landing in Brussels just after 8 a.m. on Friday morning, I met up with my indispensable training partner Zeb Nelessen at the luggage carousel, and we made our way to the Canadian team’s hotel, the Chaletpark Fauwater near the town of Tielen. Well, things weren’t quite that simple – it took a while to figure out where and how to buy tickets, and then once we were on board our train, it turned out I’d purchased tickets to Tienen, not Tielen. Sorry ma’am, you owe us almost 2 Euros, and I’m afraid you’re going to have to return to Brussels to obtain the proper ticket! Luckily the multilingual conductors took pity on me and somehow straightened things out without us having to retrace our steps.
When we disembarked in Tielen, we found ourselves in a picturesque European village with absolutely no signs of life. We had been told to call the hotel and they’d send a driver to pick us up – that however required finding a phone, and the only one in sight required a card, not coins. In the end I knocked on the door of what may have been the tourism office and used the phone on someone’s desk. It’s a curious experience to start your day in French-speaking Brussels and then an hour later to find yourself in the Flemish part of the country, where people would rather speak to tourists in English than in French. Too bad my Dutch isn’t better!
We were happy to arrive at the pastel Fauwater compound, which featured a chilly open-air pool and clay tennis courts. While some team members stayed in the hotel itself, those of us who wished to economize booked chalets. My accommodations turned out to be a plywood cabin in the woods, with 2 small bedrooms and a common area – somehow we managed to squeeze five bikes, five bike cases, five athletes, and all their aromatic cycling gear into this space. Luckily we all got along!
On our first afternoon, Zeb & I assembled our bikes, went grocery shopping, and after several attempts succeeded in finding a bank machine and a phone card (a word to the wise: make sure you’re buying a card for a PAY PHONE rather than a CELL PHONE before handing over 25 Euros). After lunch we decided to see if we could make our way over to the race course to register. We didn’t have a map, but our housemates pointed us the right way down the road... Amazingly enough, considering our spotty track record, we actually did find our way to Géel. The town was probably 10-12 km away from Fauwater, and there were roadside bike paths the entire route. Stopping into a local bike shop filled with exotic European frames at bargain prices, we managed to restrain ourselves, just buying C02 cartridges, spare tubes, and, since Gatorade was nowhere to be found, some high glucose ‘rocket fuel’ for our race day water bottles.
By the time we made it to Géel and registered, it was time to head right back to Fauwater for a pre-race meeting, team photo and dinner. Over our pasta and apple tart, Team Manager Andrew
Armstrong introduced me as the women’s team captain, sweetening this honour with a kilogram of Belgian chocolates. (Oh, the willpower it took not to polish off the entire box before the race!). Forty-five Canadians and assorted family and friends had made the trip to Europe this year, including 16 women, 2 élite men, and 5 under-23 competitors. This 48-hour day over at long last, I had no problem sleeping soundly in my cosy bunk.
At 10 o’clock on Saturday morning, I rode over to Géel again to preview the 13-km bike course. We arrived a few minutes past the hour to find that we’d missed the group... fortunately the police escort was completing 2 loops of the course, so we hopped in on the second go-around. The pace was quick so it was a bit hard to absorb all the details, but I did get a sense of which turns might be tricky, etc. The start/finish and transition areas were set up in the middle of town, and the run and bike courses both looped around the church several times. I rode my bike along the 5-km out-and-back run route– the race organizers weren’t kidding when they claimed that the course was as flat as a pancake. The only elevation change was a narrow tunnel that dipped under the railway tracks midway through the bike course. I biked back to Fauwater again, starting to wonder about how all this mileage fit into my taper.
I spent the afternoon watching cycling on T.V. – the Giro d’Italia on one channel, live!, the Track Cycling World Championships taking place that weekend in Melbourne on another – what an embarrassment of riches. Saturday evening we congregated in downtown Géel again for the opening ceremonies. Once again, Great Britain had an enormous team at the championships—fully half of the competitors (of a total 715 age groupers and 237 élites/U-23/juniors) were either British or Belgian. I had a nice chat with Stephanie McLean, the one competitor from last year whose name I recognized on the start list. She had just returned from Triathlon Worlds in Madeira, Portugal three weeks earlier; that gruelling, mountainous course couldn’t have been more different from the classic flat Belgian road race we were about to do.
Saturday evening we congregated in downtown Géel again for the opening ceremonies. This year’s Parade of Nations was brief, from one side of the church to the other. Due to space limitations, the opening ceremonies took place at an open-air stage, and then the teams dispersed to various restaurants around the square. I realize how nice the set-up was last year, with everyone able to dine with their teams in a large tent. We had been given coupons for a discounted dinner at a local pasta joint. The menu looked good, but the fact that there was a large “help wanted” sign posted didn’t bode well. It took nearly 2 hours for our food to arrive... at least this gave us time to get to know some Canadian teammates!
Sunday morning I went for an easy run in the local nature preserve. Strolling along the many kilometers of hiking trails seems to be a favourite weekend activity for Belgians, but I managed to slip in some strides around them. Although it had been mild and sunny since I arrived on Friday, the weather gradually clouded over – everyone who had been in Switzerland last year had a horrible feeling of déjà vu. By the time the élite men took to the course at 4 p.m., the skies had opened up... According to the forecast, Monday looked mostly dry, but we didn’t feel too sure of that.
For races this year, my new Temple has been outfitted with Cane Creek carbon race wheels, with tubular tires. I’ve been a bit nervous about these speedy, light wheels compared to the more pedestrian clincher tires, because these tires are glued on; that means that it’s quite a production to change them, and if you get a flat during a race, you’re out of luck (no C02 to the rescue). So wouldn’t you know it, on Sunday afternoon first Zeb and then I both got flat tires. Well, now I’ve learned how to use special Czech glue strips to swap in new tubulars... We went for one final spin to make sure our bikes were running well—only to find that my brakes needed tuning, the cleats on my shoes were clogged, and it had started to rain. Definitely time to remember the adage about “bad dress rehearsal, great opening night”.
Despite the weather we headed into Géel to watch the final race of the day; we lucked out with the infrequent buses, timing things just right to watch the Belgian favourite Benny Van Steelant storm to victory. (We were proud to see our dormmate from Affoltern, Jason Spong, finish 36th in the élite race.) After dinner in town, we headed back to the hotel – only this time, we missed our bus by 30 seconds. We had to walk the final 2 km to Fauwater in the rain... – perhaps not a recommended pre-race activity, but we had to get home somehow.
Race Day
When our alarms woke my roommate Christine and I at 6 a.m. on Monday, the sky was dry. We double-checked the weather forecast, and it still claimed that the day would be mostly sunny with a high of 20 degrees Celsius. At that point though it was still decidedly chilly... Over my ‘raspberry stripe’ Powerbar breakfast, we watched a recap of the previous day’s races. (At the last minute I decided to take my spare rear wheel along in the truck– I’m not sure how it could have helped me if I’d flatted on the far side of the course, but I’d rather have it near the transition area than under my bunk bed in the chalet 8 miles away.)
The women were shuttled over to the race site at 7 a.m. We showed off our dollar store maple leaf tattoos, had our legs marked, and set up our bikes in the low-lying wooden bike racks (these were confusing—I nearly misracked my bike coming into T2). The weather seemed to be holding steady, so I finally decided to go with arm warmers and bare legs—covered with a slimy layer of Vaseline-like “Protect Oil.”
I can’t exactly remember all the details of my warm-up... Just before I was about to head over to the start line, I heard my name; there was my cousin Flip and his family. Leon and Twan stood out in the crowd thanks to the Dr. Seuss-like maple-leaf spangled red plush hats my father had bought them last summer. It made them easy to spot out on the course! (My cousin also served as my personal paparazzi—thanks for taking such great shots, Flip, and for keeping me smiling.)
My goal for this year was to improve on my 6th-place finish from 2003. Since I was only a few seconds away from finishing second in my age group in Affoltern (if it hadn’t been for a silly wrong turn!), I knew that this year I was aiming to be up with the leaders. However, I told myself that I didn’t want to lead the first run, since I have a tendency to go out too hard at the beginning of races. I took confidence in the fact that my cycling has improved substantially in the past year, but in the duathlons I’d completed recently I’d been feeling very sore by the time I reached the second run, so today I didn’t want to push myself past my limits on the bike at the expense of the finishing leg.
The wave of under-40 women went off at 9 a.m., with the over-40s following five minutes later. I jumped to the front with a pack of 5 or 6 Brits, calling out directions when the marshalls weren’t ready for us. I felt smooth and comfortable, warm enough with my arm warmers scrunched down around my wrists. I tried to calculate my per-mile pace as we passed the kilometer markers; I’m not sure how fast we were going, but after the first loop, I started to feel that maybe I should pick it up a bit. I was feeling good now, and it seemed like the girls I was with were working harder than I was, but what if they turned out to be lightening fast on the bike? I would be so frustrated if they outsprinted me later! With that in mind, I picked up the pace on my second loop, and that evidently had a decisive effect—when I reached the turn-around at the 7.5 km mark, I was surprised to see all the G.B. girls strung out in a line quite a ways behind me.
I made it into the first transition, noting my 10 km split of 37:36. This was a bit slower than I’d hoped to run, but according to general consensus, the course was probably several hundred meters long. Once on my bike, I had the thrilling experience of following a pace vehicle; on one or two occasions, I think the driver lost track of where I was and slowed down to wait – the first time I slowed my own pace a bit, but towards the end of the race, I sailed right by the motorbike! Since the day was dry, the cobbles in the town square weren’t too terrifying, nor were the few more technical turns. For a good part of the race, I was convinced that my odometer wasn’t working – try as hard as I might, I could barely get my pace up above 24 miles an hour (I realize now that this almost certainly had more to do with the 10 km I’d just run than any miscalibration of my computer.)
The first 13-km (8-mile) loop took far longer than I thought it should, as I sipped at my cloying ‘rocket fuel’ and kept my head down. At one point, the thought crossed my mind that I might actually win, but I chastised myself—“Margaret, if you’re still ahead 2 laps from now, and you haven’t flatted, then you can think about coming first!” One turn at the far end of the course, which had two brick medians in the middle, gave me a few moments pause each time I approached it, but otherwise the course was smooth and straight. I headed back into the centre of town, where the spectators lined the route. The announcer was saying something about how “Margaret Scott of Canada has really set the pace today”... I didn’t really register his comments, I was too miffed at the thought that here, in a Dutch-speaking country, my name had been mispronounced once again! It was only when I spotted Zeb on the sidelines and he told me I had a two minute lead that I realized that I was riding really well. Of course, that actually made me more nervous, so I spent the rest of the race working like a bat out of hell, convinced that the women behind me were slowly but surely closing the gap. Finally, after an hour and 7 minutes on my bike, I circled the church for the final time and headed into T2, tired but elated.
The thing I remember most clearly about the second run was the fact that a chicken dashed across the road in front of me – that doesn’t happen in NYC-area races! I headed out to the turn-around, playing leapfrog with the over-40 men whose race had started at 10:30. My legs felt like they were barely moving, and my shoulders were up around my ears. The final 2 km seemed endless, but as I got closer to the finish line the energy of the crowds carried me along. Just as I turned into the main square, Andrew Armstrong handed me a small Canadian flag. It was an incredible feeling to cross the line with my arms up in the air (the flag is there in the pictures, but it’s hard to see!).
Giddy, I ran over to my cousins and Andrew, still not quite believing what had just happened. I wanted to know where second place was; “you’ll just have to wait 3 or 4 minutes until she gets to the finish!” Michelle Parsons and Celia Brown, both of Great Britain, were 2nd and 3rd to cross the line, in 2:07:04 and 2:07:31. The rest of the day was an enjoyable blur, recounting snippets of the race to anyone who would listen, cheering on teammates, juggling cameras, and finally tucking into a greasy paper cone filled with lekkere Belgian “frites”. The weather continued to play mind games, and the sky opened up just after the final men’s race. After entrusting my backpack of race gear on some kind teammates, I biked back to Fauwater one final time. I stopped at a pay phone but couldn’t get through to Heather or my family – it wasn’t until later that I realized that it would have been a regular Monday morning in Canada, so people were at work. (Luckily, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, my family was able to see my results on line shortly after I crossed the line, and immediately started calling people with the news).
The awards ceremony took place in the Cultural Centre de Werft, where we had registered. Team Canada turned out to support its medallists: Marieke Gardner (bronze, 20-24), Lynda Lemon (gold, 60-64) and Geoffrey Wright (gold 75-80). All the award winners were presented with a typical Belgian treat, two bottles of Duvel and the requisite bell-shaped glass. The podium was so tall that getting up to the top level was a challenge – although I’m certainly not complaining!
Following the ceremony, it was dinner time for these hungry athletes, so 
we headed to a restaurant on the main square that advertised a garden patio and spare ribs. It turned out not to have much else on the menu besides the ribs, but they were delicious. We washed them down with Duvel (after all, they were a major sponsor of the race), cherry-flavoured “Kriek”, and shots of ‘citronen jenever’. After sampling delectable Belgian waffles drowned in chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream, we met up with the Australian team for some dancing, and once the clock struck midnight, celebrated Jim Mylet’s and Chantal Denholm’s birthdays. Good fun was had by all.
Up bright and early on Tuesday, we packed up our bikes and loaded our gear into the hotel vans one last time. After schlepping my luggage on and off four trains—getting slightly scraped and bruised from my bike case in the process—I made it to the lovely town of Maarsbergen, for an all-too-quick visit with my aunt, uncle and cousins. There’s nothing like good Dutch home cooking—meat balls, potatoes and peas from the back garden, topped off with a bowl of “Vla” (special vanilla pudding)—to restore a hungry athlete.
First thing Wednesday morning, Tante Sjaan and I went for a ride “op den fiets” —I borrowed my uncle’s majestic 3-speed and proceeded at a gentle pace around the neighbourhood, past the “Kaasboederij” (cheese and party farm), quiet cow paddocks and green sloughs. It was a damp, grey day, and at points we had to stand up to push against the wind—I’m glad we didn’t have that on race day!
Flip and Yvonne chauffeured me to Schiphol where I spent my final Euros on stroopwaffels and hagelslag (syrup sandwich cookies and chocolate sprinkles), and made it through the rigorous customs screening. Happily, my flight wasn’t full, and I got to stretch out across 3 seats for a comfortable trip back to Newark.
Home Again
The line-up at customs was monstrous and the cab ride back into Manhattan was hair-raising (but at least not as expensive as my outward journey). I’m happy to report that my bike made the trip safely. Despite the excitement of the trip, it felt good to be home... As for my next race, now I will have to scour the calendar for some events that fit into my summer schedule. It’s going to be exciting to move up and race at the élite level, something that I hope to do a few times before Canadian Nationals at the beginning of October. Please check back on my site throughout the summer, as I’ll do my best to keep you up to date. Until the next time, thanks to all my supporters, family and friends, particularly to my parents for their tireless help, and to Heather Hanson for her year-round encouragement.
P.S. The ITU announced the location of Worlds for the next two years: Newcastle, Australia in September 2005, and Corner Brook, Newfoundland in the summer of 2006. It will be awesome to have Worlds in Canada, but I must confess, I’m even more excited about the prospect of a trip Down Under!
