Alicia Kay at the Worlds

September 10, 2005

 

Alicia travelled to Gamagori Japan and competed in the Worlds "Under 23 Olympic Distance Triathlon on September 10, 2005. She came 19th overall out of a very deep field. You can check her results Here .

Congratulations Alicia. We are very proud of your excellent accomplishment. Now the Olympics!

 

 

Read Alicia's account of her experience:

World Triathlon Championships

Gamagori, Japan

September 10, 2005

Firstly I have to say that I wouldn’t even have been fortunate enough to go to Japan if it wasn’t for the Alicia “5” Kaye that FitFriends put on for me. Thanks again for everyone’s hard work!

Here is a great picture from the event:

The long trip to Japan began from Toronto on September 3rd ; my first flight took me to Vancouver. I met up there with quite a few other members of the National Team. The flight from Vancouver to Nagoya was 11 hours. The entire team was walking around trying to keep our legs loose, eating, drinking, and constantly going to the bathroom. When we finally landed in Nagoya we all took a bus to Gamagori; although it is not especially far away it took about an hour and a half with the traffic and narrow roads.

As soon as we got there, we went right across the street to “Apita” which was a rather large mall that was similar to a WalMart. This was an awesome location as we could buy all our meals here. After some good old sushi we went straight to bed. I slept fairly well considering it was Japanese style bedding. I thankfully brought a thermarest, and a huge thanks to my good friend Jamie for lending it to me for the trip. We were ALL up bright and early at 5am. None of us could sleep any longer. It was going to take some time to adjust to the time difference.

We all spent the week together training and getting to know one another better. As a team, we all became very close. The juniors, U23’s and senior athletes all hit it off. We had a great time hanging out together. I had an absolute blast with my roommate/ teammate Jen Coombs, we didn’t really know each other well until this trip and my experience in Japan wouldn’t have been the same without her. We basically spent the week relaxing; we did a little shopping, a little sight seeing, but mostly getting prepped for the race as our U23 team had a real shot at doing well.

Here is a great picture of the team:

It had been two years since I had been to World Championships and what a completely different experience without the age groupers in attendance. It felt just like a World Cup, or an ITU race. I look forward to the age groupers and elite triathletes racing worlds together again, it just wasn’t the same; however, it was still a fantastic experience.

All week there had been reports of a typhoon coming through Japan and watched the news as the horrible weather flooded many areas of the country. Fortunately, it went north of us and we had beautiful weather on race day. A little too beautiful for my liking; the temperatures soared over 30 degrees. It was very humid, you began sweating the second you stepped outside. My bike and run warm up went well, but I really wasn’t feeling myself in the water. However, I never let myself write off a race based on my warm up because some days you feel the opposite when you are actually racing.

I looked over my transition one more time and took off to the marshalling area. I sat with my team and we discussed where we were going to stand on the start line. Kathy Tremblay, Jess Kirkwood and myself were ranked quite high, so we really had our pick of where we wanted to start. I decided to go right in the middle which was a direct straight line to the first buoy which was about 200m away. I was expecting this to be advantageous with my swimming ability, but I ended up just getting clobbered. The swim course had big horseshoe shaped buoys at either end of the course that were less than easy to swim around. I got stuck in a slow group and just couldn’t find my rhythm. It was frustrating. I came out of the water after loop one and realized very quickly that I was back a pack from where I needed to be. I picked up the turnover, but I felt like I was swimming backwards, so I settled the stroke rate down and tried to be smooth.

Here is a picture of the U23 womens start:

I came out of the water in no mans land, in between packs. I put the hammer down on the bike; I didn’t put my shoes on until about 5k. I caught the group ahead of me and then I rested for a couple minutes attacked again with a group of riders and we dropped 4 people in our group. No one wanted to work once we made the split. We had two riders in our pack were adamant about not working and three of us were working fairly well together. There was the usual frustration in the pack as girls began yelling at one another trying to get people to work. The heat was getting to everyone.

Here is a picture of me entering the water for my second loop of the swim:

I did my best to drink as much as possible. There were 17 turns on every loop of the bike which was 7 loops. We spent a lot of time regaining speed, breaking, cornering, etc. Our pack was maintaining our spot and even closed a couple seconds on one lap, but then after lap 5 our pack really slowed the pace. We came around for the final lap of the bike and officials were whistling madly. Three sharp whistles meant there was an emergency and to slow down. I saw my good friend Jasmine Oeinck on the ground and I later found out that my teammate Jess Kirkwood also went down in the crash. Jasmine’s tire had come unglued in the heat and literally rolled off her rim. Jess went right over her handle bars and landed right on the medial side of here knee, which exploded open with the impact. I didn’t realize that Jess had crashed until after the race.

The last lap was quite slow because everyone was a little nervous after seeing the girls lying on the ground covered in road rash. Everyone just wanted to get on their feet at this point. We got onto the run and I felt much better than I did in Kelowna. I had my legs, but noted immediately how hot it was. Every aid station I drank water and dumped water on my head. I felt great through 5k, as I was running ahead of Beatrice Lansing, but the heat got to me through 7k and I fell of pace. I was in 17th for the majority of the run, but slipped into 19th place by the end of the race.

My goal was to come top 20 because I knew the field was going to be very rich. I am satisfied with my placing, but knew it wasn’t my best race; however, 19th in the world is AWESOME! I had a good day! I must take this opportunity to congratulate my teammates: Kathy Tremblay on 5th place, Jen Coombs on an awesome first world champs appearance, and to Jess for being tough through three layers of stitches.

This season was ground breaking for me. When I had initially done my tentative schedule for 2005 it looked nothing like what I have actually done. I had only 8 races planned, with two ITU races. I never dreamed I would crack the top 100 in the world or make it to 5+ international races. I am continuing to make progress towards my ultimate goal of representing Canada at the Games and this season has been so reassuring for me. Seeing all the hard work pay off feels so good.

I am really excited about my training over the winter as I know exactly what I need to improve upon. I have been back at Laurentian now for 6 days, and just a few days ago, I was given the ok on my thesis idea. It’s difficult to make the change of focus to being a student now, but I’m enjoying the time to focus on my studies. This is my final year of my undergraduate degree.

I am in the midst of starting up with the varsity swim team and cross country running team. I plan on doing Cancun World Cup on October 30. It is going to be a challenge to balance my final year with an internship, thesis, full course load, job and training- but I look forward to achieving big things this year and in years to come.

I hope this update finds you all well! Thanks for reading and for all your support!

Kindest regards, Alicia Kaye

Here is some info on Alicia