The weekend consisted of a good Brick session in Centennial Park. For the third or fourth time over the last couple of months I did it at about 75% effort because of the race the next day. In retrospect probably a better way to do it would have been taking Saturday off altogether when I have a race on Sunday, and then only doing Brick when I can get in there and give a full 100%. Ah well, it’s been something different.
The session was an hour on the bike, 5 minutes effort and 5 minute recovery x 6. Then a 6km run, the first 4km solid effort and the last 2km cruising.
Sunday was the Newcastle Triathlon!
We had laid out some plans to stay at a friend’s place up that way the night before, but that fell through and I didn’t want to subject Sarah to getting up in the middle of the night to drive up there so I went solo.
Set the alarm for 3.15am for a 3.30 departure. Unfortunately I set the alarm for 3.15pm, but some strange sixth sense woke me up at 3.19 when I glanced at the clock and realised what had happened. Up I got, thankfully everything was packed so I grabbed all my gear and jumped into the car and headed up the almost deserted freeway for about 2 hours in the pitch black. Hit Newcastle about 5.30am and registered and set up my transition. It was a pretty small transition (in the end I saw that about 300 people raced – less than half the field of Nepean the week before). The weather was already warm, cloudless and completely windless and the water in the harbour was still and glassy.
I had to pee so badly, but the portaloo queue was huge and it was a 20 minute walk to the swim start, so I thought I’d just wander down and go at the swim start instead. Of course there weren’t any toilets and not even a way to jump in the water and let it all out (although in retrospect I probably should have). By this stage I was in major bladder discomfort. I figured I’d just let it out once we jumped into the water for our wave start.
During the race briefing a pod of dolphins surfaced just a few metres offshore which was just awesome and caught a lot of “ooos” and “aaahhhs” from the crowd. Then it was “jump in the water, swim to the buoys, ok GO!” I barely had time to zip up my wetsuit and no time at all to pee, then we were off.
Oh my god, trying to swim for half an hour with an already completely full bladder at bursting point is not something I’d recommend to anyone! My style wasn’t exactly perfect and I found it very difficult both to concentrate on my stroke and to put in any effort whatsoever. I tried to slow down a few times to pee while swimming, but was unable to do so. Performance anxiety?
Anyway we were supposed to be swimming with the tide, but it appeared the tide had turned because everyone was taking a lot longer than they thought (so I heard afterwards) and one poor girl had to be pulled out after having been swimming on the spot for 20 minutes. Coming out of the water all I could think of was the portaloos so I hobbled over there (try running on a full bladder) and took a pitstop that ended up being close to 2 full minutes of urinating! Thank god to get that out. Feeling a billion times better I hit transition and took off on the bike.
Again my legs felt a bit crap for the first of 4 laps, but they eventually warmed up. It was a lovely ride course along the waterfront, with a short rise, followed by a long series of switchbacks of about 1.5km up King Edward Park. Big hill for a tri course, that we had to do four times, but in the end I rather enjoyed it and funnily enough the fourth time I hit it I managed to power up seated and in a much larger gear than before. Oddly I got stronger and faster as we went along! Again however I found it hard to gauge my effort on the bike and didn’t end up going as hard as I probably could have. Passed by a lot of people and it really did take me up until the 4th lap to be going round at a decent cadence in a good gear.
Ah well, the best thing about that was that I wasn’t wiped out for the run. Completely flat and level run and I just hooked into it and started passing people the whole way, not being passed once. I definitely picked up the pace on the back half of the course, but probably started a bit slow so I wasn’t able to go sub 40mins again. Went 41:05.
I should have been running at about 165 bpm but I couldn’t remember and thought 155 was ok. So I was doing 155 the front half and 165 for the back half. I think if I’d done 165 the whole way round I would have gone sub 40 mins. I totally could have done it, I felt fine when I finished and I certainly had plenty more to give. I guess that’s what learning to race is all about, knowing how hard you can push.
Finished in 2:28, then it was grab the bike as soon as transition opened, get back in the car and do the long hot (28 degrees) drive back to Sydney in time for lunch and the nap of champions!
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