Canberra Half Ironman wrap up

It was a tough day out there that's for sure, well at least it was for me in my half ironman debut.It was even tougher because I was at Mia and Dan’s beautiful wedding until 10.30 the night before, which was fantastic, and then grabbed my gear and jumped in Dan’s car for the drive to Canberra. Thank god for Dan, I think I would have been in really bad shape if I’d had to concentrate on a 3 hour night drive at that point, and then do the race a couple of hours later. I really appreciated Dan doing that for me, it was fantastic.

As it was we arrived in Canberra and got to bed around 2am, only to wake up at 4.30am to start getting ready for the race! Ah well, sleeping’s cheating.The morning was grey and drizzly and at first I was upset about having to do the race in the rain, but then I considered that it would be a lot better than blazing heat, and the rain was pretty light so that was ok. We met Andrew and Mark in the foyer of the hotel and cruised over to the start to set up.

We got “professionally fitted” in our wetsuits by a guy who had a line up of people to give atomic wedgies to! It did make the suit fit well though.

SWIM
The swim was the easiest part in my opinion - warm water, no chop and all the buoys were lined up with big buildings on the lake shore so sighting was dead easy. It was a big rectangle, so you’d just turn 90 degrees and have another landmark to sight. 35 mins for the swim which I was very happy with, it can’t have been the full 1.9km but I’m ok with that. Had to pay a quick visit to a portaloo on the way to T1, guess I was completely hydrated…

BIKE
The bike was challenging, but then again I prefer the variety of hills to the flat stuff. I’m just not that good on the bike and 93km gave a lot of time for every faster person to fly by me! It went from overcast and dry to absolutely pouring for short periods but it was never that bad really, I just stuck my head into the rain and ground it out, going just over 1 hour per lap for a total bike time of about 3:12. The surface was variable, but pretty good I thought for most of it and there was one hilly section and a bit of undulation which made things more interesting.

I saw a ridiculous amount of flat tyres, surprising since there didn’t seem to be much debris on the road. Maybe I just didn’t see it. One guy passed me halfway through the first lap, dropped in front of me and instantly started swearing as I heard his tyre go PFFFFFFFT! He saved me I guess!

The only issue I had on the bike was that about halfway through the 2nd lap I kind of needed to pee and for the whole 3rd lap I had to pee SO BADLY. Back teeth floating kind of stuff.

RUN
I was dying to get on the run – not only to ease the pressure on my bladder, but because I figure it’s the one leg of a triathlon I’m actually ok at. I basically hobbled to the portaloos (conveniently placed at the 1km mark of the run – I can’t believe there were none by transition. I was literally on the verge of exploding and couldn’t go one more step when I got there) and had a full 2 minute pitstop, then I thought “It’s go time!”

Unfortunately it was more like “slow time”. I just couldn’t get the legs the fire how I wanted them to. I was hoping for around 1:30 on the run, but by the last 5km I was seriously struggling, I could barely hang on to 5min per km pace and I was giving it everything I had. Which wasn’t much by that stage! It was a really strange and uncomfortable feeling that I’ve never had in a race before – even in the one marathon I’ve done. I … just … wanted … to … stop! Lots of people were stopped by the side of the path or sitting down or walking and it was ridiculously tempting to follow suit, but I kept telling myself “You can lie down as much as you want after the finish line, just make it to that point!”

With 3 km to go I realised I could sneak in under 5 hours and 30 minutes if I moved my arse a bit quicker, so I managed to squeeze out a last little bit of effort to hobble across in 5:27:25 with absolutely nothing left in the tank. A couple of hundred metres before the line I saw another guys from the same age category that I “had” to pass, then one more. Improved two more positions that way and made myself keep going as fast as I possibly could. Run leg was 1:40:27.

And I was utterly wiped out. Definitely the most suffering I’ve ever had in an event. Andrew came in a couple of minutes after me and he was hurting big time too. Mark finished about 5 minutes quicker than me and seemed to suffer no ill effects whatsoever – he was wandering around happily afterwards, then jumped in the car to drive his family back to Sydney! And he’s 15 years older than me and has only been riding a bike for about 6 months. My new hero.

Anyway I am SO happy to have ticked off my final goal for 2007 and the hardest of the lot. It’s been a big year of firsts for me and a lot of hard training which I’ve really enjoyed, especially getting to meet some fantastic people along the way. Hooray I’m half an iron man!