The first thing I noticed was that numbers were seriously down on what they were expecting. I think they have something like 600 spots and less than 300 starters, they even extended the closing date for registrations up until the week before, and then again extended it so that you could register on the morning of the race. I found it really unusual that the only Olympic Distance triathlon in the city of Sydney that I know of would be having such trouble getting numbers, but I'm guessing it's for two reasons:
1) It's not known as a "fast" course. The bike is certainly flat and fast but the run is quite hilly with soft sand in sections, plus the unpredictable nature of the surf swim makes it a hard one to do a pb on I guess.
2) Triathletes are pussies when it comes to swimming in the surf! As this was the first olympic triathlon I ever did, I assumed that all triathlons had a surf swim component to them. Only recently have I realised that this is not the norm, and most of the triathlon swims are flat water in a lake or bay.
I think it's kind of funny that these tough triathletes are all shuffling about at the start shitting themselves about a few waves (like at last years Cronulla), when compared to any of the ocean swims around Sydney where you get these grizzled old sun-wizened guys with tiny speedos (pffft, no wetsuits!) and big bellies who lumber about on land but go like the clappers once they hit the water and lap up big waves and choppy conditions.
Anyway in the end it was a storm in a teacup as the horrendous rains of Saturday blew over and Sunday dawned with a few scattered clouds, no wind and an almost flat ocean surface with neither chop nor waves. Beautiful!
Andrew picked Mark and myself up at about 4.45am and we cruised over to Cronulla. There seemed to be very few people around so it was easy to park, took about 2 seconds to register and plenty of space in transition.
The Swim
We walked down the beach about a km to the swim start and by this stage were almost sweating in our wetsuits it was so warm, the water was similarly warm and incredibly clear considering the rains of the day before. I was in the first wave and took off for the swim fairly easy. I managed to sight well to the buoys (and there were no bluebottles attacking me this time) so I kept a fairly straight course. Couldn't buy a wave to take me back to shore, but apart from that I'd call it a very good swim. Two minutes faster than last year (although I didn't have a wetsuit last year, so I'm sure that helped). Although getting the damn wetsuit off over my feet was a nightmare and wasted at least 30 seconds!
These best part was that Sarah surprised me by driving over early and was there cheering for me as I came out of the swim!
The Ride
The ride felt like it was going really well for me, I managed to keep up a great cadence between 85 and 90, although I was geared more lightly than last year in order to get that. My speed hovered between 32 and 37km/hr and it was a flat, clean, mostly smooth course. I don't think I pushed nearly as hard as last year though and I ended up 2:30 slower overall.
The Run
This just didn't feel right. I was trying to push as hard as I could but my body wouldn't have a bar of it. I felt slow the whole way round and I couldn't seem to get any faster. I think the issue was that I haven't done any brick sessions for the last couple of months so my body is just not used to running off the bike. The course was a little better than last year, slightly less soft sand on the trail. Once again it was up and down on a bush trail and I do love those little hills, perfect for leaving people behind. I focussed on keeping my cadence just as fast while shortening my stride uphill and that felt good.
The coolest bit was on the last lap coming back toward the finish I saw a bottleneck of people stopped up ahead. Slowing as I drew close I saw the reason - a massive black snake lying across the entire width of the path! I tiptoed through the bushes by it's tail and continued on, finishing the run about a minute slower than last year.
Results:
2007 2008
Swim 0:27:03 0:25:07
Bike 1:09:04 1:12:38
Run 0:44:37 0:45:43
Total 2:20:44 2:23:28
Very odd. I felt like the race went better than last year, but I ended up almost 3 minutes slower! I certainly didn't train nearly as hard in the lead up weeks. I've done pretty much done no riding (or running off the bike) since the Canberra half ironman on 16 December, and was working off my fitness from then. So that result makes total sense! Anyway I was happy with it, the race felt good and I'm certainly much more comfortable doing the olympic distance having tried a half ironman.
The rest of the day turned out really nicely too, our good friends Mel and Prash came to cheer me on which was very sweet. We then went for a delicious brunch with those guys, went to see Juno at the movies and afterwards it was a really hot afternoon so we all went snorkelling down at Gordon's Bay. The perfect Sunday really!
No comments:
Post a Comment