Husky

The Huskisson Long Course Triathlon 2009.

I should have written the race report straight away but time just got away from me and now it's a week and a half later! Ah well, hopefully that means I just remember the essentials without the boring detail.

I drove down Saturday morning through absolute pissing rain and thought that it did not bode well, but hopefully it would clear. The rain started drying up as I pulled into Huskisson about 1pm and went to check out my digs, staying in the kid's room at the place Andrew had rented, right on the run course and 5 minutes walk from town.

After settling in, Mike Hughes called wanting to go for a ride, so Andrew and I saddled up and we did one lap of the bike course, around 28km, just to check it all out. It was a lovely cool afternoon and a really nice relaxing jaunt, although the course seemed a fair bit hillier than we remembered!

--------

The day dawned cool, cloudy, but no rain and no wind so it looked like it was going to be absolutely perfect conditions. And so it was! We got up in good time, ate a solid brekky and wandered over to set up our transition which was all flawless.

The swim start seemed to come around quickly and before I knew it I was treading water as the hooter went and we were away.

Not a great deal to be said about the swim, all these triathlon swims are melding into one for me. I just plod along at my fairly average pace, usually manage to avoid too much body contact and do my best to sight well enough not to avoid swimming too many excess kms. Unfortunately they didn't have the big battleship to sight to like last year, but there was a small fishing boat (although it was hard to spot with the sun behind it). The way back seemed a bit quicker and then I was goggle-eyed and head-spinning, stumbling up the beach and the grass track to T1 with Andrew's wife Carolyn cheering and me trying not to go too hard to keep my HR down.

T1 went ok, although I had some trouble exiting my wetsuit. Then I hunkered down for the ride. This was the first time I've ever ridden my new Giant with the tri bars clipped on. Also the first time I've ridden it in a triathlon. And I have to say I liked it! The bike felt good, I was able to spin easily and I stuck very well to my plan of keeping my HR between 140 and 145 while keeping my cadence about 90rpm.

I played cat and mouse with a couple of people. One guy in particular who kept beating me on the downhills and then I would take him on the uphills. With all the rollers on the course this happened a lot. He actually got pinged by the TAs for drafting me at the end of the first lap!

Saying that I saw a couple of packs of drafting cheats, but nothing like the huge bunches at Geelong. The weather stayed cool and windless, the rollers weren't that steep and I was able to spin easily up them all without getting out of the saddle until the back end of the final (third) lap. I stuck with the very simple nutrition plan as well where I ate one portion every half hour of the following:
- one powerbar chopped into thirds
- one banana chopped into thirds

The only unfortunate moment on the bike was when I grabbed for my water bottle at one point and the buckle on my HR monitor watch strap caught in the front brake cable. This suddenly jerked the front brake on and nearly bucked me off, thankfully I retained control with my other hand, although the first knuckle was pushed into the metal pad holders for the tri bars and cut and bruised. No big deal and a real relief to stay on!

Finished the ride in 2:29:40 and all three laps were pretty much even.

Into T2 I encountered a couple of problems. One was that my right bike shoe buckle was stuck. Sometimes if it's buckled really tight, the quick release won't release at all. It's happened once or twice but never in a race. I sat on the ground struggling for what seemed like ages and eventually managed to just ease my foot out of the done-up shoe - it was all I could do! Then I went to grab my running hat which had my nutrition in it and... it was gone. I desperately cast around for it but couldn't find it anywhere.

What do I do? I can't run without nutrition can I? Maybe there are some gels on the course? But I didn't want to have any gels. A further look revealed it had been kicked a few metres away so I grabbed it up and made a beeline for the portaloos to relieve the pressure on my bladder which had been building since lap 1 of the bike. A very long, but very rejuvinating, urination followed and I exited T2 after a week or so of mucking around. Nearly 5 minutes it took me! A lot of wasted time.

So it was time for the run. I had decided already that gels aren't my thing, so I ate the final portion of banana left in my bento while in T2 and took off. It was still overcast and cool, with a few spots of drizzle, but I heated up fairly quickly and was soon pouring water over my head at every second drink station. My pace seemed ok, but it was hard to tell because this year they decided to do away with the km markers. It didn't matter to me, all I wanted to do was keep my HR between 150 and 155bpm, try to relax and have a good time.

I was stoked with the race so far and I knew that I'd done very little run training so I had no expectations, I just wanted to enjoy it. That attitude worked very well for me because I had possibly the most fun I've had on the run leg of a tri before! I ran with a big smile on my face, enjoyed the cheerleading from the Thomas, Hammond, Bowman & Pearse family cheer squads, high fived little kids, made jokes with random spectators and shouted encouragement at everyone I know in the race, including Alexis, Andrew, Mark, Mike H, Reid, a couple of the HuRTS boys and anyone in a Balmoral Tri Club suit.

I had no problem keeping my HR in that zone and the pace felt fine, so good in fact that I decided to throw my race plan of 14 minutes run / 1 minute walk out the window and just run the whole way. I ate twice, 2 fresh dates after half an hour and another 2 after 1 hour.

With 2 km to go I thought let's give 'er, but I honestly didn't have anything left to run much faster. I picked up the pace very marginally and fired over the line in 1:22:26 for the run, which totally blew me away, I did better than last year on far less running training and no long runs at all.

My total race time was 4:34:07 and there was nothing for it but to wander around the recovery area with a massive smile on my face chatting to everyone who came within earshot. The post race glow lasted all afternoon, through the best shower ever, a vegan pie with the crew, the drive back to Sydney and the first (and only) beer on the couch with my wife.