Ah well, I’m glad I did it and would do it again. A few days of feeling like garbage afterwards is totally worth it to not miss a fantastic event like that.
I’d started to feel scratchy throated the Wednesday arvo before and of course I was thinking “Oh please no. I can’t miss this!” so I pumped myself with vitamin C and tried to take it east for the next couple of days. And it worked, after a fashion. I still felt super tired and drained and was blowing my nose and sneezing a lot, but marginally better every day and by Saturday I thought “As long as I don’t feel any worse tomorrow, I will do this race! It may not be my best time ever, but I will get through it and qualify for Ironman”.
Drove down Saturday midday with Mark and Andrew, and in packing my bag I couldn’t believe how much stuff you need for a triathlon. Tri suit, tri bars, aero bottle, race belt, wetsuit… it seemed endless. All of it I hadn’t even thought about since April at Port. Turns out Andrew and Mark felt the same way, as the first thin they both said was “Wow there’s so much stuff to pack – I’m sure I left out something vital!”
We checked our bikes in and met with Steve and Dog, browsed the merch tents waiting for the briefing at 5.30. Then checked into the Crowne Plaza and all went out for a really nice dinner at Wagamama.
Morning dawned with our alarms at 4.50am and we were all a bit apprehensive. Sharing a bed with Andrew didn’t help… We got our shit together relatively quickly and went downstairs for a light brekky, which the hotel had opened early just for us. Then shouldered our bags and schlepped across to the race, 800m down the road.
We only had 15 mins before transition closed and again, I felt like it had been so long since I’d done this I was sure to forget something! But it went smoothly and I even ran into a mate of mine Wes who happened to have his bike racked right next to mine.
I stood next to the lake on a slowly warming morning with no wind and a completely clear blue sky and watched a few waves go by, reflecting on how I felt. I wasn’t 100%, but I felt ok to give the race a good nudge and I knew I had plenty of training in me. It just depended on how much energy the illness left me with to go hard for 5+ hours.
I was pretty calm entering the swim, thinking I would take it super easy and just cruise the 1.9km, focussing on technique and not pushing at all. Then hopefully be fresh to push the bike a bit and see how the run went.
The swim was a cracker. Nobody near me, I sighted well and kept straight course and really took it very gently, focussing on long even strokes. I finished in almost exactly the same time as last year, exiting the water at just under 33 mins, but with my average HR of 133, compared to 148 last time.
After a long portaloo piss I entered transition and faffed around as usual getting my wetsuit off. Took off on the bike and really enjoyed the first lap. Last time I did this race 2 years ago it was absolutely pouring rain and quite horrible, but clear and sunny thing time the ride course was just beautiful, particularly the back half around Coppins when you get up high.
I felt like I was doing well keeping a 90ish cadence and my HR in the 140 -145 zone, although from the very start my right knee and buttock seemed to be hurting. Maybe something to do with sitting in the aero position for the first time in 9 months! I only put the bars on the day before.
I went through the first laop in about 58 minutes which I was very happy about, but didn’t enjoy the second lap so much. By the third I’d kind of had it with the bike and was ready to get off and run. What gives, I’ve been loving the bike lately? I can only think it was a couple of things: one is that I was still tired and wiped out from the illness in my body, so I never felt really strong on the bike, it was a real effort. Secondly I had so many people on TT bikes shoot past me on downhills or flats, even when I pushing to the max, I just felt my bike / setup wasn’t aero enough and was holding me back. These weren’t better riders, I sailed back past them everytime there was even a remote incline, but they’d just put too much time into me on the flats and downs and then be off. It irked me.
Foodwise I did well. I wasn’t about to make the ironman mistake again of not taking on electrolytes, so I made sure I got through a strong 750ml bottle of powerade which I kept sipping over the ride. That plus the aero bottle of water in front of me (which I filled twice) was all I drank.
I ate 2 powerbars and a banana over the three hours ride. Basically all of them cut into 3 portions and I had a portion every 20 mins. So 1 powerbar or banana for each hour / lap. The 2nd and 3rd laps took 1 hour exactly, each. My stomach started to feel really tight and problematic in the first hour which worried me because I wasn’t eating excessively. I didn’t want to be in the same position as last Canberra HIM where I started the run feeling like there was a rock in my gut. But I thought about it and figured I probably wasn’t having enough water to properly digest my food, so I kept sipping water for a while and shortly afterwards I came good and had no more stomach problems for the rest of the race.
Anyway as I say, by the end of the third lap I was done riding and ready to run. It was getting really hot at this stage, so I knocked off the rest of my powerade, ate the final portion of powerbar and took off. I really wasn’t feeling it at the start of the run, plus I needed to piss really badly. At the first turnaround about 2km in I found a great tree and let loose. Then my pace picked up a bit and I ran well for a while.
After about 5km though I found it hard to keep a rhythm. I could tell my both my HR and my path per km that I was dogging it, but I couldn’t make myself go harder. I couldn’t work out if it was lassitude from my illness, or not having anyone near me running at my pace to keep hold of, or simply the heat (a lot of people were effected), but whatever it was I just wasn’t running the speed I wanted to and knew I was trained for. I resigned myself to it and thought, “Hey I’m still feeling pretty good and am going to finish the race strong, so no complaining!”
And a lot of people were suffering. By the second lap of the run I’ve never seen so many people walking in a triathlon before. The heat had really knocked them around and there were a lot of staggerers. I kept ploughing through, only dropping my pace marginally over the 2nd half, but not running anywhere near what I should have been because I was comparing myself to walkers.
Again I was really happy with my nutrition and hydration. I pounded a lot of water bags (which are awesome) and enervit bags every second aid station. As with Geelong, I did the same food plan of two big fresh dates after 30mins and another two after an hour, then just ran to the finish.
I made it in 1:39:26 for the run and was very happy to have it over with as I was seriously overheating by this stage. I think I’m lucky being smaller that I don’t overheat as quickly as a lot of people, which is the only thing that saved me!
Afterwards I just didn’t feel right until I’d skulled some water and sat in the shade for 15 minutes cooling off. Once my body had cooled down I felt great and was super stoked with my overall time of 5:19:11 (last time was 5:27:25). The swim and run legs were virtually the same as last time, as were the transitions, but I was about 8 minutes faster on the bike.
Plus being able to do it all when my body was under the weather really made me happy. Although as I said, later than afternoon when the adrenaline wore off my body rebelled and I spent the next few days coughing, spluttering, sneezing and moaning. Who cares? Awesome race.
Both Andrew and Mark did better than last year too, with Andrew absolutely thrashing the race on his brand new 2 day old white Cervelo P3. Beautiful bike. Plus with his training plan he kicked ass with something like 5:09 compared to 5:3x last time. Makes me want a tri bike too...
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