Australian Long Course Triathlon Championships

We drove down to Huskisson on Friday night after work. It is not the best drive, especially in the dark, especially after you get past Wollongong and we were both tired, so we were glad to arrive at the house we were sharing with the Bilbys gang.

Saturday morning was absolutely beautiful. I got up early and rode an easy lap of the course on my own (27k). It was nice and quiet out there but getting warm and humid by 8.30 when I got home. Tom and I had a lovely swim at the beach when I got back, then went into town for a yummy breakfast and coffee with Jen and Terry. Tom did the 5k fun run at lunchtime in hot conditions, and comfortably beat his time from last year which was his goal. In the afternoon the storm clouds rolled in, we all got soaking wet checking our bikes into transition and it rained almost continuously all night. I went to bed at 10pm after watching half of the "What it Takes" DVD. I slept pretty well but every time I woke up it was still raining.

I got up 5AM - still raining! I had two big pikelets with banana and nutella and a large milk with sustagen. It was still raining as we set up everything in transition in plastic bags. But as the sun came up it was a big relief to see that the water was much calmer than it had been last year - there was some swell but no big waves. I also noted that, unlike last year, the buoys had not moved 500m closer to shore and so the course was certain to be an honest 2k. :) If anything it looked long.

Up till Saturday afternoon my race plan had been to go hard on the swim, take it easy on the bike and practice my eating and drinking and then go hard on the run. But on Saturday afternoon after a pep-talk from Dani I decided to push it for the whole race and see how it went.

All agegroup ladies started in wave 6 at 7.17AM. I tried to go out faster than usual and I was aiming to stay with some sort of bunch, rather than end up in no-mans-land between medium-fast and medium-slow like I usually do. The swell was big enough that it was impossible to see the buoys (why don’t they make them bigger?) so I just followed the other orange caps. I never felt like I got a good rhythm but I was pushing fairly hard and thought I had had a solid swim until I looked at my watch as I ran up the stairs to transition and it said 36 minutes damn! I was disappointed because the last 2k swim (Cole Classic) I did in 32 minutes and that was with no wetsuit - and I had thought I would be faster than that.

My transition was also pretty terrible. I decided to wear my gloves and they took forever to get on and so did my socks. On the positive side my wettie came off with no trouble. I came into transition right behind the woman next to me on the rack (445) and we then stayed near each other for almost the whole ride. After my drafting penalty at Canberra I was determined to take no chances whatsoever, which made for an annoying ride. I braked or stopped pedalling as soon as a passing person's wheel came in front of mine and only passed someone when I was able to do it easily. This is what the rules require but its actually not how most people ride.

I lost count of the number of times 445 and I passed each other but it was kind of good as it helped me stay focussed. Just like the swim, I was pushing fairly hard but I never felt good. Excuses - there was a bit of head wind and the road surface is not great. My legs were probably not as fresh as they could have been. I had done 190k on the bike in the week which was probably too much in hindsight. In the end my bike time including T1 was 2.40 which is 2 minutes faster than last year. I expected to have improved more than that so was again disappointed but others said they thought it was a harder ride this year, so I am not too worried.

I was really hoping for a good run to redeem my disappointing run at Shepparton HIM in December. I was aiming for under 5 minute kilometres which I thought would be hard but do-able - on a good day. I had a couple of big running weeks for me leading in (65k) and was feeling confident. I started running and felt surprisingly good. It is 2x10k out-and-back loops so I got to see heaps of Canberra and Sydney mates along the way which was fantastic. I did the first lap in about 47 minutes and I was pleased. I slowed a bit in the second lap and was definitely feeling fatigued by the last few kilometres, but I hung in there and finished with a watch split (not including transition) of 1.35.37. I am VERY happy with this. Even discounting for the possibility that the course is slightly short, I am confident I was still under 5 min pace and I never EVER thought I would be capable of that. My goal for this race last year was 6 min pace and my run split last year was 1.54, so I have really come a long way. :)

My official time was 4:54:22 and my splits (category place) (gender place) were 36:33 (9) (42); 2:40:32 (9) (42); 1:37:15 (10) (36). I was 8th out of 23 in my age group - compared to 21st out of 28 last year.

It was not exactly perfect IM training because I was going too "fast" to pay proper attention to my nutrition and it was not hot at all so I probably didn’t drink enough. But it was good for my confidence and IM will be a very different race - MUCH SLOWER!