Sixth at Otago Champs

I just competed in my first Otago Triathlon Champs. I wasn't expecting much, as longer training runs have really been taking it out of me this week and to be honest I felt like crap all week.  Lots of little niggles and legs of lead! It got so bad by the time yesterday came around that I didn't train at all yesterday because my back and right hip were so sore (plus there was a swim carnival on at the pool by time made it there two hours after I should have started).

In fact I was expecting to be painfully slow in today's race and I fully expected Little Bro' Chris to motor on by somewhere on the run. But, to my surprise I felt great and I did quite well given the lack of an focussed  preparation and the extra weight that I am carrying at the moment.

While my swim is still a bit slow, it was way better than the open water race that I did on Tuesday evening. Chris and I actually went stroke for stroke, so I think he has been getting some extra sessions in without telling me. It won't be long and he'll be beating me out of the water. He also beat me out of transition and to be honest at this point I thought: 'Hell, this is worse than I thought. He'll be right with me through the bike leg and he'll overtake me in the run'. But by the time we got a kilometre or so out on the bike, I had gathered up a pretty good head of steam and I passed him pretty easily. I expected him to pick up his effort and try and stay with me, but by the time I glanced behind me another kilometre down the road, I had a few hundred metres on him.

James Brundell (one of my training buddies) was in transition when Chris and I arrived and left about 20 or 30 seconds ahead of us. He was wearing a yellow dayglow bike top so he was easy to spot about 600-700 metres off in the distance, so I set him as my next target. I was pretty sure that Lindsey Dey (Dunedin Tri Club President) was also somewhere near him and I knew both of them were in the vet males section of the race, so I was doubly determined to catch James.

James just beat me into the bike-run transition and that is where I overtook him. Chris was nowhere in sight so I was feeling quite relaxed that I'd put enought distance on him to hold out till the end of the race, but I could see Lindsey a few hundred metres ahead.

I'd passed quite a number of people on the bike and managed to average a touch over 33.5km/h, so I was pretty stoked, but having gone quite hard, the heart was just about leaping out of my chest as I dismounted and I was convinced that my legs would give out on the run. So I figured that I needed to go hard from the start both to try and catch Lindsey (realistically I knew there was no chance of that happening, but what the hey) and to get as much distance on James and Chris as possible to try and maintain my lead over them. It turns out that my legs didn't give out and I was able to maintain a pretty steady pace in the mid-4:50s for the entire 5km (I know its slow, but you try running faster carrying 103kg).

In the end I didn't catch Lindsey (he was probably a minute ahead in the end), but I did manage 1:22:44 overall (my fastest time over the 750m/20km/5km distance) and I beat James by around a minute and Chris by around 2:30. I was sixth vet male! OK, there were only eight vet males, but it is my first go and I didn't exactly train specifically for this race and there were plenty behind me in all age groups. Next year I want to give this a real good nudge and get closer to the top three. It will mean taking about five or so minutes off today's time, but with the planned weight loss, that should be a breeze.

If I'm being honest, Chris is doing pretty bloody well for a complete novice who also carries a few too many kilos around. His swim today really surprised me - he was literally right beside me until about 150 metres from the end, when he veered off course by five or six metres and bumped into a swimming platform anchored in Macandrew Bay (ouch, that's gotta hurt). Actually I was deliberately swimming right on his hip at the point where he veered off in the hope that it might put him off his stroke a little. The plan obviously worked better than I had hoped, but he was still only seconds behind when we both stumbled out of the water. He has also been doing some great 5km times in training so I wasn't surprised that he was a good 50 seconds faster than me on the run. If he can get some more quality time on the bike, I will struggle to keep up with him (Note to self: must stop lending and gear to Chris and giving him training tips). For now though, I am taking the opportunity to give him a hard time about beating him - him being five years my junior and all. :-)

That's one of the things I love about triathlon, you can have all these little races within races: me vs my bro'; me vs James; the vet mens section; the race overall (I always like to see how I stack up against everyone else including the teams); beating someone on the bike leg, even though they may have been faster in the swim and you know they will pass you again on the run. Then there are your own personal achievements: even if you have a bad swim, you can have a great bike or run; you can improve your time for that particular course; you can improve your position relative to the rest of the field (i.e. what percentile you finish in). So, even though I am still down the back of the pack, I still feel like I am acheiving something every single race and I'm lovin' it!

Back online

Just finished my first full week of training for about four weeks and started on a nutritional regime that should see me in better shape for Challenge 2012. So I am back online training and blogging.

I blatted out almost 7.5 hours of training last week and eat so much I felt like I had something in my mouth all day and half the night. Something worked though, because I lost almost 2kgs.

I'm also in the process of buying a timetrial bike so that I can go faster. Well, so I can kid myself that I am going faster. It's a bit like red cars going faster than other colours, really. The reality is it's the engine that counts and I am in the process of up grading that to a lighter more powerful version too!

I know that I promised a race report and that is on it's way soon too. So watch this space.