Not sure if anyone has picked up on this but congratulations to CR's Plazbot who was first Aussie home at the ITU World Champs in Almere on the weekend.
Link here
Full Version: Congratulations Plazbot
CoolRunning Messageboards > Specific Running Categories > Triathlon, Cycling, Swimming, CrossTraining etc
jebus - nice job Plazbot
plaz is rad
plaz is rad
holey schmuck
well done Plaz
well done Plaz
hey bloody good find there Balri
well done big fella - fantastic stuff - one step closer to Kona!?!?
PH
well done big fella - fantastic stuff - one step closer to Kona!?!?
PH
Go the Plaz!
Great job, man!
M
Great job, man!
M
Awesome work Plaz.
Congratulations and well done
Congratulations and well done
solid day out for the Plazman. Well done !!!
he has hinted the swim seemed quite longer than the quoted 4km...
only 7hrs of racing...not long enough for him
next on his dance card IMWA in december
he has hinted the swim seemed quite longer than the quoted 4km...
only 7hrs of racing...not long enough for him
next on his dance card IMWA in december
Hah. Thanks people. Was harder than expected.
Am at the airport wasting time until I come home after a couple of weeks of dumplings and beer in Eastern Europe.
Dingo got it on the money re the swim. I have heard of as long as 5.1km according to some one's Garmin. Split wise that sounds pretty close.
Will do a report as always.
Am at the airport wasting time until I come home after a couple of weeks of dumplings and beer in Eastern Europe.
Dingo got it on the money re the swim. I have heard of as long as 5.1km according to some one's Garmin. Split wise that sounds pretty close.
Will do a report as always.
...... and here it is. Sorry if you read it elsewhere.
2007 saw the first year that I went into races with a decent unbroken base of training. As a result, my performances were just on a whole new level. I raced Gold Coast Half Ironman and took about an hour and a quater off my time from the year before and in the process, managed to get some qualifying points for the Long Course team to go to the Netherlands in August 2008. I threw my $65 into the hat to register for selection and figured that I would see where that took me.
Ironman Australia 2008 saw me with an excellent plan to go fast. That plan was perfect..... for someone else, but for me, things came unstuck at about the 140km mark of the bike and it turned into a fairly long and painful day that taught me much. I was a bit bummed after this result as up until then I was unstoppable with fast and dramatic improvements. While sitting around feeling sorry for myself on the Monday after the race, I opened my email and found that I had been selected on the team to travel to the Netherlands for the Long Course. I had in the preceeding weeks decided that if I got the call up, I would not go but the timing of the email was just too spooky not to jump upon as a 'sign'. I sent my acceptance then and there and got back up on the horse that had shown me who was boss not 24 hours earlier.
Almere
Almere is the place in the Netherlands where the race was to take place. In the early 70s, the place did not exist. It is about a half hour drive East from the outskirts of Amsterdam on the main highway. It is entirely reclaimed land and as a result is flat flat flat. While flat sounds appealing for a triathlon, Almere has the unfortunate positioning right on the enormous inland sea in the centre of the Netherlands and is windy. Windier than a windy thing that has wind.
Travel
Being like 99.9% of triathletes, I have a job that of course gets in the way of real life. As a result, I could only obtain leave to travel over to Europe so that I would end up there 3 days before the race. I did a bit of reading into jet lag and it seemed that 10 days is acceptable but 14 is better for that shift in time zone. Oh well, I did not have that opportunity and figured that as I work shift work anyway, it could not be so bad right? Well not so true. I did struggle a whole lot more than expected. Nothing debilitating come race day but just a 10-15% or so reduction in what my body normally produces for known efforts. If I travel again a similar time zone shift, I will be taking a full 14 days.
Race Week
My parents as always were super stars and when I told them of our plans to go and race, immediately offered to have my 4 year old son stay with them while just myself and Court went over. After a quick think we took them up on the offer as Court is due again in December and pretty much, this would be the last opportunity for quite a number of years to travel 'solo'. This meant that we were pretty much free to do as we pleased with accomodation and timings which really made the race week very very cruisy.
After arriving in town and finding our accomodation, I hooked up with one of the Ironchicks from my club who was racing for Czech Republic to go and survey the cycle course. Like I said above, flat flat flat...... And WINDY. When we got onto the course proper we were met with windmills as far as the eye could see. Oh dear.
The Dutch are a very literal bunch and they ran the race this way. There was to be a carbo dinner, race brief and opening ceremony all together. They had these but it all just felt like a box ticking exercise. It really seemed as though they were a bit out of their depth and had just rocked up with a heap of cash and the army (yes the army, they pretty much shut the whole place down) and put on the race. there were no bad experiences to be had but it was all a bit 'fake' if you get my meaning. just as an example, all of the compulsory things like briefing, rego, awards etc were all in different places and unsigned. Most of them were half an hour apart and all of them were an hour return trip from where the 'official' accomodation was.
Anyway, eventually we were all registered and settled in and it was time to rack the bikes. Again, the literal Dutch reared their heads in the bike compound. I grabbed one of the officials and asked where the bike and run exits were as they were not marked at all. The reply I got was 'You swim 4km (we will get to this later) come and get your bike, ride One-Hundered-Twenty kilometre then run 30 kilometre.........' Ummm, yeah I get it, a triathlon. LOL. Oh well, I wasn't planning on leading the swim so I guessed I would just follow someone.
Race Day
Forecast was for 29 degrees and sunshine with moderate to strong South Westerly wind (apparently the favoured direction for this course). Again, the literal Dutch were on the money and a sunny 29 degree day was what we got wind and all. As I mentioned above, the race distances were 4km swim, 120 bike and 30km run. The swim was a two lap affair with one small lap then around the first half of that lap again then shoot off along the shore to a harbour then in and out of the water. The bike was a 2 lap on mostly road and bike path. Dutch bike paths are pretty much like roads anyway and they did get narrow in parts but nothing dangerous. the run was a 2x15km loop through a forrest section and some exposed parts along the sea wall. All in all, a pretty good course. They run an ironman every year and did so the day before our race and we did the same course but minus one lap on bike and run with a lengthened swim.
Lengthened swim. Hmmmm. 200m longer for us than the Ironman...... talk about drop the ball on this one. Hah. The swim ended up being anything from 4.8 to 5.1km depending on who you asked. The most believeble report I got was from a euro pro who was pretty annoyed after the race and have their Garmin to one of the kayak club and he paddled the course in 5.1km. So be it, it was the same for everybody. My guess is that they moved the outer buoy 200m to make up the extra 200m. unfortunately you swam out and back to it twice (4x200) and then across from it once (1x200) to get to the harbour. this would make the ~5km claims about right. The only issue with the extra length was that they still enforced the planned time cut off and there were many many people who got disqualified as a result.
Swim
The swim start was on dry land and the Age Group race was to start 30 minutes after the male pros and 25 after the females. Due to the lengthened course, the female pros were just coming through when we started and it was pretty rough. Europeans being like they are can be a feisty bunch. I was quite happy with the idea of a dry land start as it would avoid the usual ironman problem where everybody goes from being vertical to horizontal and suddenly you are wearing feet in the nether reigons. It did not matter as this was crazy brutal. It was more of a punch up than starting two rows back at Ironman Australia. We hit the water and guys were just jumping straight onto your back and pushing you under. Thankfully I have done heaps of mass start training at swim squad and am pretty used to getting beat on but this was just mental. One of the Aussie guys got a dislocated finger early on. A guy on a surf ski put it back in for him and he got back to it. As he was a tad pissed about the finger, the next bloke who hit him, he gave some rib music to. The recipient did not take to it kindly and punched him clean in the jaw knocking him out!!! The surf ski guys got to him quick and got him out of the water but that was the end of his race. A very expensive 800m swim!!!! Very lucky that a finger was alll he had wrong after that one.
My swim plan was pretty easy. As a wet suit brings me waaaay up the field, I can usually get into packs with guys who normally school me in the pool. After the start cleared out and we were about 1500m into it, I was all alone. I could see the bulk of the field about 50m to my left and figured I must be way off course. I had swum the start loop of the course and had found some sighting markers for the traverse to the harbour a couple of days before and was seeing them well and hitting every marker buoy. Still, the others stayed over there. i was starting to think that maybe I was supposed to keep on the left of the buoys or something? I did not get too worried as i knew that eventually, i would turn left towards them to go into the harbour and normally, my navigation is pretty good so I backed myself and kept on with my plan. All i focused on was catching water and touching my thigh with every stroke. Long and easy.
It seemed that backing my navigation was spot on as about 200m before the harbour, the swim officials lined up about 20 surf skis and kayaks and 'directed' everybody back onto what I thought was the course. Things got a bit crowded again but eventually we made it to the water exit in the harbour. There was a run of about 500m to the bike compound. i did not see the timing mats all day except one on the run turn so don't know what contained what.
Swim Time 1:26:37. 29th position.
For the 4km, I was expecting around 1:02-1:05 which is about 1:37 per 100m and with the 5.1k m actual swim, I averaged 1:41. Not so bad, not so great but passable.
Bike
I will make no secret that I expected the bike to go fairly well. It is far and away my strongest leg and as a result, I have of late had a tendancy to get excited and push way too hard. This is what brought me unstuck earlier in the year. What I did not expect was the quality of the field. The course was mostly a square with a little in and out section in the middle then some twisty stuff along pathways back to the lap start in town before heading out again. I got well and truely schooled in what I thought would be my chance to shine. I hit the 90km mark in 2:19 which would be near on the fastest Age group bike in any half ironman in Australia but these guys were riding away from me. Having a think to myself at this point, I decided that I was not going to let myself blow to bits and I was feeling really 'heavy' still as a result of the time zone shift. Again nothing dramatic but I was having to hold heart rates a little higher than normal to push similar gears. I could see this compounding later on the run. I pulled off dramatically and pretty much sat up the last hour back to town.
The support on the course was amazing. There was one section that was like something out of Le Tour with people 10 deep spilling onto the road and leaving a gap for the bikes to get through. It was very very hard not to turn it up along there just from the energy in the air. Awesome.
I rolled into town feeling pretty good and ready to run as I had my nutrition worked out perfectly from a winter of endless laps around a circuit with my club. Very glad with the outcome and it is a plan I will be sticking with for my next longer race as well.
Bike Time 3:12:01 21st position (13th fastest bike split)
This was a tad slower than anticipated but boy did it blow. There were some sections where I was in my 54/12 gearing combo and spinning at 100+ RPM but was still feeling like it was down hill then there were bits where I was wishing I could change into my little ring and just nurse it home. Ouch. Great stuff. I was expecting 3:05-3:10 which is about 37.9-38 km/hr average but ended up about a half kay an hour slower. Still acceptable but again just that little bit 'off' based on effort.
Run
The last long distance triathlon I did, I got 3km into the run the spent a nice 4 and a half hour walk looking for change to finish the Marathon. I was determined that this was not going to happen again through my own stupidity like last time. I got onto the run course and felt OK straight away. I had planned to take a fuel belt with concentrated carb drink like I use on the bike but give the supplied gels a try at the first aid station just to mix it up a bit. Wow. those gels were sensational. Every time I had one, it felt like someone put their hand in my back and gave me a shove. I have scoured the internet since for them but can't find how to get them into Australia. I tossed the fuel belt to one of the Aussie on the side lines at the firsts opportunity.
I planned to very simply run the first half hour based on perceived exertion then see where my heart rate would settle. I ended up running with an American guy who had a garmin on and we were in the 4:45-4:50min/km range which was exactly what my perception was telling me. I hit the 6km mark and had a look at my heart rate monitor and it was through the roof. I was running nearly at my aerobic threshold but at a pace a good 45 seconds/km slower. Oh dear. I thought for a moment about just turning off the monitor and seeing where I would end up but history tells me that is not a smart thing to do. I pulled back the pace until my heart rate dropped into what I knew I could maintain to the finish.
Run Turn
By now, it was getting pretty hot and every station saw me with 4 sponges and 4 water cups with two to drink and 2 to pour over me. I was surprised by the humidity and it must have been in the late 60s/early 70s. Still, I was going OK and the gels were going down well still. I was keeping an eye on the categories going by me and only every 20 minutes or so did one of my race go by. It was the first time I had ever been racing for position alone. As this race distance was to be wrapped up after this one and revert to the Double Olympic format, I was not interested in setting a benchmark but interested in not letting the whole world run by me.
Eventually, the accumulation of 5 hours well above my heart rate and a 5.1km swim started to catch up with me and it was getting hard. I remembered my coach telling me that at Ironman Western Australia when I had my break through race, I looked like I was letting it be hard the last half hour. While this race today was unfolding into a bit of a struggle fest from the 20km mark of the run, I started employing some techniques to 'make it easy'. I started high fiving all the kids and giving a shout out to anyone who called my name from the crowd. It really worked to keep my mind off the task and was a real buzz experience wise but I let the pace slip and slip and slip. Finding the happy medium here would be the holy grail.
I took a look over my shoulder coming along the sea wall towards the final 3 or 4 kays and there was no one to be seen so I decided that I could allow myself a little walk. Silly me. Once you walk, it is so hard to get going again. Walk run, walk run and on it went for a couple of kays. Noone was passing me and I was actually catching a couple up ahead one of whom was the lead Aussie and the other a guy in my race. My goal from there was noone was going to pass me from my category and I was going to get the two guys ahead. I got Shane, the Aussie about 2 kays from the finish and left about 50m to the guy infront for a while.
Epic Sprint Finish
The fella in front of my was from Great Britain and in my category. The finish chute was a wierd set up where you ran along for about 100m then did a sharp U turn then ran back about 50m to the line. The only hills of any note on the entire course was a bridge they built on the run course to cross over the bike exit/entry and a 5m long ramp up to the finish. I have never been one for the sprint finish as I always looked at it that we have gone all this way so what is one place going to matter/ well to me at that time, I may have well been racing for first! I edged up onto the guy's inside shoulder approaching the u turn so that he had to run the long way around with me on the inside and probably would not have know how close I was. I knew I could hold some form of crazy leg sprint for 10 seconds so dropped da bomb and let rip. Mr GB took maybe 3 or 4 steps trying to counter but turned it off and I kept going. Now, remember this ramp I mentioned? Well, much hilarity ensued when I hit it and BOOM!!!! Both hammies cramped followed quickly by the quads! Only 3 more steps to the finish line!! Suck it up!!
.........
Made It!!!!!
Run Time 2:45:25 position 29th
I was aiming for a 2:30 run split. Where 2:45 was a good 15 minutes slower than that, i feel that under the conditions I did OK. Actually, for the entire race, I did OK. Nothing great, not shameful, just OK. To be honest, I am very pleased with that outcome. The time means nothing but the entire intent of even doing this race was to learn about how the body reacts to travel and the junk between the ears reacts to a Big event like this one.
All money in the bank. Loved it.
2007 saw the first year that I went into races with a decent unbroken base of training. As a result, my performances were just on a whole new level. I raced Gold Coast Half Ironman and took about an hour and a quater off my time from the year before and in the process, managed to get some qualifying points for the Long Course team to go to the Netherlands in August 2008. I threw my $65 into the hat to register for selection and figured that I would see where that took me.
Ironman Australia 2008 saw me with an excellent plan to go fast. That plan was perfect..... for someone else, but for me, things came unstuck at about the 140km mark of the bike and it turned into a fairly long and painful day that taught me much. I was a bit bummed after this result as up until then I was unstoppable with fast and dramatic improvements. While sitting around feeling sorry for myself on the Monday after the race, I opened my email and found that I had been selected on the team to travel to the Netherlands for the Long Course. I had in the preceeding weeks decided that if I got the call up, I would not go but the timing of the email was just too spooky not to jump upon as a 'sign'. I sent my acceptance then and there and got back up on the horse that had shown me who was boss not 24 hours earlier.
Almere
Almere is the place in the Netherlands where the race was to take place. In the early 70s, the place did not exist. It is about a half hour drive East from the outskirts of Amsterdam on the main highway. It is entirely reclaimed land and as a result is flat flat flat. While flat sounds appealing for a triathlon, Almere has the unfortunate positioning right on the enormous inland sea in the centre of the Netherlands and is windy. Windier than a windy thing that has wind.
Travel
Being like 99.9% of triathletes, I have a job that of course gets in the way of real life. As a result, I could only obtain leave to travel over to Europe so that I would end up there 3 days before the race. I did a bit of reading into jet lag and it seemed that 10 days is acceptable but 14 is better for that shift in time zone. Oh well, I did not have that opportunity and figured that as I work shift work anyway, it could not be so bad right? Well not so true. I did struggle a whole lot more than expected. Nothing debilitating come race day but just a 10-15% or so reduction in what my body normally produces for known efforts. If I travel again a similar time zone shift, I will be taking a full 14 days.
Race Week
My parents as always were super stars and when I told them of our plans to go and race, immediately offered to have my 4 year old son stay with them while just myself and Court went over. After a quick think we took them up on the offer as Court is due again in December and pretty much, this would be the last opportunity for quite a number of years to travel 'solo'. This meant that we were pretty much free to do as we pleased with accomodation and timings which really made the race week very very cruisy.
After arriving in town and finding our accomodation, I hooked up with one of the Ironchicks from my club who was racing for Czech Republic to go and survey the cycle course. Like I said above, flat flat flat...... And WINDY. When we got onto the course proper we were met with windmills as far as the eye could see. Oh dear.
The Dutch are a very literal bunch and they ran the race this way. There was to be a carbo dinner, race brief and opening ceremony all together. They had these but it all just felt like a box ticking exercise. It really seemed as though they were a bit out of their depth and had just rocked up with a heap of cash and the army (yes the army, they pretty much shut the whole place down) and put on the race. there were no bad experiences to be had but it was all a bit 'fake' if you get my meaning. just as an example, all of the compulsory things like briefing, rego, awards etc were all in different places and unsigned. Most of them were half an hour apart and all of them were an hour return trip from where the 'official' accomodation was.
Anyway, eventually we were all registered and settled in and it was time to rack the bikes. Again, the literal Dutch reared their heads in the bike compound. I grabbed one of the officials and asked where the bike and run exits were as they were not marked at all. The reply I got was 'You swim 4km (we will get to this later) come and get your bike, ride One-Hundered-Twenty kilometre then run 30 kilometre.........' Ummm, yeah I get it, a triathlon. LOL. Oh well, I wasn't planning on leading the swim so I guessed I would just follow someone.
Race Day
Forecast was for 29 degrees and sunshine with moderate to strong South Westerly wind (apparently the favoured direction for this course). Again, the literal Dutch were on the money and a sunny 29 degree day was what we got wind and all. As I mentioned above, the race distances were 4km swim, 120 bike and 30km run. The swim was a two lap affair with one small lap then around the first half of that lap again then shoot off along the shore to a harbour then in and out of the water. The bike was a 2 lap on mostly road and bike path. Dutch bike paths are pretty much like roads anyway and they did get narrow in parts but nothing dangerous. the run was a 2x15km loop through a forrest section and some exposed parts along the sea wall. All in all, a pretty good course. They run an ironman every year and did so the day before our race and we did the same course but minus one lap on bike and run with a lengthened swim.
Lengthened swim. Hmmmm. 200m longer for us than the Ironman...... talk about drop the ball on this one. Hah. The swim ended up being anything from 4.8 to 5.1km depending on who you asked. The most believeble report I got was from a euro pro who was pretty annoyed after the race and have their Garmin to one of the kayak club and he paddled the course in 5.1km. So be it, it was the same for everybody. My guess is that they moved the outer buoy 200m to make up the extra 200m. unfortunately you swam out and back to it twice (4x200) and then across from it once (1x200) to get to the harbour. this would make the ~5km claims about right. The only issue with the extra length was that they still enforced the planned time cut off and there were many many people who got disqualified as a result.
Swim
The swim start was on dry land and the Age Group race was to start 30 minutes after the male pros and 25 after the females. Due to the lengthened course, the female pros were just coming through when we started and it was pretty rough. Europeans being like they are can be a feisty bunch. I was quite happy with the idea of a dry land start as it would avoid the usual ironman problem where everybody goes from being vertical to horizontal and suddenly you are wearing feet in the nether reigons. It did not matter as this was crazy brutal. It was more of a punch up than starting two rows back at Ironman Australia. We hit the water and guys were just jumping straight onto your back and pushing you under. Thankfully I have done heaps of mass start training at swim squad and am pretty used to getting beat on but this was just mental. One of the Aussie guys got a dislocated finger early on. A guy on a surf ski put it back in for him and he got back to it. As he was a tad pissed about the finger, the next bloke who hit him, he gave some rib music to. The recipient did not take to it kindly and punched him clean in the jaw knocking him out!!! The surf ski guys got to him quick and got him out of the water but that was the end of his race. A very expensive 800m swim!!!! Very lucky that a finger was alll he had wrong after that one.
My swim plan was pretty easy. As a wet suit brings me waaaay up the field, I can usually get into packs with guys who normally school me in the pool. After the start cleared out and we were about 1500m into it, I was all alone. I could see the bulk of the field about 50m to my left and figured I must be way off course. I had swum the start loop of the course and had found some sighting markers for the traverse to the harbour a couple of days before and was seeing them well and hitting every marker buoy. Still, the others stayed over there. i was starting to think that maybe I was supposed to keep on the left of the buoys or something? I did not get too worried as i knew that eventually, i would turn left towards them to go into the harbour and normally, my navigation is pretty good so I backed myself and kept on with my plan. All i focused on was catching water and touching my thigh with every stroke. Long and easy.
It seemed that backing my navigation was spot on as about 200m before the harbour, the swim officials lined up about 20 surf skis and kayaks and 'directed' everybody back onto what I thought was the course. Things got a bit crowded again but eventually we made it to the water exit in the harbour. There was a run of about 500m to the bike compound. i did not see the timing mats all day except one on the run turn so don't know what contained what.
Swim Time 1:26:37. 29th position.
For the 4km, I was expecting around 1:02-1:05 which is about 1:37 per 100m and with the 5.1k m actual swim, I averaged 1:41. Not so bad, not so great but passable.
Bike
I will make no secret that I expected the bike to go fairly well. It is far and away my strongest leg and as a result, I have of late had a tendancy to get excited and push way too hard. This is what brought me unstuck earlier in the year. What I did not expect was the quality of the field. The course was mostly a square with a little in and out section in the middle then some twisty stuff along pathways back to the lap start in town before heading out again. I got well and truely schooled in what I thought would be my chance to shine. I hit the 90km mark in 2:19 which would be near on the fastest Age group bike in any half ironman in Australia but these guys were riding away from me. Having a think to myself at this point, I decided that I was not going to let myself blow to bits and I was feeling really 'heavy' still as a result of the time zone shift. Again nothing dramatic but I was having to hold heart rates a little higher than normal to push similar gears. I could see this compounding later on the run. I pulled off dramatically and pretty much sat up the last hour back to town.
The support on the course was amazing. There was one section that was like something out of Le Tour with people 10 deep spilling onto the road and leaving a gap for the bikes to get through. It was very very hard not to turn it up along there just from the energy in the air. Awesome.
I rolled into town feeling pretty good and ready to run as I had my nutrition worked out perfectly from a winter of endless laps around a circuit with my club. Very glad with the outcome and it is a plan I will be sticking with for my next longer race as well.
Bike Time 3:12:01 21st position (13th fastest bike split)
This was a tad slower than anticipated but boy did it blow. There were some sections where I was in my 54/12 gearing combo and spinning at 100+ RPM but was still feeling like it was down hill then there were bits where I was wishing I could change into my little ring and just nurse it home. Ouch. Great stuff. I was expecting 3:05-3:10 which is about 37.9-38 km/hr average but ended up about a half kay an hour slower. Still acceptable but again just that little bit 'off' based on effort.
Run
The last long distance triathlon I did, I got 3km into the run the spent a nice 4 and a half hour walk looking for change to finish the Marathon. I was determined that this was not going to happen again through my own stupidity like last time. I got onto the run course and felt OK straight away. I had planned to take a fuel belt with concentrated carb drink like I use on the bike but give the supplied gels a try at the first aid station just to mix it up a bit. Wow. those gels were sensational. Every time I had one, it felt like someone put their hand in my back and gave me a shove. I have scoured the internet since for them but can't find how to get them into Australia. I tossed the fuel belt to one of the Aussie on the side lines at the firsts opportunity.
I planned to very simply run the first half hour based on perceived exertion then see where my heart rate would settle. I ended up running with an American guy who had a garmin on and we were in the 4:45-4:50min/km range which was exactly what my perception was telling me. I hit the 6km mark and had a look at my heart rate monitor and it was through the roof. I was running nearly at my aerobic threshold but at a pace a good 45 seconds/km slower. Oh dear. I thought for a moment about just turning off the monitor and seeing where I would end up but history tells me that is not a smart thing to do. I pulled back the pace until my heart rate dropped into what I knew I could maintain to the finish.
Run Turn
By now, it was getting pretty hot and every station saw me with 4 sponges and 4 water cups with two to drink and 2 to pour over me. I was surprised by the humidity and it must have been in the late 60s/early 70s. Still, I was going OK and the gels were going down well still. I was keeping an eye on the categories going by me and only every 20 minutes or so did one of my race go by. It was the first time I had ever been racing for position alone. As this race distance was to be wrapped up after this one and revert to the Double Olympic format, I was not interested in setting a benchmark but interested in not letting the whole world run by me.
Eventually, the accumulation of 5 hours well above my heart rate and a 5.1km swim started to catch up with me and it was getting hard. I remembered my coach telling me that at Ironman Western Australia when I had my break through race, I looked like I was letting it be hard the last half hour. While this race today was unfolding into a bit of a struggle fest from the 20km mark of the run, I started employing some techniques to 'make it easy'. I started high fiving all the kids and giving a shout out to anyone who called my name from the crowd. It really worked to keep my mind off the task and was a real buzz experience wise but I let the pace slip and slip and slip. Finding the happy medium here would be the holy grail.
I took a look over my shoulder coming along the sea wall towards the final 3 or 4 kays and there was no one to be seen so I decided that I could allow myself a little walk. Silly me. Once you walk, it is so hard to get going again. Walk run, walk run and on it went for a couple of kays. Noone was passing me and I was actually catching a couple up ahead one of whom was the lead Aussie and the other a guy in my race. My goal from there was noone was going to pass me from my category and I was going to get the two guys ahead. I got Shane, the Aussie about 2 kays from the finish and left about 50m to the guy infront for a while.
Epic Sprint Finish
The fella in front of my was from Great Britain and in my category. The finish chute was a wierd set up where you ran along for about 100m then did a sharp U turn then ran back about 50m to the line. The only hills of any note on the entire course was a bridge they built on the run course to cross over the bike exit/entry and a 5m long ramp up to the finish. I have never been one for the sprint finish as I always looked at it that we have gone all this way so what is one place going to matter/ well to me at that time, I may have well been racing for first! I edged up onto the guy's inside shoulder approaching the u turn so that he had to run the long way around with me on the inside and probably would not have know how close I was. I knew I could hold some form of crazy leg sprint for 10 seconds so dropped da bomb and let rip. Mr GB took maybe 3 or 4 steps trying to counter but turned it off and I kept going. Now, remember this ramp I mentioned? Well, much hilarity ensued when I hit it and BOOM!!!! Both hammies cramped followed quickly by the quads! Only 3 more steps to the finish line!! Suck it up!!
.........
Made It!!!!!
Run Time 2:45:25 position 29th
I was aiming for a 2:30 run split. Where 2:45 was a good 15 minutes slower than that, i feel that under the conditions I did OK. Actually, for the entire race, I did OK. Nothing great, not shameful, just OK. To be honest, I am very pleased with that outcome. The time means nothing but the entire intent of even doing this race was to learn about how the body reacts to travel and the junk between the ears reacts to a Big event like this one.
All money in the bank. Loved it.
What a great report, Plaz. Thanks a million for it.
Congratulations again, and hope I meet you around the traps really soon.
Muz
Congratulations again, and hope I meet you around the traps really soon.
Muz
Awesome report! Well done again Plaz!
Great report. What a fantastic result Well done.
Jo
Jo
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