Saturday was the World triathlon championships here in Southport, Gold Coast. After the Aquathon on Wednesday I was feeling really positive about the race as I ran and swan really well.
After all the Ausie talk about the water temperature being 22oC all week it's strange how come race day morning the temperature suddenly drop to 19oC so it would be a wetsuit optional race. When it's optional everyone wears them as you can swim faster with them. I was rather gutted as I was looking forward to a non wetsuit swim for a change, plus I'm a half decent swimmer so not having a wetsuit on wasn't going to slow me down as much as the weaker swimmers.
Over 100 Male 25-29 athletes were lined up on the start line on the beach all in wetsuits, and we were made to stand there and back in the morning sun for 5mins before the start, they wouldn't even let us into the water to stay cool. The hooter went and we all charged into the water for the 200m sprint to the first turn buoy. It was carnage everyone was on top of each other, I just couldn't seem to get into any rhythm and to top it all off I had the breathing problems that I had been get in the past few races back home. My breathing just went so erratic and the only way to calm it down was to break out the pack and do some head up breast stroke stroke until it calmed down again. I really don't know what is causing this, I thought it might have been the cold water back home, but that obviously isn't the case. I really need to get to the bottom of this as it's really starting to piss me off as it's killing my races. Once I got my breathing back to normal I was able to get a good pace going and start to pull back so of the Field, however the fast guy's were already out of sight and I ended up coming out of the water in 23:07 (78th place), I knew I had a lot of work to do on the bike and run if I was to get any sort of respectable time.
The bike course was pan flat and was going to be fast. With the course being so flat the race turned into team time trails with massive packs chasing each other around the course. It was impossible to get round the course without drafting, unless you were going to sit on the front of the pack and let everyone sit on your wheel. For the first lap of the bike I was busting a gut to try and get away from everyone and pass anyone I caught on the course, but then I would turn at the turn point and see 20 guy's behind me or have a group of guy's come past me. I know your supposed to drop back when riders come past you, but if that were the case I would of had to freewheel the whole course to try and stay out of the draft zone, and I'm just not going to let guy's get away, not when the whole field are riding in packs, it was just getting silly and dangerous at times. So much so that there were some horrific crashes. Frank Boyne told me of one that he just managed to avoid. A rider from a pack heading back to the start of the loop swerved out to the right for some reason and went over the white line the collided with and oncoming pack, even worse though, the draft buster motorcycle was behind them so he slammed on the breaks and ended up coming down and sliding into the back of the already mangled pack of cycles on the ground. I've not heard what injuries came from that crash, but I can imagine they were pretty serious.
Thankfully my bike was uneventful and came off the bike in a large 25-29 group (82nd) ready to run as many folk down as possible. I was feeling great on the run, possible due to riding in a pack for most of the bike, then again so had everyone else, and started to work my way through the field. It was starting to get hotter on the run course, but thankfully there were 4 water stations the 5k loop. I could really see how the heat was affecting me as once I had gone through a water station and soaked myself I was able to up the pace again, which would tail off slowly until I made it to the next water station. As always there was great GB support on the bike course cheering everyone on which always help when you are starting to tire at the end of a race. I was able to keep running hard all the way to the line ending up in 62nd place in 2:06:51. Not great as I was really hoping to be further up the field than that, it was a competitive field and who knows if I had a good swim how would that of changed things, no one will ever know.
Watched the Elite men race yesterday, man Alistair Brownlee is amazing. When we saw him exit T2 with a 1:06 deficit we really though this wasn't going to be his day, but with in a lap and a half he, Gomez and Fredeno had already ran in to the lead. I don't know what time he did for his 10k but it must have been fast as he was motoring past us on every lap. Today is juniors and Elite women, hopefully we'll see some more British success with us also taking 1,2 and 4th in the women's U23 on Friday.
It's now a bit of chill out time for me before I get stuck into preparation for the long distance champs in Perth in October, so I'm heading up to Cairns on Monday to do some diving and sightseeing and then heading to Ulluru for 2 days. I'm really looking forward to getting away from training for a while as it's been a long season and with Perth it will be prolonged by a month from what I would normally do.
I'll keep you posted on how the tans coming along :-).
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