My last week and a half on the GC were pretty jam packed training, a 2 day trip to Frazer Island and helping out at a local charity triathlon race in aid of breast cancer.
The trip to Frazer island was amazing, it's a sand island with a 75mile stretch of beach where your only way around is by 4x4. I went with a tour group so we were travelling around in a 4x4 bus which was cool, but at times you were thinking how in earth was this bus going to get through the trails. One of the disappointing thinks about Fraser island is that the sea is so amazing you just was to get in a swim, but it is so dangerous that you would probably die, either from the incredibly strong rip which would pull you out to sea for miles, the jelly fish if they stung you would kill you and if avoided those two the tiger sharks would eat you, and there were lots of them I saw them. Also the tour guide said the biggest ever tiger shark caught was caught off Frazer island and it was 8meters long, that was longer than our tour bus, so with all that I was quite content to stay on the beach. In contrast though, what was amazing was that the inland lakes were fresh water, as the sand would act as a filter and filter the water for hundreds of years. These I had to go for a swim in as they were just so beautiful.
After I got back from my trip to Frazer island I only had a few session left to do before my taper started. One of the the sessions was an hour and a half run with the Southport guy's in the local wetlands which was a conservation sight. IT was great to be running off road I as I hadn't really don much of that since arriving, but one of the best things were the number of kangaroos that were around. The guy's warned me about them before we started but I figured we would be luck to see one. Practically every corner we turned there was at least one if not more and some with little joeys in their pouches, it was just great to see. One of my final rides was the beachmount climb which i did earlier in my stay, but this time I took my camera to capture the views as they were just amazing, plus it was a really nice climb which I loved doing so was happy to go back up it again.
I have to say a big thank you to the Southport Triathlon team for welcoming me to their club while I was there and also a big thank you to Gus Sweeney the head coach who was a great help while I was out there. You guy's made me feel like I was back home training with my club. Hopefully see you guy's in Hawaii in 2011, good with your race season guy's.Although I was sad about leaving the GC as it had become like home over the past 7 weeks, i was looking forward to getting to Perth to see another part of Australia which everyone says is just beautiful, plus I was looking forward to meeting up with the GB team and to get racing again. First though I had to get packed and try and find away around the massive excess baggage charge I was likely to face at the airport. I decided to as much of my clothing into my carry on bag and even take the small rucksack off on my check in bag an took that onto the plane full of kit to try and get my baggage weight as light as possible so my charge would be as small as possible. After packing my bike though i was not so confident this would save me much as my bike box seemed to weigh a ton, It felt even heavier than when I came out, I couldn't understand it, so I just figured I was going to have to take the hit on the excess baggage charge. It must have been my lucky day though, when I checked my luggage in the girl at the desk just ask the weight of my bike, which I lied and said 23kg as it still had it's 23kg tag on it from the way out. My bag ended up being 15kg and she just checked it in and told me to take my bike to over sized baggage, no mention of any charge, so I wasn't hanging around there for her to change her mind. I practically sprinted off to the over sized baggage desk to get ride of my bike before anyone could say anything. That was an absolute bonus of a start to my trip Perth.
I've been in Perth now for 3 days, it seem a nice city from what I've seen and I've met up with some really nice guy's and girl from the GB team so that has been nice training and socialising with them. It's definitely a far smaller affair out here for the long distance race than it was for the Olympic distance, the GB team for a start has only 79 members in it and I think the over all entry is about 700, hopefully this means the drafting issues from the GC will not happen here even though it is another pan flat bike course. However the strong winds could be a strong factor on the bike and the it's supposedly going to be 31oC tomorrow so the run could also be hard even though it's flat as there's no shelter anywhere on the course. I'm looking forward to it though, it should be a good race.
Well I need to go and get my bike sorted out as I have to go and check it into transition soon before we have the racing briefing.
Good luck to all the GB team racing tomorrow.
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