I flew in on Wednesday, arrived later in the day, and pretty much went to bed after a brief look around the establishment. The accommodation was pretty average - I have stayed in a back-packers that was worse - but that was $60 per week rather than $195 per night. I had set very low expectations for the TriNZ side of the organization, and the race organisers - due to previous experiences and the general feel from information prior to the event. Also it is better to be pleasantly surprised when it is better than expected, than to be bitterly disappointed when expectations are not met.
The laptop died on the trip over - well the power supply did. This caused a bit of stress, but after spending most of a day trying to get a new one, I realized there was little hope of getting any work done - it was hotel room, with a terrible TV and a book - oh dear. One hyperactive athlete with a short attention span that is bored going to be quite bored quite soon...
The training build-up was quite relaxed - a swim on Thursday, and a bike on Saturday morning. It was actually quite windy on Saturday early in the morning - and the prospect of a windy race was not that exciting. a few weeks prior to the race, the Perth weather was looking very mild, with some daily highs under 20 degrees, so I was optimistic of a calm morning with quite mild temperatures. However the week before saw temperatures rise over 30 degrees - which really was not in my plan or my favour.
The course was a mostly out and back swim in the swan river. Water quality being just below poor - with visibility around 20-30cm in the clear parts. My only swim in there was going to be race day - I didn't need anymore pathogens or radioactivity than I already had. The bike course was 4 laps of 20km, on effectively 3 out-and-back legs, with the middle leg on a 3 lane (each way) motorway. I was pretty sure that with just under 700 athletes on a 20km circuit, and of quite different abilities, that there was going to be some large 'groups". After the drafting farce of the gold coast shorter distance world champs, the race organisers had decided on a 12m draft zone and that drafting was now prohibited (presumably this is worse than illegal). The run course was 4 laps of 5km - which included 3 out-and-backs, so you were never very far away and you were likely to see the people just in front and just behind at very regular intervals!
Race briefing the day before was a bit of a shocker, and I quickly realised that asking questions would be futile as no one in the organization had a clue what was going on. The briefing instructions generally followed along the lines: "there will be no [insert vital information here]", a pause and someone from the organising committee comes up to the speaker and says something to him, then "sorry, there will be [vital piece of information]". The athletes handbook - with all the course information and rules etc had only come out on the Monday before the race, and the main thing we got from the briefing was that most of that information was incorrect.
Race day dawned and I was pretty relaxed. The first glitch of the day was that the milk for the breakfast cereal was frozen! Even turning the fridge to very low (ie higher temperature!) the day before was not enough to solve this little issue. A few of us popped down to transition early to set everything up, and then back to the hotel, which was not too far away from race start. The races had wave starts - elites starting at 8am, and various age groups - in a very random order and time interval there after. Transition closed at 7:30am, and my wave did not start until 8:45 (the last wave!). 45minutes of relaxing in the hotel room was pretty good - and I even had a shower just to feel a little fresher. I really wanted to go or a warm-up run - but the injured leg was not going to allow that.
I went to the start and just caught the elite start. The wind was quite strong and the first leg was straight into the wind. I got in the water and had a good warm-up and tried to sort out a few land-marks to sight off, but there were none really. The first main marker buoys were also a fair way away.
After the warm-up you had to get out and walk up to a holding pen, and then were allowed in the water just before your wave start. I was in the biggest age group apparently, and there was around 65 in our wave. Most at the start line were a nervous relaxed, and the main sentiment was "we can all swim out own line and don’t need to bash each other up" - which was great! I started on the left of the main group, with a few very nervous guys to my let - who looked like they were ready to breaststroke 3km if they had to. They started a count-down from 10sec to go - and I piped up "do we go on 3 or 2?". I went on 3 and I think everyone else went on about 2.5! I took off quite fast, and it was pretty hard to see where we were suppose to be going. I headed or what looked like some buoys - and tried to check where I was in the bunch. There was no-one to my left, and I could see a few to the right, but they were back a little and quite a long way to the right. I might be leading!! So I ploughed on, and then after around 400m I came across a paddle board obstructing my forward progress with a chap pointing to the right and yelling "go across, go across...". OK - not ideal, the first buoy is around 100m directly to my right, I have been heading for the return leg buoys. Damn it! So I adjusted my line a little and headed or where I thought the far turn marker was, and started gently heading back on course. Around another 4-500m later I had a group of 5 swimmers just to my right, and I figured I was swimming slightly on the inside line and they were slightly on the outward. Plan B - get in the group and go the same speed for less effort. So I went over and slotted myself into the group - in around 3rd spot. This was all good, although the leading two were not swimming that straight, and being pretty rough, it was hard to get a reasonable draft. But I felt there was a bit of advantage, and they could do a bit more work sighting too - which was tricky in the conditions. A little further along the first leg, I did have a little "bumping into" incident, very mild, but the clash of arms did manage to break my watch strap and I felt the HR monitor slip away to the bottom of the swan river. Bugger - that was expensive. The first leg felt very long, and after we turned at the top we were starting to swim through a lot of those that had started in the earlier waves. So it had gone from battling the head-on chop to weaving through plenty of obstacles. The group of 5 was now a group of two. I was following mostly, although did take my own line a few times when I thought it was better. I was happy to get out of the water, it felt like a very long swim, and it was certainly more than 3km - even if I did go off course a little.
The first shorter leg of the bike I did go at a reasonably solid effort, just to get passed some slower traffic - feeling it was much safer to pass when I am going 10-15kph faster than to just cruise past gradually. You could certainly pick out the northern hemisphere athletes - they were very uncomfortable riding on the let hand side! The first turn around came very quickly, and it was quite tight (one narrow lane each way). I accelerated quite strongly out of the turn, as I had just passed a couple before the corner, and there was another rider just in front. Unfortunately the rider in front decided to dart from the left to the right side of the lane, and I was already going a fair amount quicker than he was, starting my passing mauver. I quickly dove to the let and passed on the let (a little illegal), and just missed clipping his rear wheel. About a km further up the road I hear a whistle blowing - not a good sign, and glance to the left. Mr draft-buster is beside me, and starts yelling "drafting, drafting..!!!", but he is looking just behind me - whew (not that there was anything in front of me). Mr "chop-me-off" must have been sitting right on my wheel. Enjoy your 5 minutes in the penalty box! I did have a couple of riders go passed - most I would stick with for half a lap or so, but decided after around 10km to ride a comfortable steady, and try to save as much as possible for the run. I was passing quite a few on the bike, and just kept eating and drinking, and trying to stay comfortable. The longer out-and-back on the main motorway was actually very good, easy to pass people, and not really that much drafting at all. It was far better than I expected. My second scare came at the end of the 3rd lap of the bike (4 laps of 20km), and I was overtaking on the off ramp from the motorway. As passed and began to get back to the left side o the road, I managed to drop my front wheel into a small metal channel that was running across the road on an angle - it was just wide enough to fit the front wheel in, and I couldn’t get it out! The back wheel decided it wanted to pass the front wheel, and I am now thinking this is going to hurt a bit (I am doing 45+kph). After a little fish-tailing I managed to ride out of the end of the channel and somehow managed to stay up-right - a big whew! I was reasonably happy to get of the bike, although I did feel pretty comfortable - and felt I had plenty in the tank. The let butt had given me a bit of grief at around 45km, and then did tighten up quite a bit at 60km, so I new the run was not going to be great unfortunately.
Made myself comfy in transition and headed out on the run. It was starting to get hot -mid 30's now. I had gone through over 4 bottles on the bike (in just over 2 hours), and still felt a bit dry. I took the first lap of the run very conservatively, although did start to feel pretty good after around 3km and started to lift the pace a little. I walked each aid station, more to give the legs a break that to get the fluids - but getting the fluids in was certainly a bonus. Then at around 7km my leg popped, a crampy tighten and it then a bit of a pull. Bugger - I was optimistically hoping to nurse it through. Then it was pretty much walk-run. Just run where I could and find a pace that settled everything as much as possible. It was a little weird - as the entire left leg just stopped working really - so it was a nerve issue rather than a muscle one - which at least is probably better for longer term recovery. So now rather than the occasional person passing and going past the occasional runner, it was everyone going past - fast! I managed to limpy my way up the finish shoot - happy to be done - legs were pretty toast, and the butt was killing me. No finish T-shirt, towel or anything like that, just the 50 cent finishers medal. A few bananas and apples were available and that was about it. Trading war stories was all that was left!
So all in all it was good to see where I was at. I was where I thought I was! Still very frustrating at not being able to give it my best shot with the injuries, but them's the breaks! After sifting through the results, I managed 8th in the old buggers category and around 146th overall. For my age category; 2nd in the swim, 4th fastest bike and 35th fastest run. Now I just need to get over the sunburn and chaffing! ouch...
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