After leaving Oz in December 2008 (temporarily i am discovering) in fairly good condition, i returned to the cold of the British winter and got stuck into some decent training (after Christmas that is). I'd forgotten how hard running in winter here is! The Blue Mtns had equipped me with some decent cold training weather, but Welsh winter days are bitter, wet and short. Not enjoyable but necessary. By the beginning of February i'd had enough, so off i set to South East Asia. In just under 11 weeks i think i went to the gym maybe twice and drank far too much! Needless to say, when i returned to the UK in late April i was in atrocious shape and training started in earnest.
After 6 weeks training it was time for the first race of the season. It was a Half Ironman Aquathon at Eton Rowing Club, which is the venue for the Olympic Rowing in 2012. So, after some solid training and no tapering i felt ready to have a crack at the 2km swim and Half Marathon, just hoping to get through it and feel fairly good during and after. With no huge expectations i was satisfied with the 12th place finish (out of 63) in a time of 2:02 (swim:34.49, run:1:28.02). Another 3 weeks solid training and 1 day tapering, it was time for Half Ironman. Not sure exactly why i chose a Half Ironman distance race for the first one, especially when the bike training volume has not been huge and the goal has always been to target Olympic Distance races. However, the result could go towards a potential place on GBs Long Course team for the Worlds in Perth (Oct 09), so that was at the back of my mind in case i surprised myself with a half decent performance. So, here's the race report from Sunday 28th June 2009:
The 7.00am start was delayed by 15mins due to the dense fog hovering over the lake and the roads, which is always good for me as i'm always "running late". To be fair, i was ready on time for this one but the queue for the can was quite big! With a crowd in the vicinity of about 300 competitors the race was divided into 3 waves. Seniors, Vets and Teams & Sheilas. Senior wave was by far the biggest and a large crowd congregated on the edge of the lake. The fog meant i couldn't see any of the buoys so the plan was to get into a rhythm and sit in behind someone that seemed to know where they were going. Well, the start was a disaster. Didn't get away quick enough, got swamped by swimmers and managed to get a cut above the right eye and some dislodged goggles from a stray elbow. What happened next has never happened to me before in a race. I started to panic and lost all ability to breath properly. I started to look for the nearest canoe as my lunges screamed at me for more O2. Somehow, i still don't know how, i pulled myself to the side of the pack and slowly attempted a normal swimming rhythm which seemed to do the trick, and finished the swim quite strongly, 4:50 down on the leader. Transition was awful, and it was all my fault for not being more organised. Couldn't find my pockets for my gels, sunnies were missing a lens, i'd lost my watch on the swim and so finally 2 mins later exited transition. The ride was awful too. Never felt comfortable, and as has become all too common on rides was regularly overtaken. Transition 2 was much better and started the run annoyed with the ride and determined to take back all those lost places. The heat of the day had by now established itself and sat at about 26C, taking its toll on many athletes, but with all my Oz racing and training experience i felt pretty comfortable. I finished strongly and for the run ended 24th out of 282 finishers. Overall result not great (details below), but lots of things to take away from this first race to work on. These include:
- Be more thorough when preparing gear in transition
- Go hard at the start to get away from big packs
- Train harder
- Do more volume on bike in training
- Call bike shop to find out when new bike is arriving
- Kick earlier on run as i still had a bit at the end
- Train harder, sleep less
- Buy new watch
So, there it is. First race done. Looking forward to applying some of this to the next race. British summer is abnormally hot so training is actually more than enjoyable at the moment, all we need now is an outdoor pool and a 50m pool thats actually open all the time, but we'll save that grievance for another blog.
Swim: 32.34
Ride: 2:53.41
Run: 1:31.13
Total: 5:01.19
