Well there are good races and bad races....unfortunetly for the first time in a while i had a bad one..
I rocked into Gold Coast at about 10am Wednesday morning (after a 2 hour delay) and what a shock to the system that was. Having been training in a crappy cold Perth winter, the warm 27 degree weather of the east coast was a pleasant surprise! Nothing but relaxing, a quick visit to Movie World and putting my bike together, then off to bed!
Thursday morning up nice and early for a nice ocean swim, then back to the airport to pick up Rosie yaaay! We then met up with Chad and Sky for an easy run over the run course. This is where problem number 1 presented itself. Just before reaching the summit of the main climb in the run the itb in my left knee decided to go. It was instant pain and i don't know how it happened, but it did :( we were bloody lucky though that a runner that we'd picked up along the way, her husband was waiting for us, so a lift back down was greatly appreciated.
Friday, was time for a ride over the course with Chad, Sky and hot favourite Sean O'neill. T'was all going well until about 10k's in, right in front of me, Andy came off on one of the big down hills. Originally i thought he was knocked out and had a broken arm, but my suspicions were fortunetly wrong and apart from a horribly buckled front wheel he was ok.
Before we knew it Saturday was here and it was time to register, and get my ski dropped off. Problem number 2, wrong ski. However it was a Saturday and there was nothing i could do about it..So we registered went to race briefing, and put are bikes into transition, then straight into bed for an early night.
Race day: Up at 5:30, for a good brekky of Powerbars and bananas, YUM! Then down to the race start, litteraly a 200m from the front door of where we were staying. Was actually a bit rushed to get the wetty on and didnt quite get the warm up i wanted, but not to worry, before i knew it bang the gun went and i was off onto the 1.9k swim! I took a bit of a widder line around the first bouy but still ended up getting pretty knocked around and by the time i got to the "run around the can part" in the first part of the swim, the stronger team swimmers were making their moves. I finished of the swim reasonably strongly, but for some reason my arms just wouldn't fire, so i ended up with a pretty crap swim time.
It was then a short run up the beach back to the lake for the paddle let. F@#k did i struggle to get my gloves and vest on though! After a few harsh words...to my gloves...i was off onto the ski and although it is my weakest leg, was actually feeling pretty good. I'd paddled through the first 3 or 4k of ocean pretty well and then crossed through the surf into the river. Problem 3: long story short, alot, alot of weeds and sticks caught (unknown to me) caught in my rudder for the whole paddle.
From here i put down one of the worst paddles of the day and didnt realise my problem untill lifting my ski out of the water. Unfortunetly i lost alot of energy from here and didnt get to put down a really good run and a solid ride :(
I crossed the line spent and pretty annoyed, but hey you can't win them all...
Untill next time..
Cheers
