In an effort to have the blog branch out, this post will be in English. Whether we will gain any readers from this I still don’t know (hell, I might even lose a couple). But here it is anyway: the Race Report from one hell of a competition.
Preparation:
As most of you know my pre race preps were less than ideal. For starters, I had to do a somewhat unexpected trip back home to Norway two weeks earlier. Although it was great to have a feel of the snow it meant my lead up was interrupted. And as if that wasn’t enough, I cought a pretty bad cold (did anyone say swine flu?) on the flight back and was feeling pretty shit for the best part of the week leading up to departure. But hey, a minor cold or flu has never killed anyone, right?
24/3: Wednesday night was spent making sure everything was ready to go, got the bike case (read: cardboard box) as well as wetsuit, tri suit and a bit of extra training gear all packed and started to feel the pre race tension/anxiety/anticipation slowly coming on.
25/3: Thursday morning we headed to the airport, got x number of boxes, bags and suitcases checked in and on our way. With a 2 hour stopover in Sydney, the flight to Port Macquarie took in total 4 ½ hours. We were staying with Phil and Gay, one of our exchange students’ parents. Gay picked us up at the airport and took us to their house where I almost immediately started putting the bike together. I don’t trust baggage handlers and wanted to make sure everything was ok as soon as possible. Then we went for a drive with Phil to check out the bike and run legs. As the nor-easterly started to pick up I had a few not-so-nice thoughts about what that would mean on race day. Dinner and an early bed, more anticipation but starting to really look forward to racing.
26/3: Registration. Got to the athletes’ village and my heart started beating just a little bit faster. Did the registration and went for a walk through the expo to see if I could find some last minute gadgets that could magically make me go faster (I did, they’re called Zipp 1080’s). Treated myself to a fresh pair of x-socks, and stocked up on gels before we headed home. Sarah had caught my cold (oink oink) and was starting to feel the effects so we decided it was time to get home. I did a lap on the bike to make sure post flight adjustments were good and to check out the circuit, especially the near-deadly 10.8 % climb on the run-in to town. Decided that the best approach was to get up as fast as possible (fast and painful=better than slow and painful!) and take it easy for a minute or so after the biggest climb.
27/3: Competitor briefing. Nothing too exciting, just your standard security warnings. After the briefing I went back to the house to pack up my transition bags and give the bike a last overhaul. We had to check in our gear the day before, and got handed the bag in transition so took a bit extra care to make sure everything went in the bag in the right order to make it easier in transition. Early bed again, set the alarm(s) for 4AM and went to sleep.
RRRrrrrrrinng... RRRRRiiiiingg.. The phone’s going off and i’m thinking “surely it can’t be 4AM already??” I was right. My dear mum decided that 10:45PM was a great time to call. Thanks mum.. Can’t really remember what I said but I doubt it was very polite at that stage.
Race day
This is it! Got up, got into the tri suit and runners, another layer and I was good to go. Breakfast for champions: A bowl of weet bix and a couple pieces of toast with nutella, accompanied by a high magnesium sports drink. And a coffee.
Got to the transition tent for race day registration around 5:30, checked the bike and got into the wetsuit. With 20 minutes to go before start I startedto make my way through the hoards of nervous competitors and (even more nervous onlookers) and into the water. And then we wait.
BANG! The cannon (yes, cannon) fires and 1500 competitors start making their way through the maze of arms and legs. I made sure I took it nice and easy and took the swim more or less as a warm-up for what was coming. The swim time of 1:11 was still faster than I thought, even though I was thinking “this isn’t going fast enough” a few times during the swim.
T1 went fairly painless, got “un-suited” and put the bike gear on.
I started off in a group of 10-13 riders and we stayed together through town but as soon as we hit the “Cathie straight” we stretched out considerably. Before we got to this point I had encountered the first technical issue of the day: the bloody Polar speed sensor was not working! So I considered stopping to see if I could fix it, but thought “well, I’m in a nice flow at the moment, I’ll have a look later”. Much later, I still thought I was in a decent flow and had no desire to stop. The hill went ok, as I suspected a fair few riders had a different (read: slower) approach to this hill and I passed at least 8-10 struggling cyclists. Second round went much like the first, managed to keep a nice and steady pace without the computer working so I just kept going. On the third lap I was feeling pretty good and had a rider in front of me keeping pretty much the same pace. So I tried to stay on his tail (7 metres behind his tail, that is) for most of the straight. But, after a while I thought “this isn’t going fast enough” so I passed him and never saw him again. From then on in I kept passing riders. The nor-easterly had picked up at this point and I had to really keep my head down and the legs going. But even after this I still pushed up the hill, still passing other competitors.
T2 also went smoothly, bike shoes and helmet off, runners and fuel belt on. I think I’m over my “slow transition syndrome”, André!
For the run I had 4 bottles in the fuel belt: two of them with gel/water mix (3 gel portions in each bottle) and two with coke/coffee mix. Tastes like shit, but it does the job. Instead of going the prescribed 30 minutes between gel doses I had a little nip at each drink station (12-13 mins apart) and that worked really well. The last 45 minutes I stuck to the coffee/coke as well as a full gel serve from the aid station just before the 38 km mark. I’m really happy with the nutrition side of things, it all worked really well.
The run itself was pretty hard. After getting off the bike, the legs were less than happy to start running. But I set out doing 2km laps in 12 minutes and it felt ok. Had to do a “pit stop” just before the 4 km mark, and adjusted a few things (the timing chip was rubbing on my heel so moved it out of the sock, and tied my shoe laces). Starting the second lap was by far the hardest. Knowing what was ahead of me, and knowing the half way mark was still a fair way away was not a welcome thought. But I tried my hardest to keep focusing on the next 2 km. And then the next. And then the next. And before I knew it, I hit the 32 km mark, and told myself “hey, this is pretty easy! Only ten more k’s!”. Your head does some funny things after 10 hours of pushing yourself. Less than six km to go, and I hit the hill for the last time and it seemed to grow before my eyes. But I told myself to “keep running, don’t you dare stop running” and before I knew it I was up, at the second last drinks station and it was all downhill from here. At least for about 1 km! Hit the last aid station with just over 2 km to go and all I was thinking at this stage was about crossing the line. I think I actually sped up a bit over the last 2.2 km, had a massive case of tunnel vision and as soon as the finish line banner came within sight that was all I saw (sorry Sarah, Gay&Phil, I didn’t ignore you on purpose).
11 hours, 32 minutes and 26 seconds.
Crossing the line was awesome, the post race ice cream and fruit was awesome, and the massage (although a bit on the soft side) was awesome. At this stage pretty much everything was awesome!
Came home, had a shower (which was awesome), Gay made an awesome seafood platter (fresh prawns, oysters and smoked salmon) and Phil got me an awesome beer. I emptied the beer, and had about three prawns before my stomach let me know that it wasn’t too keen on solid food yet. Went to bed and had an awesome sleep.
Awesome. But not doing it again for a while.
