The Triple F crew and I began our journey to Rainbow Beach for the back to back triathlon; Boys trip style. Coach G managed to survive the journey with us all blabbering in his ear and we arrived late Friday afternoon to check into our cabin, unpack our bags, and then head over to Poppy Lane’s place for some pizzas in his wood fired oven. Saturday morning was race day, although we didn't race till 3:30pm which is a bit different.
Getting to the start line of my first Elite race was a mission on its own. I had been struggling with a niggling knee problem in the weeks leading up to the race, fortunately I had the support I needed from my coach, Glen Ingram Mobile Massage, and my Physio Peter Mitchell. Race morning was the usual transition setup followed by an extremely long queue for body numbering and timing chip collection leaving 10 minutes for me to do a warm up. Add to this the fact that we weren’t allowed in the water as “it is too dark” but we were racing 10 mins later?
I was pretty keen for this race as it was the first one on my new Cannondale System six thanks to the guys at V1 Cyclery. Dad dropped me off to the airport nice and early on Friday morning for my flight via Melbourne to Davonport, landing with the Triathlon Queensland team. Davonport is a pretty small place so it didn't take long for us to arrive at our accommodation and build our bikes. The afternoon was pretty rushed but I managed to fit in a couple of laps on the bike course and go for a small swim at the same tide as race day.
Canberra was scorching when I arrived, a lovely 40 something degrees. Friday afternoon we had course orientation and then a briefing later at the AIS. I chose not to get in the water as the swim course was changed and I wasn’t feeling confident with the water quality, not wanting to risk any sickness the day before racing. The bike course was a rough T shape with constant undulation but nothing too hard. There was a lovely u-turn through a car park that was pretty rough through the apex but smoothed out towards the end of the corner.
6 races in 4 days... To go into detail of every race would take up an entire book so I will keep it relatively short. Thursday night kicked off with a windy 1500m run. All events were timed across the heats so it was vital to get a good time and not just be aiming for 1st in the heat. I gave it a good crack taking the lead after the first 200 and pushing the pace creating a group of 3 until Oscar came around for the final sprint and the fastest time of the heats.
I kicked off the weekend with an evening at Top Golf to claim my first trophy of the weekend #1stPlace maybe I should switch sports and play golf... It is at this point I would like to add that everyone else was drunk and we were equally terrible.
Last year's result had set an expectation and I could feel the pressure. Wednesday was not the ideal pre race preparation standing in line for over 2hours to collect my race registration after swim familiarisation. The swim course was rather straight forward and with wide turns using two buoys. This allowed for less congestion and a faster swim. To add even more time on my feet pre race, there was the Parade of Nations and Opening Ceremony dinner. Everybody left as soon as the food was served and headed home to prepare for their race.
Friday afternoon, straight after work, my coach Graham Fidler picked up myself and Billy Bishell for a boys trip to Ballina. Traffic wasn’t great and we arrived at our cabin just before 7:30 pm, unloaded heated up some of mums spaghetti, showered and went to sleep. That night the rain came bucketing down with the caravan park recording just shy of 100mm overnight, boy was I glad to be in a cabin. Saturday was a rainy and miserable morning made even better by discovering a flat tyre on Coach G’s car.
The freezing weather made for some tough choices before the start of the Springfield Duathlon, do I wear a thermal or arm warmers or a cylce top? I changed several times as the temps began to rise and decided to go with a cycle top and arm warmers that I could take off in the first run and dump in transition if I felt the need. The Duathlon began with a two lap, 5km run with some tough competition.
My lead up to the Oceania champs and final race of the AJTS series was less than ideal having a bike accident the week before and using my shoulder to suddenly stop. I jumped on the plane anyway and arrived in New Plymouth on Friday afternoon, two days before the race. The weather hit hard on Saturday leaving us athletes to prepare for a cold, wet, windy and choppy race. Bike familiarisation was miserable but I kitted up and stayed warm before testing my shoulder in the swim orientation.
