| | 1st 4:03:55 Swim 5th 24:28 Bike 1st 2:16:22 Run 1st 1:21:00 |
From a birds eye view you would't think you could go too far wrong with this swim leg. Just follow the canal. Houses on either side. But once in the water you may as well be the size of an ant. The canal is still fairly wide. As we arrange ourself on the start line I'm searching for a sighting buoy. I see ONE in the distance. I'm swimming along next to Belinda Granger. Belinda has been doing this for years so I'm confident she'll keep me on track. We reach the first buoy and turn right around it. From there I don't see any more buoys. I lose Belinda as another athlete crosses my path. I assume the person I'm following now is on Belinda's feet so I remain calm. But before too long, it seems like I'm zig zagging all over the place to try stay on the feet. How can I be going so far off track? Jared ran down to a bridge where he could see us pass under. When I was telling him after the race "I just couldn't swim straight today", he informed me "it wasn't you... there were four in your pack. The leader was zig zagging and each of you just kept looking up when you lost the feet in front and zig zagged to get back on". Lesson learnt - if you think your zig zagging more than normal get off the feet you're following! The swim was tough in that we all had no idea where we were going. There were three buoys in total as we wound around the canal.
As I ran out of the water Jared yelled out that I was 2min 40sec down on the front pack - three former ITU triathletes, in other words, amazing swimmers and then a small gap to Lisa Marangon. I had to ask Jared to repeat it as I was expecting it to be more like 3:40. This gave me a lot of confidence as I ran into T1.
The bike was flat. The one hill that we rode up twice was not steep enough to get out of the aero position and off your bars. The only time I did was around the round-abouts and towards the end which was a tight little square back into transition. The wind was fairly kind the first lap but the second it had picked up. The way out was a head/cross wind and back a tail/cross. The road surface was nice and smooth for half the lap before you hit that dead bitumen that zapps your speed. I was getting blown around as I was searching for the smoothest line. Both laps had two turn arounds points plus the end of lap one so I could see my competitors up ahead. Radka was leading Liz in the front with Lisa chasing them down. The second lap saw Lisa had caught them and was on the front. I felt good on the bike but wasn't closing the gap as fast as I hoped.
The bike was flat. The one hill that we rode up twice was not steep enough to get out of the aero position and off your bars. The only time I did was around the round-abouts and towards the end which was a tight little square back into transition. The wind was fairly kind the first lap but the second it had picked up. The way out was a head/cross wind and back a tail/cross. The road surface was nice and smooth for half the lap before you hit that dead bitumen that zapps your speed. I was getting blown around as I was searching for the smoothest line. Both laps had two turn arounds points plus the end of lap one so I could see my competitors up ahead. Radka was leading Liz in the front with Lisa chasing them down. The second lap saw Lisa had caught them and was on the front. I felt good on the bike but wasn't closing the gap as fast as I hoped.
Just before we hit T2 Liz must have put on a surge and dropped the three she was riding with or must've just had a lightening quick transition. I racked my bike and it wasn't long before I moved into second place with Liz a further 30sec ahead. At about 3km I came up on Liz. My initial plan was to 'catch and sit' but when I approached her I was running at a faster pace so didn't want to slow down in case I got comfortable and couldn't then build on it later. I went straight past and opened a gap. The course was two laps. Each lap had a long steady incline in the middle of the lap with the rest fairly flat. By 12km I was surprised to see Liz had caught back up and was on my heels again. Instead of trying to increase the pace I slowed for a bit, quickly recovered and then got ready to respond to Liz if she attacked.
The next 6km was something neither of us had ever experienced in a race this long. We ran side by side with both of us slightly testing the other putting on small surges then slowing it down. With 3km to go I made my move. I knew it had to be a clear decisive move so I put the accelerator down and didn't look back. After 1km we turned a sharp corner so I used this to quickly look over my shoulder. I could see I'd made a enough of a gap so I could relax a little but you never know what's coming and the race isn't won until you cross that line so I kept the pace on. With a couple of hundred meters to go we u-turn then head for the finish. Only then did I know I had it won. I could finally slow down, wave to the crowd, give some high fives before running through the Ironman arch
as Australian 70.3 Champion.
as Australian 70.3 Champion.
It was great to be back home, well back in Australia. I've been in the US for 5 months so after all the travel to get to Perth and then out to Mandurah all I was thinking about was how close to home I was. When we arrived Friday afternoon it was hard to get motivated to race again. I just wanted to go home. But after I went for a spin on the Saturday and felt great I was confident I could put on one last show before heading home. Looking back now, Mandurah is a beautiful place and a great location for the Australian 70.3 Pro champs. The swim was unique and the laps on both bike and run made it more spectator friendly which helps make the race more interesting for everone. USM & Ironman have teamed together now and they showed it is working really well.
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