Aaaarrrrgggh

Bloody Blogspot!

I just wrote a MASSIVE race report, pressed publish, and it came back with "errors" and it's lost...

Am exhausted so will postpone it till tomorrow but in short, race was fantastic, very happy, and thanks sooo much to all for all the support (Cirque, Clairie, Tesso, Miners, Jen, 2P, Wobblyman, anyone-else-I've-forgotten...)

Oh yeah... Noosa Tri - 2:32

Done, I am officially a triathlete.

Well I was just outside my goal time (and 30 places outside my secret goal of top 1000...), but I had a blast and I'll be ready for Mooloolaba with a few lessons up my sleeve!

I got a really good transition position on Saturday (right on the edge so I couldn't get lost!) and when I set up my stuff this morning I was feeling really good. I did a swim warm-up and got some good stretches in before moving to the start line.

Swim was great, nowhere near as rough as the gatorade series ones are and I finished in 29 minutes, more than I expected, but then I wasn't as drained as I expected to be by that stage either...

I had a really good transition onto the bike and had a really good first half of the bike leg. I was passing so many people on the uphills but everytime we started going down again they'd all fly past on aero bars (Note to self: get aero bars!). The Noosa Hill was AWESOME, I hit about 85km/hr (thanks for the tip Miners) and the entire ride was fairly uneventful except for a) the guy in front of me getting seriously bad speed wobbles on the hill and very nearly crashing at high speed and b) the big packs that were quite clearly drafting. Two of the riders in one pack got into a really loud screaming match at about 35km/hr about who was drafting who and the technical official rode ride into the middle to break it up. Very intense! I finished the ride in 1:16 Avg speed of about 31km/hr which I was really happy with.

Another very comfortable transition and I was off for what I thought would be the best part of my race. I was about 7 minutes ahead of schedule to finish under 2:30 by this stage but my run just didn't come together. I was fine for the first 3km and my legs started to loosen up from the ride and I got into a really good rhythm for kms 4-6, but by about the 6.5km mark I just couldn't give it any more pace. I didn't stop running but I just couldn't accelerate. I'm not sure if it was taking on too much water or going to hard on the bike but I just didn't feel like I had anything else to give! Run time was 47:30. (about 7:30 minutes slower than I was hoping!)

So post race analysis... There were 76 athletes who finished in my age group. Overall I was 49th. My swim time was the 60th fastest for my age-group, my bike was 53rd fastest and my run was 34th. If I had run a 41:30 (a minute slower than my PB) I would have got a top ten run time for my age-group. I was 1030th overall out of three and a half thousand.

I had a really good race for my first time at olympic distance and nothing went wrong so I'm really happy with my result, but in retrospect I think tactically I could have done a lot better. In pushing so hard on the bike I may have saved about three minutes off my bike time, but I think if I had done an ordinary bike time and got 1:19, I could have pulled 6 minutes off my run. So next time I'll have to weigh up how I pace myself better. Nutrition-wise, I kept it very simple, vegemite on toast for breakfast and then pretty much nothing but water til afterwards and I felt fine the whole way through. I think I'll keep coffee and gels for longer efforts.

Massive thankyou to Cirque, Clairie and Tesso who screamed their guts out for me from the PCRG tent, you guys made my day!

Also big congrats to Jordan, who did the swim leg for his team and finished third in his category.

Thanks to all for their support, I had so much fun today ( I caught myself grinning at different times throughout each leg, which was something I thought I'd forget to do - if that makes sense!) and despite the fact that I'm more sore now than after the marathon (not as tired, just sort of sore all over...) I'm so keen to keep building and eventually, do an ironman.

What's next? Tomorrow I'll start drafting a new training program, hopefully one with a bit more regularity. *possibly* the Goondiwindi Hell of the West in February but I think that's a bit of wishful thinking at the moment. Definately going for Mooloolaba in March though and hopefully for a 2:25.

In the same vein the following is a copy of the post I put in the 2007 goals thread on CoolRunning...

after running my first marathon in 2006 (and hopefully completing my first Olympic distance Tri...) (EDIT: DONE NOW!) this is just a random collection of thoughts for 2007...

Distance - Goal - (PB)
5km - <18:00 - (20:05)
10km - <38:30 - (40:30)
1/2M - <90:00 - (96:53)
Mara - <3:20 - (4:27!!!)
HIM - <5:30 - (no previous...)

Some goal races:
Hell of the West Tri (Perhaps extremely overambitious, I'll see how the christmas holidays treat me...)
Mooloolaba Tri
Brisbane 1/2M
Warwick Pentath Run
GC Mara
Noosa 1/2M
Yeppoon HIM
Noosa Tri
Either GCHIM or Port Mac HIM...

Bring it on...

Thanks so much for all the support guys!

Went for a little run and even smaller spin yesterday and I'm feeling really good and ready to go (read: sick of the waiting...)

The next thing I post will be a race report...

Until, then, again, thank you.

Back in blogland

After an absolutely manic month, which has seen me basically trying to fit in a session every three days in order to maintain the level I was at, I am feeling good about the weekend. The last week has been particularly good and I'm taking a rest day tomorrow and then my last run on Friday and a little cycle on Saturday to see a bit of the course.

The whole training period has been a valuable lesson in work-life balance and I realised very quickly that if I didn't train, I was going to be grumpy, irriatable and run-down, until I got back into the swing of things!

Predicted finish time for my first olympic distance? 2:30. Noosa, bring it on...

Sporadic training fortnight - but I'm back into it.

I've been very slack in my blogging lately, only because there doesn't seem to be much to report!

Was planning on taking it reallllly easy after the BRRC 10km, so I chilled out for most of the week straight after it but when I went for my long ride last Sunday my shin played up again so I didn't do anything til Tuesday which was slightly more rest than I'd bargained on. No matter, I did a hard 8km on Wednesday, an easier 9km on Thursday and then a tempo 37/9 brick set on Friday afternoon. All of which felt really good.

Today was the first race in the Gatorade Tri series. Because it's realtively short (400/15/4) and I only live 15km away I decided to ride there and back and it was really awesome. I normally don't ride with music but I needed some pre-race tunes so I put a playlist on my ipod that a friend had done for me, ending with Eye of the Tiger and went both to and from the race.

The race itself also went really well, I managed to keep a good rhythm in the swim and wasn't as freaked by it as last season. Bike went well, except for some smarmy b*stard who drafted me for the last 7km and then took off on the run leg. I was killing him on the uphills though, he only caught me on the downhills. Run was really good too except I couldn't push myself in the last 500m the way I normally do - stomach just wouldn't let me... I think it's just a result of experimenting with different gels etc and coffee. I think I'm just putting too much in at the moment so I'm going to back off the fuel while I'm racing...

Recovery run tomorrow and then swim on Tuesday.