The Reason I Race

Writing race reports after the good races is easy.

Writing race reports after the bad races is hard but a valuable learning experience.

But writing race reports after the races where things out of your control affected the race just plain suck! The reason I race is to push my body to the absolute limit and see what I am capable of and each time I race the idea is there to try and push just that little bit more than the previous time. To have this opportunity taken away from me not once but twice in succession was a combination of frustrating, annoying and disappointing among several other adjectives. That partially explains why it's been over 6 weeks since Mooloolaba Triathlon and over 5 weeks since Bribie Island Triathlon and there is yet to be a race report for either races.

No one plans to puncture during a race but sometimes s#&$ happens and it's more about how you react to a bad situation that shows true character. First up Mooloolaba was one of those days and just a short seven days later Bribie Island was another one of those days!

It was actually a last minute decision to race Mooloolaba Triathlon this year and it was only because I won an Instagram competition because of my love of coffee and Clandestino Roasters that I was on the start line. With such a jam-packed race calendar this year the open field was a lot smaller than usual but the quality was still definitely there. Amongst some of the big names were Sam Betten, Ben Cook, Giles Clayton and Tommy Zaferas.

I had a fair idea in my head about how I thought the race was going to pan out and in all of those situations I was banking on all of the swimming and riding I'd been doing since Goondiwindi to keep me near the front of the race. My running volume and intensity in training was only sitting at about 60-70% of what I would normally be at and want it to be at but a slight achilles injury/ strain shortly after Goondiwindi had stopped me doing any running for about two weeks.

Waking up on race morning to torrential rain outside was far from the most motivating experience but by the time I was ready to walk down to transition it had cleared and remained that way for my whole race.

The swim went somewhat as I'd expected with a few of the gun swimmers getting a gap on me but what I hadn't expected was the size of the gap that I'd let go. The gap was a lot bigger than I'd wanted which was disappointing after putting in a lot of time to my swimming lately but regardless I set out on the bike course to try and rectify that as quickly as I could. The out and back course would give me one opportunity to see this gap and who filled it and to be honest I didn't realise there were as many athletes as what there were ahead of me at the 20km mark. The good sign was that they were all relatively close and pushing into the solid headwind on the way home I felt I was beginning to close the gap to a lot of the guys up front. Unfortunately that's about where my chase ended with the sound of air gushing out of my tyre, leaving me motionless on the side of the highway with 10km to go. Luckily I'd left my spare kit on my bike and even though my race was over my mindset quickly shifted from thoughts of the podium to just wanted to finish the race and enjoy the experience. To be honest I'm actually quiet proud of the way I handled this situation because I have been known to have a pretty short temper in these situations and a less mature me would have thrown the towel in and waited for a lift back to transition but after a quick tube change I was back on my bike to finish the race. Starting the run so far off the leaders gave me the opportunity to be a lot more relaxed than usual and that ended up being a really good thing for me because even though I wasn't chasing the win or a position high up the leader board, I still managed to record one of the fastest run splits of the day and crossed the line having enjoyed the race as much as I possibly could considering the situation.

One week later I found myself on another start line, this time at Bribie Island with the aim to go as hard as I could from start to finish and get a gauge on my training that I missed out on at Mooloolaba. It wasn't a strong field but that didn't concern me because I was there to push myself, I hadn't tapered for this race nor had I put race wheels on my bike but that didn't stop me wanting to push my body to the absolute limit. As the gun went off at the start of the race I pushed hard to get on to the feet of Josh Minogue who I knew would be one of the quickest swimmers coming from a surf lifesaving background. I exited the swim just behind him and had a quick transition to go back past him as we mounted the bike. I pushed hard to open up a gap and when I looked back I'd managed to achieve this but after no more than 3km as I went round the first sharp corner I heard the all too familiar sound of air coming out of my tyre. It was a slow leak this time and try as I might for the remainder of the first lap I knew another 17km was going to be an all mighty effort to survive. After close to 10km I was riding on the rim and I had to call it a day and record a DNF.

Even now, some six weeks later it is still frustrating to write this because these races were supposed to be a form checker and give me some knowledge as to how my training was going and what changes I could make to continue to see improvements. But that is just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes and after two races in two weeks where I didn't get the chance to push to that limit that I continue to aim for I am back to the drawing board to plan out my next series of races and what I can do to see further improvements.