Tough times never last, but tough people do - Tweed Coast Enduro

They say that practice makes perfect and if there is one thing that I feel I need after twelve months off racing it is practice. This was my reasoning behind racing Tweed Coast Enduro three weeks after Hell of the West and two weeks before Mooloolaba Triathlon. Racing is the best form of training and I felt I needed more race practice before putting myself into a big pro race.

Last time I raced Tweed Coast Enduro I confused myself to no end trying to work out the daylight saving and what time I needed to be at the race so this time I left nothing to chance and drove down on Friday afternoon to stay the night. An 8:10am start time almost felt like a sleep in and after going through my normal pre-race routines I was down at the swim start getting ready to tackle the 1.9km swim, 90km ride and 21.1km run.

Lining up on the start line I knew I was one of the fastest swimmers in the field and wanted to capitalize on that. As soon as the race started I tried to get away as quickly as I could to have the best line to the first buoy and also to try and get a gap before the others knew what was happening. Once I made the first turn after 100m I saw that I had opened a gap but much to my disappointment, the tide hadn’t fully turned and it wasn’t the tide assisted swim we’d been told about. Not much changed for the remainder of the swim but I did have the occasional fish swimming below me to distract me momentarily. As I found dry land and made my way up to transition I tried to gauge the gap I had but was more intent on getting onto the bike course because with a four lap course I knew there would be lots of opportunities to see the gaps.

A four lap bike course is good for gauging gaps but it is bad when the force of the head wind on the way out feels a lot stronger than the force of the tailwind on the way back. Towards the end of the first lap I was caught by Adam Gordon but I stayed out front and continued to set the pace. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to get lap splits at the end of each lap but I am absolutely positive my times got slower as the race went on. It was after about 55km that the head wind really starting to take its toll on me. Shortly after I was passed by Matt Slee and my first thought was that he must be a team rider because he went past me like I was standing still. At the beginning of the fourth lap Adam Gordon went passed me and I could do nothing but watch him ride off into the distance. I was having serious doubts as to whether I had the energy to finish the race but I focused on keeping the pedals ticking over and taking in as much nutrition and hydration as I could and hoping things would come good when I started the run.

I got off the bike in third place and caught Adam in transition but the splits I was getting from a lot of spectators had Matt up the road with a healthy five minute advantage. To be honest I was initially more worried about even making the finish line and wasn’t even thinking about first place. As the kilometres ticked over I certainly wasn’t running to what I felt was my true potential but the time gap was coming down and as it did my confidence slowly grew that I would get to the finish and first place was within reach. Matt ran a great race and certainly deserved to cross the finish line in first place which left me on the next step of the podium in second place for the day. Everyone that finished the race on that day deserves recognition because the wind and heat that we experienced made for one of the toughest races I can remember in some time.

I could go on to list a number of factors that influenced my performance on the day but what it all boils down to is that I gutsed out a second place finish on a day where there were several times I wanted to give in. I’ll take a lot of positives and negatives away from this race but the biggest positive of all is that I got a whole lot more than just some race practice out of it.

"Tough times never last, but tough people do" (Robert Schuller)

Next stop is Mooloolaba Triathlon in two weeks and Tweed Coast Enduro has given me plenty to be excited about for that race.

#racing #triathlon #triathlete #swimbikerun #tweedcoastenduro #mentalstrength #race