When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going

I've done a lot of racing and a lot of blog writing this year so far. I've rediscovered my love of racing after some time away from the sport and have also rediscovered my love for putting pen to paper after those races to write about it. I have even found myself at the most random times thinking about a topic that could be worth writing about and making a note of it so I can keep this blog updated as regularly as possible. I'd love to be writing something on a weekly basis but any triathlete will tell you that racing weekly just just so I can write a race report just isn't going to happen. This is possibly something I should've told myself last weekend after running a half marathon and then spending the majority of the week unable to train because I was too sick. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and one week on I was lining up at the Gold Coast Luke Harrop Memorial Triathlon to do it all again.

The Gold Coast Luke Harrop Memorial Triathlon has always been a race I have enjoyed racing because of the significance behind it. I may not have known Luke personally but it is a race that holds such significance to the whole triathlon community and it is a privilege to be a part of that each year.

I went down to the Gold Coast on Friday this year and was lucky enough to spend Friday evening and Saturday making the most of a weekend away and enjoying a few drinks with friends, sleeping in, coffee and breakfast bike rides and watching the World Triathlon Series race on Saturday afternoon. It was almost enough to make you forget you were racing on the Sunday morning!

The early morning alarm was enough of a reminder that it was race time and with that I was heading down to the transition zone. I really didn't know what to expect from this race, it's been a long time since I've raced a sprint distance race and a lot of the best junior and U23 athletes were on the start line beside me. In previous years I've had some really good performances at this event and have finished on the podium a number of times. This is what I was reinforcing myself of in those final moments before the gun went off. I'd put out of my mind that in reality I'd done very little training all week and even less speed work lately.

What do you do when you have one of those days when your body just doesn't want to swim, bike or run? It was shortly after the gun went off that I got the opportunity to answer that question. I had a great start to the race and found myself right up the front heading towards the first turning buoy but that was about as positive as things got. I quickly found myself falling off the pace without too many other guys around me. As I ran out of the water I could see the leaders and knew how important a fast start to the bike would be if I was going to close any gaps over the 20km bike leg. At each turn around it was a bit demoralizing to see that gaps weren't closing at all and no matter how hard I tried to push I wasn't making any inroads.

The 20km cycle was over before I knew it and I had 5km left to try and redeem something from my performance. I started off fast knowing that it would be over before I knew it having raced 21.1km the weekend before. At Mooloolaba I ran 3:30/km off the bike and at the half-marathon I ran 3:33/km so I was focused on bettering those splits considering it was so much shorter. I ended up running 3:25/km for the 5km which was pleasing and it did allow me to catch a couple of the guys ahead of me but still left me back in 16th place as I crossed the finish line.

To be honest it's a result I am disappointed with but I can also see things in perspective and know I wasn't really in a position to perform much better on that day. A week off sick did affect my performance even though I spent every day telling myself it wouldn't and I'd still be fine to race. When you go into a race like that and you are racing some very talented athletes who specialize in that distance, if you are even slightly off your game you'll be made to pay for it. I was pleased that even though things didn't go my way right from the beginning, that I battled on and still took away some positives from the race. It's easy to give up in a situation like that but that just makes it that much easier to do it next time when the going gets tough.

Next time looks like it will be the Byron Bay Triathlon in May. There's lots happening between now and then and while there might not be a race report for a few weekends for a change, I'm working on a few things to make sure I have some updates to write about.

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