As someone close to me told me, the road is bumpy and has lots of unexpected ups and downs, which are to be expected and embraced.
In saying all of the above you can forgive me for being just a little bit apprehensive in flying across the country to race IRONMAN 70.3 BUSSELTON. Going into race I wasn’t nervous and more so just wanted to get a lot of frustration out of my system after missing many of my planned early season races and training.
Pumped, focussed and ready to go minutes before race start
Race day crept up on me like always and I prepared to toe the start line on the famous Busselton course. The start was more of a gentleman’s agreement as the count down began and we all dove into the cold, clear waters together. I quickly found myself swimming side by side with young James Hodge the 2012 winner of this event. James and I rounded the far swim turn together before Courtney Atkinson kicked it up a gear and swam past me. Not one to let him get away I stayed glued to his feet for the remainder of the swim. Heading towards the swim exit I attempted to get past Courtney who wasn’t amused by all of this and also lifted his pace. I made the effort to sprint past Courtney up the beach and cross the timing mat with the fastest swim of the day and also a nice little swim prime bonus. A quick look over the shoulder confirmed that we had a nice two-man gap heading out onto the bike leg.
This gap allowed me to take the time to put my socks on and have a more leisurely T1. I knew that there was a strong pack of men behind who would be unwilling to let Courtney and I ride off into the sunrise so lifting the heart rate and smashing the first part of the bike leg wasn’t in my best interest. I let the pack catch up and settled into my rhythm aboard my Specialized S-Works Shiv. I paid close attention to my position in the pack sitting in 4th for the entire first lap while also ensuring that I was drinking and having my Dextro Energy gels at regular intervals.
Heading out onto the final lap a few keen athletes decided to move up in the pack, which moved me further back than I would have liked. With the large amount of age groupers on the course during this 2nd lap I kept my head up and stayed out of trouble letting others set the tempo.
Hitting T2 I was feeling pretty good and ready to see if my legs would make it through a Saturday morning half marathon after a 1.9km swim and 90km ride. Being that I had already put my socks on in T1 and most of the other athletes hadn’t in order to make the front pack I had a very quick transition and went out into the run in 2nd place. Courtney hit gas early and soon enough Sam and Tim also came through and took the podium positions up the road. 
After all the injuries and lack of run training I resorted to settling into my own rhythm and pace in order to have the best run I could. Guy soon joined me and we ran together for most of the first run lap of 3. Guy was breathing hard and dropped off half way through lap 2 of the run leaving me in 5th place. With just one lap to go I wasn’t happy with the gap I had on 6th and 7th so I pushed just a little bit harder to make sure that once I hit the final turn my competitors saw that they had no chance of catching me.
With just 2 kms to go I heard a fellow pro on the other side of the road yell something to me, which I thought was ‘they are catching you’. A few hundred meters later and I clued onto what he had really said which was ‘Courtney is walking!’. I was pretty surprised to see Courtney Atkinson walking but it looked like his day was all over red rover. 
I crossed the line is 4th which was for me was an amazing result considering the terrible preparation that I had in the lead up to the event. During the entire run I really felt in control and was never out of breath, however with the lack of run miles in training I was a V6 engine in a running race of V8 engines. With some weeks of good run training behind me I am very confident that I can be up there fighting for the win in my other races to come this year.
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