Ironman 70.3 Sunshine Coast - 8th

Ironman 70.3 Sunshine Coast was a race that I really wanted to perform well at and my training over the last 4 weeks had all been based around getting me as ready as possible for this event. I had put in some big weeks in training and going into IM70.3 Sunshine Coast I was confident in my ability to perform well on the day. Unfortunately this wasn’t to be the case with a less than desired race day performance netting me 8^th place in the end.

I was looking forward to the 1.9km ocean swim and with the gun start I immediately looked at getting off the line quickly and establishing myself within the front swim group. The pace was quite fast for the majority of the swim and so I felt like I worked hard to keep in touch with the front swim group.

After the aforementioned big training weeks on the bike I felt good about being in the front group and being able to ride strong. The pace wasn’t super quick for the first 25km out to the bike turn around however with Tim Berkel and Luke McKenzie catching the group just after the turn the pace lifted with a few big surges during the ride back towards Mooloolaba. This caught me out big time and heading back towards transition to complete the first 50km lap I started to drop off the back of the group along with Luke Bell. Luke and I spent the next 40kms together and were joined by Todd Skipworth with 20kms left to ride. I was honestly guttered to have dropped off the front pack and was struggling to find my rhythm during the bike leg.  

Going onto the run I thought back to ITU Long Distance World Championships earlier this year where once again, I had a less than desired bike leg however managed to run really well and have one of the quickest run splits of the race. Unfortunately these thoughts were short lived after tapping out the first few kilometers at 3min30sec/per km pace and watching my pace start to slow after that. I crossed the line in 8^th place with a 3hr57min02sec time.

I was really hoping for a much better result at IM 703 Sunshine Coast but was outclassed on the day. There are some positives that I have taken away from the race as well as some changes that I need to make in my training in order to improve for the rest of the season.