I was fairly disappointed with the result from Ironman 70.3
Philippines the week prior and really wanted to prove to myself more than
anything that the result in IM70.3 Subic Bay was not a reflection of where I am
at with my training and performance. My plan at Mooloolaba was pretty simple,
race as hard as possible and see what kind of result I could produce. The legs
were far from fresh but mentally I was prepared to push hard on race morning as
well as excited to do so. Since racing Ironman 70.3 Philippines I had spent roughly 5
hours at home in Brisbane before spending the next 4 days in Townsville
visiting schools as part of my role as an ambassador for the Weet-Bix Kids
TRYathlon trying to get kids more involved in triathlon. So as you might
imagine the preparation the week leading up to the race was far from ideal.
Race Day:
The ocean swim leg at Mooloolaba is probably one of my favorite swim legs of
any race I have done. The choppy ocean makes for a fun swim leg where your open
water swimming skills are tested. I positioned myself on the left hand side of
the beach start and once the gun went off found myself leading the group towards
the first turn. American, Tommy Zaferas had started on the right hand side and
as I rounded the first turn buoy I noticed that he had put a small gap between
himself and me. At the half way point of the swim Japanese triathlete Ryosulce
Maeda passed me and I was able to sit just behind him right until we exited the
water. Heading out onto the bike course I passed both the Japanese and American
athletes early on and really pushed hard to build up a solo lead. Rounding the
half way turn around point I checked the time gap which I had extended out
to around 1 minute and 30 seconds.
Photo: Anthony Radford
The head wind on the return journey was
testing on the legs and I just tried to put my head down and push hard. I came
into transition still with around a minute and a half lead and proceeded in
trying to maintain my lead at the front of the race. My running legs were not their
usual self after having done the IM70.3 race in the Philippines the week before
and I was not able to hold the pace that I would have liked. Australian Ben
Cook was really strong on the run and made the pass on me at the 4.5km mark. I
tried to go with Ben but the legs were unresponsive and so I had to settle with
holding onto 2nd place. Although it wasn’t a win, I was still pretty
happy to have what I thought was a good performance with everything considered.
No comments:
Post a Comment