Thursday 24 March 2016

Mooloolaba Olympic Distance Triathlon - 2nd

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.

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