St. Kilda, Victoria, the home of two of
Australia’s most notable clowns; Luna Park and Shane Warne. A suburb where I
almost certainly wouldn’t want to live, but a place that I love to race.
A half-distance PB in 2018 on this course
had left me with pleasant memories of the location, however this was Melbourne
and the chances of getting those sort of race conditions again were akin to
spinning the barrel for a second round of Russian roulette. Somehow, I missed
the bullet again and the weather turned out pretty good.
My main reason for selecting the race was to
give myself the maximum opportunity to recover from injuries late last year and
to be in some sort of shape conducive to racing.
The lead up was good, a performance at
Geelong that had me feeling like we were moving the right way, combined with
some more bike and run gains since augured well. Still, when you know that you
have to race faster than you ever have just to show some progress from a year
earlier, the task can appear daunting.
Race morning presented fairly good
conditions. A grey, dull mist eerily enveloped the venue, it’s seems the norm
in Melbourne. The temperature was how I like it; cool but not cold with only
the hint of a breeze. The water was similar, you wouldn’t wanna be in there
without a wetsuit, but you could still feel your face.
The pro waves left at 6:50 with the scene at
the swim start then becoming organized chaos. Waves every 90-seconds created a
cavalcade of colour, with more latex than a big Saturday night at the Hellfire
Club, air horns ringing seemingly non-stop and more than a few athletes
scrambling for the start wave they had already missed.
At 6:56 our wave became semi-submerged in
Port Phillip Bay and began flailing our way along the 1900m course.
We quickly combined with the stragglers from
the wave in front and the speedsters from behind, which made for a fairly
physical swim, featuring more hits than the Beatles. Eventually I was under the
pier and into shore.
My wife had achieved her race goal of making
up three minutes on me in the swim and beating me into T1 by a few seconds. We
exited together.
The plan on the bike was to work pretty hard
on the first two of the three laps, making use of the hard work we had done in
recent times, before setting up for the run on the final 30km lap.
It’s a reasonably flat course on the iconic
Beach Road, with a good road surface, conducive to good riding and minimal
risk.
I didn’t muck around on the first two laps,
pedalling harder than a Colombian drug lord. My heart rate was about 10 beats
higher than I’d normally produce but it seemed to be producing results based on
the 10km lap times I set up on my bike head set.
The last lap was a little more relaxed with
the reduced effort yielding an overall heart rate that was only equal to the
highest I had ridden in the past. The outcome was my best to date, 2:31, three
minutes faster than a year earlier. The big question was whether or not I could
back it up with a solid run.
While the first 10km felt reasonably
comfortable to hold a target pace, I was weary not to try and over-capitalise
and go harder.
Half-marathons off the bike can be a bit
like a dog turd in the sun, the longer it goes, the harder they get.
From around the 14km mark, I broke down each
kilometre, only concentrating on what I needed to do to get to the end of that
1000m stretch. The main motivation I gave myself was that I had the choice of
two pains, the pain of discipline for another 30-minutes or the pain of regret,
taking the easy path and letting it fall apart.
By the time I’d reached the finish chute at
Catani Gardens, I had managed to string together my fastest run off the bike
from the seven half-distance races I’ve completed and a gallop four minutes
faster than the year before. The most pleasing part was probably the fact that
there was only 20-seconds between my fastest and slowest km’s, so there was
some sort of consistency throughout the 21km.
My overall time of 4:58:35 was a PB, five
minutes faster than the year prior and the first time I’d broken the coveted
five-hour mark.
I’m not a fan of comparing courses so the
biggest takeaways for me were the bike and run improvements from a year earlier
in almost identical conditions and realising that it is possible to put a run
together off the back of a harder bike.
The patience of my coach (Nathan Miller) has
been something that is only understood when you are there to experience it. A
couple of frustrating years with Achilles issues must have made it a real pain
from his perspective, so to finally put something together that is in someway
indicative of the work he puts in and faith he shows is as satisfying as
anything else.
That’s the end of the season for me, which
in some ways feels like it was just beginning. There was definitely a couple of
races post-Christmas that were satisfying after an extended period of
frustrations.
Now it’s time to log some winter miles with
an emphasis on running (including some exciting uncharted territory) before
attacking a new triathlon season.
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