What a great weekend of racing, we had a great mix of Moore Performance Athletes taking part and I was part of a “Mixed team” trying to win for the second year in a row.
Conditions were perfect, but were going to get pretty warm on the run but compared to last year it was a cool day peaking at 29 degrees, but with pretty much no wind to cool the runners down I was happy that I was just doing the bike leg.
The swim was going to be a little slower for most with those magic words that 99% of triathletes hate, “Non Wetsuit swim” as the water temperature was 25.5. ย You could see panic setting in, how will this affect my PB, surely the race needs to be canceled. Adding the fresh water to the mix I knew we would see some interesting swim times. On the plus side the swim was very easy to navigate, no waves, straight out and back, easy right?
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The Bike
They had changed the bike course slightly so I wasn’t sure how much it would affect the course times but again being a flat flat course it was going to be fast. ย I had a target to hold 269 watts and I had 20 mins auto laps set, so hold 269 every 20 mins through to the end and it would be easy right?! ย Iย knew the first couple of mins would be too hard, but I promised myself to pull it back quickly as I knew the 3rd quarter of the course would be really important (you always find something in the last part of a race)
So you guessed it, I went way too hard in the first 20 mins, 24 watts over target, getting carried away as usual but I did bring it back in the next 20 mins. Starting an hour after the first wave I was constantly passing people knowing I didn’t have to run off the bike I just tried to stay Aero and be as smooth as everyone. ย I felt great but I knew the second lap would hurt.
Kelly-Ann came out of the water in 5th place after a great swim and we appear to have made up one spot in transition and moved into first place at the end of the Lap. ย I rode up to Scott from the Outrace Cancer Team and he looked like he was riding strong so I said lets work together (legally) and get a led on the others but we hit the flat and I looked back and he was gone and at the first turn I realised I was 80 seconds up, I was hurting but this also gave me a mental boost as I had a little extra to give on the last 1/4 and I might be able to give my team a 2-3 mins lead off the bike.
I found myself in a very dark place for the last 20km. I was hurting, but thought its only 20k right, so I pushed hard! ย Iย actually threw up a couple of times (only a little) and my vision momentarily wentย blurry so I backed off a touch, but I quickly came good and pushed again. ย As I hot the last 5k I was really pushing, as hard as I could. ย Pretty happy that the last 5k was my peak HR but felt much harder than the 307 watts I was putting out.
So I joked and said if I didn’t do under 2.17 I wouldn’t come back to Sydney, so how did I go:
Ride Time – 2.14.35
Avg Speed – 40.1 KPH
Average Power – 275 Watts (Target 269)
Normalised Power – 282 Watts (target 270)
VI – 1.03
IF 0.87
Cadence – 88 RPM
Happy with that andย overall i’ll give myself a 9.5 out of 10 (I lost focus a few times and I think I could have squeezed out another 45-60 seconds by just riding a touch smarter)
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The Run
Chris was taking on the run and given he had an injury and missed out on a lot of training we were looking between 82-85 mins. I was so happy that he quality showed and he had the 3rd fastest run in the Mixed teams to give us a 2 mins win in the Mix Team Category.
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I was so happy with how the whole team raced and their results are here
