Western Sydney 70.3 - Nov 29th 2016

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. 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?

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. 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?! I 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. 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. 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! I actually threw up a couple of times (only a little) and my vision momentarily went blurry so I backed off a touch, but I quickly came good and pushed again. As I hot the last 5k I was really pushing, as hard as I could. 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 and 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)

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.