It’s been a long while since I last wrote a blog, but last week when I saw $220 withdrawn from bank account paying for this website I thought I better start using it or just flush my money down the toilet!
I was really excited heading down to Melbourne on Friday . There were a couple of question marks going into this race, one being the weather on race day and the other was whether we would be completing a triathlon or if the swim would be cancelled and the race being changed to a duathlon (run/bike/run) format, anyways this race was purely a hitout for Ironman Busselton in 3 weeks so the nerves weren’t quiet as high as they usually would be. I was just happy to be able to break up the solo training and race against such a high quality Australian field.
I woke up on Sunday morning to perfect race weather. I completed a quick warm up jog with Cunno and was down to transition to set up for the day. I had chose to race in my sleeveless wetsuit as I wanted to make a comparisson to my swim at Sunny coast 70.3 to be able to make a final decision on what wetsuit to wear at Busselton.
Photo- Korupt Vision
The race kicked off at 6.06am, it was a very frantic start to get around the first turn bouy which was only 50m from the waters edge. I had a solid start and got around the bouy in a good position but the front guys seemed to turn on the after burners and really stretched out the swim. I had to work hard to get around a few athletes and eventually ended up on Jarrod Osbourne’s feet. Once the split of the groups had been made the swim was pretty comfortable, this probably isn’t what you should feel when you’re in the second pack, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to bridge the gap so I was happy to sit on feet and come out of the swim with some good bikers. We ended up swimming off course a little bit at the back end of the swim, which forced me to go to the front and lead the last 500-400m of the swim, which once again probably isn’t the best situation for the chase group. We exited the water 2 minutes behind the back of the front group.
Once I got through transition and was out onto the bike, Jarrod laid down some solid power right from the beginning and I knew I had to go with him early if we wanted to split up the group. The two of us got away in the first 3km and had a gap to the rest of the group. At around 15km Kieran Storch rode up to us and went straight to the front and thats when the bike got REALLY hard. My legs were pretty stale from the start of the bike, probably due from the limited taper and Ironman training but once Kieran started pushing the pace my two VMOs were on fire and I was really struggling. After about a 15km onslaught Jarrod made his way to the front and while the pace was still very high it was a relief to be able to get a few deep breaths in. Unfortunantly for Jarrod his tyre flatted nearly instantly once he got to the front, luckily his sealent worked its magic and resealed the wheel because he was having a great day. But this meant that Kieran went straight back to the front and the onslaught continued. We also had Nat Lindsay in our group by now and at 40km Kieran started to pull away from the three of us and I know there was nothing I could do as my legs were in shambles. Keiran actually went on and bridged the gap to the leaders which ended up being a huge opportunity lost for us, but in the moment I didn’t have the strength in my legs to do much about it. We kept on riding very solid for the next 30km with Jarrod doing the bulk of the heavy lifting. We werent losing any time to the leaders until Keiran reached them at 70km and they started to pull away + we started to lose the wind out of our sails and suffer a little bit in the last 20km. We still managed to ride 2hrs 5min at an average speed of 43.1km/h.
Photo- Korupt Vision
Onto the run, I was very surprised to see Mitch Cunno leaving transition next to me. He quickly told me he got given a very unfair drafting penalty, which is ridicilous for the bloke that had ridden at the front of the race for majority of the day! Anyways there was still 21.1km of running to get through before we could chat about that. My legs were absolutely cooked from that bike ride and I had real concerns about getting through this run. I had a plan of running 3.35-40 per KM. I do think I can run a half much quicker then this but I wanted to get a solid run on the board leading into Busso. Mitch and I ran together for around 11km which was great as his pacing was perfect for what I wanted to run. Unfortunatley Mitch had some stomach issues and needed a toilet break + his morale wasn’t to high after his penalty. I was comfortably in 9th place by the 15km mark and I could see that 8th place wasn’t to far ahead and this was the last spot that gets paid some money. I made a solid effort to close the gap but by 18km I was pretty fried and the slight headwind we were running into got the better of me and I had to settle for 9th place in a time of 3hrs 52mins 6secs.
Photo- Korupt Vision
I am very happy with this result to go top 10 at a stacked Aussie race on some pretty tired legs leading into my Ironman debut on the 4th of December. It has been straight back to work and pretending my legs don’t hurt as much as they do. I would like to say a massive thank you to my coach Ryan Williams for the constent hard work and dedication to my careers, to my wife and family for continually motivating me to be better and loving me know matter the result. Also thanks to my great training partners and sponsors who are always so supportive and hard working.
I am really looking forward to racing Busso in 2.5 weeks and I can’t wait to see what this Ironman stuff is all about. Thanks so much for reading guys (if you got this far)
Cheers!