Valentines Scorcher - Oly tri

After my flight cancellation and subsequent cancellation of last months Scorching tri I was keen to race this Sunday to test legs and race gear prior to Ironman NZ (just 3 weeks away)

Unfortunately, this month the race route was changed due to a road closure so they took us over a stupid great hill, twice. Meant for slow times on the bike and a bit of a sense of humour failure from me.
The swim was long - I hope - but I came out where I'd expect in the field.  After some really good swim sessions recently I thought I might be a few seconds up, especially as the conditions were great, but I'm pretty happy that with three weeks more swimming I should be able to reproduce, or better, my 57 minute swim last year.  Transition was great, no fuss, nothing to think about and I was onto the bike in under a minute from hitting the beach.  The transition at Taupo is long, but hopefully I can still cut a bit off last years 4minutes.  If I can be on the bike in under an hours I'll be happy.

The altered bike wasn't really hilly, rather in the middle of the ride it had a 2k wall to ride up, twice, that said I wasn't firing on all cylinders on the flat.  I was overtaken straight out of transition and it was all I could do to maintain pace with this guy rather than warm up and go through him.  After a lot of riding since last October I would have though I'd be a little better, but Dave and I have been working hard on locking in the Ironman race pace, so to expect to kill 40k at the moment is probably mis-guided. Still 4th fastest bike (and one dropped out after the bike) is ok.

I do however need to make sure I have some tactics for dealing with negativity, I let the fact someone came past me really get to me this weekend.

Out onto the run I was in 5th, or so I thought, with the next guy was about 1:20 up the road.  I set about trying to run him down; after a couple of 4min k's settling in I easily got into a 3:50k pace which I held to the finish.  Didn't catch the guy but I was pleased with my run, a rel. low heart rate and not too much damage to the legs, best of all 38mins felt easy. 

4th fastest run and in the end one guy dropped out at T2 and another did a short swim, so I got a 3rd place. 

All in all, it would have been nice to smash the bike - it's in there - but I'm very happy to save that for Taupo.

Just a couple more big session over this week and then it's quality sessions, lots of sleep and good food and RACE TIME. 




Not quite the confidence builders I was after, but still great to get out and test gear, etc.