Devonport Oceania Sprint Champs 2013


 
 
I have finally come out of hiding for 2013. With a few months of base training under the belt, training has been going relatively well but I know I am no where near full race fitness.

A late arrival on Thursday night to the White House. Yes, the White House- looks alittle bit like it. It is a 110 year old two storey weatherboard mansion. It is always nice to stay in places like this as it feels like a homely place to stay before a race. I even got to have a nice bath, as my blonde moments for the trip started as I thought there was no hot water in the shower.. I just had it on the cold tap :/ My third year back in Devonport and not much has changed. The normal pre race on Friday and finally it was time to race my first race of 2013.

 

A lot of people were going on about the choppy swim conditions with the extremely strong wind. To what I swam in at North Wollongong a few days ago, the waves looked tiny and I wasn’t planning on shredding any tears. With a 100m beach run down the water, it was important to maximize the opportunity and run as if a tsunami was chasing me. With 750m in the choppy water, I could barely see the buoy, let alone anyone else. Coming back in, it was luck of the draw to catch a wave back into shore. I got a few little ones but nothing good enough for a body surf. Exiting the water in 5th, I was just off the back of some of the main girls. Unfortunately, that 5 to 10 seconds, just put me off the back of the girls to start the ride. With the swim being choppy, it spread the small field out quite abit, more than I expected with the main pack of girls being 40 or so seconds back.

 

Lucky Jamie’s eyesight is a lot better than mine as the night before the race, he noticed that my seat had moved a good 30mms back. This is when I am so grateful for the environment that I am in. I rode with Gillian Backhouse until we caught on to Gwen Jorgensen and another Australian girl. The wind gave us no mercy at all and I didn’t touch my drink bottle once, as I just didn’t have time. With only 3 of us rolling through, it was hard into the head wind and took a lot out of me. My bike fitness is probably lacking the most at the moment from only being on a road bike for the past month. Today of all days, would have been the perfect situation to have a larger pack like the chasing group behind us. I could feel myself fatiguing by the end of the 20km and it didn’t help that one of the girls refused to roll through for her team mates sake up the road. Coming off the bike, the 3 girls in front of us had 35 seconds on us.

 

After coming down from Falls Creek, February has been exciting with new sessions of running, sometimes, well most of the time ending up in a heap on the side of the bike path. I haven’t been feeling that bad but coming off the bike, my legs were not moving anywhere. The chase group weren’t that far behind us and by the u turn on the first lap, I knew people were going to make the move past me. No excuses, it just wasn’t my day run wise and for the first race of the season, I have to get used to running off a bike again. Its back to the reality of hard and fast racing and you just have to start somewhere.   Finishing in 7th,  I wanted better and I will be hard on myself. Bigger and better things to come…

 

Thanks Jamie for the weekend in general, getting our wheels down to race start and looking out for the benefit of us athletes, Berta for the massages, Devonport triathlon for hosting such a great event each year and a final congratulations to the rest of my training group for an all-around successful weekend!

 

 




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