Foster Grant World Championships 70.3

I had been preparing for this day for a long time. After qualifying back in June in Hawaii,  and then quitting my job so I could train properly, it was now finally here, was it all going to be worth it? Was my result going to be good enough for all the hard work, hours of training and financial sacrifice I had put Asami and I through? I had dreamed of beating my PB time previously of just over 5hours, but how much was I capable of beating it by? The training plan Woody had me on, had put me in a position that I always trained fatigued so I had no idea of what my new body was capable of, I knew I was lean,  fit and fast; damn I was in the best shape of my entire life, but what did that mean in regards to an actual race and time that I could perform?

Well I am pleased to say things went well, very well I shattered my PB, finishing in 214th place overall (out of 1,760) and 37th in my age group (out of 222). Finishing  in 4hours 22mins, I pb'd the swim, the bike and the run, all by significant margins. I owe huge thanks firstly to Woody my coach, none of this would have been possible without his insight and experience, everything that he planned for me, and advised me on was bang on - thanks mate - I owe you a large beer when we finally meet, and secondly to Asami for supporting me unreservedly through out all of this, even after quitting my job meaning we had to move house, for all the times you looked after me when I was too tried to look after myself - thanks babe.

The swim - 29:01 32nd in my age group
Conditions on the day turned out to be ok, the course was a simple 1 loop rectangle 800m out 100m north and 800m's back, there was a breeze from the North running down the beech, which meant there was some chop close to shore, so 800m's out it was going to be a little tough. I was in wave 11, and it was a beach start. I was always a little disappointed that the race wasn't a mass start, but going by waves certainly makes the swim starts easier. I was able run through the starting chop and get myself into clean water almost immediately, the plan was to find fast feet and hang on the back of them, but with the chop that proved harder than I thought. One of my issues in previous races is that I often loose focus on the swim and maybe not swim as hard as I should, today I was determined to stay on top of my effort. The outward leg was fast, I knew I was near the front of my wave despite getting moved around by the chop, I was able to time my breathing in between the trough's and keep a high stroke cadence. I started to hit back markers just at turn 1, which coincided now with having to go head first into the chop, albeit for only 100m's my breathing pattern had to change. I put in a hard 50 strokes to get me through this section as fast as possible, round turn 2 and on the way for home. The hard spurt had worked well and I employed it again, every time I felt my effort rate was dwindling I put in another 50 hard strokes to keep me focused, I spotted well into the finish not swimming too wide and powered it onto the beach. I had hoped to swim under 30mins, my previous best had been 32mins, so to see a 28handle on my watch, I was stoked. The timing mat was a few yards up the beach, so officially a 29:01 (1:31 per 100m pace). I legged it through transition and was off on the bike.

The bike 2:13:21 13th in my age group.
I was fortunate to have received many emails of good luck prior to the race, but one had stuck with me specifically from my mate Holsh it had said "All the best for the race, go hard, and smart". One of the issues with the course here in Clearwater is that because its so flat there is a lot of drafting, it is basically impossible to avoid, with so many athlete's all of a similar ability, and no hills to split the bikers up, you end up with road trains of rider's. They had made a very specific point at the race briefing that they would not be lenient on any drafting, and as it was impossible to avoid, you had to have a sense of awareness of where the marshall's were, you had to be smart with your riding.

The plan from Woody had been to go hard on the swim so as to get me into the first pace line from my wave, as the swim had gone well, I was looking for this pace line. I settled in and powered over the one and only hill/bridge on the course, I was already going fast. I had stripped my bike down to bear essentials, and with my new aero helmet was blasting along. I had been looking for this pace line Woody had been telling me about, and after about 20minutes, I thought that I had either missed it, or he had been wrong, it was at that point that I noticed about about 40 riders in a peleton formation right behind me, as I had been looking for this line, the damn thing was right behind me, I was the front of it! I was in this group for a while and it felt crazy as it was like a team trial at times I rode to the front of the group a number of times, thinking that I couldn't just sit here in this  group, this wasn't what triathlon was supposed to be. It was actually quite dangerous at times, being in a large group of riders all doing 45kmh+ each person about a foot behind the other, then with the back marker of other wave's there were multiple fast and slow pace lines, it was simply impossible not to draft. Part of the course was out and back and you could see the earlier waves had bunched exactly as we had, there was nothing that could be done other than ride with it, but ride smart, a drafting penalty was 4mins, not something I particularly wanted to acquire.

I focused on keeping my cadence low and heart rate down, keeping my core temperature as low as possible as this was all going to be about the run. The time for the bike was 2:13:12 at an average of 40.32 kmh.

The run 1:34:49 37th in my age group.
After downing the now mandatory redbull in T2 I exited the run. I had put in a lot of effort over the last 2 months into my running, the track and hill sessions Woody had me doing are hard, and I was hoping all this effort would pay off. My previous best on the run was 1:42 in Japan 70.3 and I ended up loosing 2 toe nails after that, so today with better shoes hopefully I could save the pain of my feet and push myself harder.
As always the first part of the run is about finding a rhythm, fast or slow, just something, today it was a slow rhythm to start. I had a bad stitch, that I couldn't shift, I knew I was going to have to run through it, and after various efforts to burp and puke to clear it, it took me until about 7.5km mark before I was finally able to take a proper breath and really get down to motoring. The course was mostly flat apart from the bridge which we had to cross 4 times, and now I was feeling good. I was averaging about 4:30km's my cadence was good, and I was fore foot positioned, I was know starting to take back some of the runners who had passed me in my first 7.5km's.
I went through 1/2 way in 47mins, and i was now trying to negative split. I started to increase my pace from about the 12km mark, hoping that wasn't too early, with one more bridge crossing to go it was about about 2 miles to the finish, I had planned on dropping the hammer on the top of that hill. I managed to pick up the pace even further, running the last 3.1miles in 21:27, so just under 7min miles.

I had hoped that i might sneak in under 4:20 as a total time but 4:22:19 was pretty damn good. A result worthy of all the hard work.