The Ultimate Shock

"I'm not giving you much of a rest before The Ultimate Half mate"

Those were the words ringing round in my head as I was walked down the the swim start for the Ultimate 70.3 race with 200+ other competitors. To be honest I was feeling a little jaded due to the current training block I am in prior to Challenge Weymouth in 4 weeks. I haven't done too many brick sessions leading up to the race but I do believe that for me personally the best bricks I do involve racing a couple of 70.3s on the back of a normal weeks training. Now you'll here all sorts of cliche's when it comes to racing during a heavy training block.

'I'm not that interested in the result, this is just training"

'I've had a heavy week and not rested so I'll not be as fast as usual"

"This is a B race or C race it's not that important"

You'll here things like this over and over again, season after season. Personally, if I sign in, collect my number, and line up to start, you can guarantee one thing, I'll be racing as hard as I can with no excuses!!

So, wearing a very fetching pink swim cap (which Lucy Lou has already claimed) we were off. Bit of a shock really being only 250 or so people in the lake, I thought it would be pretty calm. WRONG!! it was the usual arms legs feet fists etc, etc. But I have been working really hard on the swim aspect of the sport and found myself bridging a bit of a gap and finding some feet for the first lap. This meant a little less sighting once I realised the feet were swimming in a nice straight line!! At the end of the lap we had an Australian exit to contend with, so as usual I lifted up the goggles to aid vision and saw an opportunity to look a bit like a pro for once!!

Having given my best pal Joe a bit of stick for his diving prowess, I saw an opportunity to run into the lake, take a dive and then do a couple of dolphin dives to get going. All I can say is that Andy Potts I am not, the dive was OK, but the newly fitted goggles ended up full of water, leaving me stood there like a right tool refitting them in front of a ton of spectators, another learning curve. Lap two was really uneventful after that, just set a steady pace and out into T1 in 32 minutes feeling a little better than I expected.

This was the bit of the race I was looking forward to but also dreading a little bit. Looking forward because I was riding my Felt DA1 for the first time, but dreading because I've just had a bike fit and new shoes but not had chance to ride.

The course is described as flat and super fast. It is neither of these. The roads are rolling and a little beaten up to be honest, but they are the same for everyone racing. That said, I settled in to a steady pace not pushing to hard with a power output of 220 Watts. This seemed to be just right and I was picking off a lot of competitors and climbing steadily from the 42nd position I came out of the water in. At the end of the first lap found myself in a bike race, as what can only be described as a peleton came past me. I hate this I have to be honest, I shouted a few things about drafting all to no avail. Then they started to slow. I passed and the whole bunch jumped on my wheel, so I sat up and started the debate, well, not so much a debate more of a rant. 'Back off or go past". The reply was unbelievable, 'You go faster'. Now, this is a friendly blog and I like all ages to be able to read it, so I won't write The reply, but the sentence ended in head!!!

Thankfully all of the drafters paid the price of riding too quickly in the early stages of the race and once we started the second lap they all dropped off and hopefully suffered like dogs for the rest of the ride!! I myself was in a nice legal group of three tapping it out nicely and with a slightly higher power output of 230 Watts for the second lap arriving in T2 in 8th position with a bike split of 2:30. But how would the legs respond!!

A swift T2 for once saw me gaining 2 places never to be lost again as I exited in 6th. As I have said previously, in middle and long course triathlon transitions are not a rest. The first part of the run was off road around the lake and very nice I have to say. The legs were a bit heavy, but I always try to ignore this for the first few miles as I just want to get moving gradually. At this point I hooked up with a top chap called Andrew Birch (also one of the old guys) It was as close to a perfect running companion in a race as you could hope for. I have previous experience of this from IMUK in 2014 were I ran with Micheal Collins from South Africa and both ended up with Kona slots, was this to prove fruitful again. We were tapping out nice 1 mile splits of about 6:25 for the first lap and during the road segment one thing was becoming very apparent, we were catching all of the guys in front of us. As we started the second lap Joey and the kids (Whist teasing me with ice cream) told us we were in 5th and 6th place and about 20 seconds from catching 4th. Sure enough before we hit the road for the second and final time we moved into 4th and 5th. At this point Andrew mentioned we could well end up on the podium if we could nail the last 6 miles. As we hit the road I could see the guy in third and made the decision to just go as hard a a could for as long as I could and hope it was enough. I though that Andrew would stay with me as he had put in a few digs during lap 1 that I struggled to close down. This wasn't the case and I ended up alone and chasing. I got into third no problem then saw a wonderful sight, second, first and the lead male bike, game on. At this point I had upped the pace to 6:15 miles and was closing quickly. I moved into first with about 4 miles left and once I had the bike in front of me started to really work hard running 6:05 miles for the last 4 miles. The gap grew and thankfully Andrew made it into second place. Once in front there isn't a lot to say only that I was right on the limit determined not to slip up. It's not like this happens every day to me so it seemed the right thing to do, just go hard!!

And that was it really, my first 70.3 win in a time of 04:30, to say I'm chuffed would be an understatement. The best feeling of the day was knowing that the girls had seen it all unfold in front of them and they really did have a great day looking more surprised than me when I went down the finishers chute first!!

As always a big thanks to my coach Ian Murphy for trying to kill me on a daily basis, to Lantec and First Rate Credit Union for their continued support and for all the physios at Summit for keeping the chassis of the diesel engine in working order. And of course Joey, Anna and Lucy for being the perfect support crew.

Four weeks to Weymouth but first the Rubicon 70.3 in two weeks to finish of this training block prior to tapering. If this weekend is anything to go by hopefully we'll be ok on the 13th September

 

Take it easy

 

Joe D