Robina Triathlon

The domestic racing season has well and truly arrived and there is hardly a weekend on the calendar that isn't filled with triathlon commitments it seems. This weekend has been particularly busy in the DAT Racing camp with our junior elite athletes flying down to Penrith for the second race in their ITU Junior Elite National Series, just days after settling in back home after our week long training camp. Exceptional results were recorded all round with Jodie winning the women's event, Anna 5th, Holly 7th, Jenna 10th and Jake in 25th in the men's event. Jodie, Anna, Holly and Dan are still based in Sydney for the remainder of this week as they prepare to do battle against some of the worlds best juniors at the Youth Olympic Championships this weekend and I'm sure their trend of fantastic results will continue.

 

For those of us not making the trek to Penrith there was still some hot and intense racing to be had with race 4 of the Queensland Triathlon Series being held at Robina. It was set to be my first race back since Noosa and I was relieved to just be at a race venue preparing to race rather than spectating on the sidelines. The men's field was stacked with several top athletes including Raby Bay winners and runners up Bryce McMaster and Mitch Kealey along with Sam Betten, Sam Speechly, Matt Brown and a host of others. The women's field had a distinct DAT vibe about it with Sarah, Emily, Courtney, Maddi and Sophie all set to do battle with Olympian Emma Jackson. Unfortunately both Sam Betten and Emma Jackson were late withdrawals but their absence didn't take away from the already quality fields.

We were set to race over the sprint distance of 750/20/5 and with the day heating up early is was set to be a battle in itself to handle the conditions. As the gun went off I felt I was having a great start and had clear water almost all the way to the first turning can. I was being as wary as I could about avoiding coping an unnecessary kick to my finger which I had heavily taped up and luckily the swim was relatively calm in comparison to most triathlon race starts. Exiting the water I found myself about 45sec off the leader and front group of 8-10 guys but with the length of transition it gave me a great chance to see where they all were and try and makeup as much time on them as I could. The bike is the one discipline that hasn't been affected by any of my injuries and I knew going in to the race it would be my strength and had quickly moved my way through the field to a clear second place with only Mitch Kealey ahead of me. I was trying to check if I was closing any time on him at each turn around but each time I though I was closing the gap it would open up again at the next turn and as we both came into transition to begin the run he still had about 45sec up his sleeve. In the back of my mind I knew that Bryce had run down Mitch in the last race at Raby Bay so was positive about what I could do but at the same time wary not to push myself too hard and do any damage to my hip as I continue to build my running kilometers back up. Similar to the bike I was checking splits at each turn around but we seemed to be holding a similar gap each time. At the final turn around I could see the gap was too much to close down after not taking any time off him through the first 4km and I also had a safe advantage over the rest of the field behind me so I took a little bit of pressure off myself and controlled myself in the hope to avoid pulling up from the race too sore. Mitch crossed the line first in an impressive performance that saw him lead from start to finish and really made the rest of the field work hard on a very tough day. I crossed the line in second place very happy with my performance and looking forward to getting back into in and building up again for another strong performance in my next race which is set to be the National Long Corse Championships in Geelong. Third place for the day went to James Trevorrow who put together a great performance and definitely deserved to be on the podium.  Training partner Luke Farrell finished the race in 10th position.

 

On the women's side of things the swim was led out by none other than Maddi who maintained her lead throughout the cycle leg to lead the women out onto the run course. The remaining DAT girls remained right in the mix with Sarah and Courtney coming off the bike in the chasing group with Sophie not far behind while Emily had the unfortunate circumstance of having to watch them run away from her after being handed a drafting penalty which on several accounts was a tough call. With an impressive running performance in hot conditions Sarah was able to run down Maddi to claim the victory, with Maddi finishing off the podium in third place and Courtney in 6th, Emily in 7th and Sophie in 8th.

In other DAT results Dave Kelly produced a dominant performance to win his age group by over four minutes, Harry Sweeny braved it out to finish 10th in his age group after suffer badly in the heat, Abbey Black finished in 2nd position in her age group and the Sangsater family took home a handful with Dave winning his age group, Priscilla winner her enticer age group and Lawrence coming 3rd in his kool kids age group.

 

A final thanks must go to The Event Crew for again putting on another great race and all the photos they get from the race (of which I have used several throughout this blog).  From here is is straight back into some serious training in preparation for Geelong in only a number of weeks. :)

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