Sunday, February 3, 2013

Caloundra Triathlon

Being a week out from Geelong, Caloundra was never really on my radar but after what has felt like so many missed opportunities and missed races thus far this season I was itching to race. With Caloundra being raced over the super sprint distance of 400/15/4 I thought it would be a good pre-Geelong tune-up and a chance to go through some of the little things such as pre-race nutrition, warm-up routines and transitions ahead of the 1.9/90/21 race next weekend. And who could pass up an opportunity to race in an event run by Brendon and all the guys at The Event Crew!
 
Wyatt getting his nutrition practice in...definitely no bonking going on here!
It's safe to say the lead up was far from ideal for anyone in Queensland with the flooding the week prior! I'm not sure about everyone else but the weather today was a welcome change from last week when most of us were locked up inside trying to stay dry and words like windtrainer and treadmill were wearing very thin! I also had the added issue of coming down with a slight cold the past few days but wasn't going to let that keep me from the race and will just be loading up on bed rest and vitamins this week in an effort to wipe it out completely.

With many athletes choosing to give this event a miss in their lead up to Geelong next weekend the field was somewhat smaller than previous events which was an added bonus at the swim start as there was little tussle for positions over the 400m swim. The swim did little to break up the field apart from my dad commenting on how good Dan Wilson looked as he opened up a small gap on the field while the rest of us apparently looked like we were flailing around chasing his heels!  Leading the flailing was Wyatt Westmoreland who continued on to finish 8th as he fine tunes his preparations for School State Titles in the coming weeks.


The gaps did start to form on the bike and while Dan's gap out of the water enabled him to continue to forge ahead, myself and Ben Cook managed to distance ourselves from the remainder of the field in pursuit of him. The 15km course seemed to be over before we knew it and on later looking I'd recorded at average of close to 43km/hr. This just wasn't enough to evaporate his lead completely but a speedy second transition into the Nike Lunar Racers (even got a quick mention on the loud speaker for that effort!) did put me no less than 10m behind him as we set off on the 4000m foot race. I quickly found out that Dan had to serve a 15sec penalty and was feeling great knowing that if I could at least hold this gap I could run away from him whenever he chose to take it. But to his credit not only did he push ahead of me before his penalty but stayed ahead even after serving his penalty and after catching back up to Tim George who had just passed me continued on to win the race with Tim in second and myself in third.

thanks Britt Dutton for the photo :)
Fellow Revive athletes Christophe Manchon finished in 12th place and Peter Ledwidge finished 5th in his age category.  On the womens side of things Ellie Salthouse began her 2013 in winning style taking out the womens event with Anna Jefferies and Kirra Seidel in third.  Laura was the highest placed DAT female in 5th with Sophie in 7th and Courtney in 8th.  Dave Kelly topped his age group by close to 2min and Lawrence finished just shy of the win in 2nd place in his age group.  Part time camera-man Jamie Hanelt (thanks for the transition video!) backed up his early efforts to finish 5th in his age group and rumor has it is putting his hand up to join the 2013 Yeppoon road trip with myself, Robbie, Tom and Dan as early nominees!

With three races of the Queensland Triathlon Series under my belt this season I have racked up a 2nd from Raby Bay, 2nd from Robina and now a 3rd from Caloundra so I'm three from three in terms of podium finishes but am still looking for that elusive victory!  I'll quickly put my hand up now for the final race of the series at Raby Bay in my bid to hit that finishes arch first but before I can do that I'll be heading down to Geelong this weekend to compete in the long course triathlon.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Share

Twitter Delicious Facebook Digg Stumbleupon Favorites