Stroke and Stride

I'm currently sitting in my hotel room in Taupo, New Zealand in preparation for my next race this Sunday which is the Kinloch ITU Sprint Triathlon Oceania Cup.  This is the first chance I've had to sit down and update this blog all week and with no less than 7 rowdy bars and 3 backpacker hotels within 100m of my room this is how I'm planning on distracting myself from what is going on just outside my window!

Last Sunday saw the second race of the new Stroke and Stride series held on the Sunshine Coast.  Not being known as a triathlon club to take the easy option we again decided to ride up to the event from Brisbane similar to what we did for the first event.  Fortunately the weather started off a lot nicer than last time and we had a much bigger group of about 15 riding up there.  About 95km later, a fair amount of rain to deal with, three punctures (all to the same unfortunate person!), one crash about 5km from our final destination and a more than solid 34km/hr average we made it to Kawana.  To put this into perspective here is the map and details from the first time we did this ride just three weeks earlier:

http://www.brytonsport.com/mapTrackView/2?id=15228

And here is the link to the ride from this weekend:

http://www.brytonsport.com/mapTrackView/2?id=20717

A 95km ride before a race was always going to hurt but doing it that much faster than the previous time was always going to produce some interesting race results.  This time the race was run over a 1km swim and a 4km run.  It was also good to see that the field had more than doubled from the first race and all the guys at the Sunshine Coast putting the race on are obviously doing a good job.  The opening 1km swim comprised two 500m loops with a small run along the beach between laps and coming out of the water at the end of one lap there was a small group of about 5 of us in the lead.  We got a bit caught up in the second lap as we caught some of the slower women who had started after us and coming out of the water Ron Darmon had about a 10 second lead to me and three other guys. 

Unfortunately it was here that I first started feeling the ride and had some painful cramps all through my quads and I thought I was literally going to have to jog the run just to make it to the finish line.  It wasn’t until about 500m into the run when the three guys I came out of the water with all went past me with ease that I started to feel a bit better and just decided I had to go no matter how much it was hurting. 

I managed to bridge the gap to all but the leader who had taken off at an incredible pace and had established a comfortable gap on the rest of us.  By the end of the run I was again feeling the cramps coming on but by this stage I had established a gap on the other guys I was running with to be able to maintain my position to the finish.  Full credit also to training partner Brayden Tucker who finished in third spot just behind me and every other DAT member that rode up and raced and also to those who just did the race and helped make a very tough training day all the more enjoyable.

As I said at the beginning this race was more of a training session in the lead up to this Sunday’s ITU Continental Cup in Kinloch and I’ll be sure to get this blog updated as soon as I can while I’m over here.

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