The domestic triathlon season may well and truly be over for another year but there is no shortage of races on offer and the weekend just gone has been a perfect example of that. If you ever needed an excuse to escape to Noosa for the weekend the weekend just gone was the perfect excuse, with the Noosa Winter Festival in full swing. However, some will probably argue that this weekend coming would be even better with the Noosa Seafood and Wine Festival taking over
Hastings St
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Never the less, a group of DAT athletes had already committed to the Winter Festival so the Seafood and Wine will have to wait for another time. The weekend offered any number of swimming, cycling and running events to suit athletes of all abilities but the events of choice for myself, Ryan Fisher, Tom Ryan, Robbie Mullins, Maddi Allen and Anna Coldham were the ocean swim on the Saturday morning of either 1km or 2km distances and the run held on the Saturday over either the half-marathon or 10km distance.
Personally it was a last minute decision to compete once I’d gotten over having a bit of the flu earlier in the week and was heading up there more so for a solid training weekend, like most of the others. However, I can pretty safely say that running a half-marathon is always going to hurt and the subsequent DOMS are sure to put a bit of a dampener on the next few days!
The ocean swim was held on the Saturday morning and it was myself, Ryan, Tom and Maddi tackling the 2km event in the elite categories and Anna and Robbie tackling the 1km event. In all the years I have been competing in triathlons I have actually never competed in an open water event so it was to be a first for me. Standing on the start line surrounded by some of Australia's finest open water swimmers in the Grimsey brothers was somewhat intimidating but perhaps even more intimidating was having the elite women starting just two minutes behind us! After hanging onto the feet of the front group for as long as possible I soon found myself swimming the remainder of the course without much company until the final stretch where I was catching the wave that started ahead of us. After finishing the race I found out that both Ryan and Tom had been in a similar situation, all be it hanging on longer than what I had and none of us were present to witness what I am discovering is a fairly common occurrence in open water swimming, a Grimsey clean sweep of the podium wit Trent taking the victory over brothers, Codie and Ridge. It wasn’t until later on when the results were actually released that the three of us had been well and truly beaten by Maddi who finished 7th in the elite women’s race.
In the 1km event we had both Robbie Mullins and Anna Coldham competing. Robbie covered the course in 19:35 while Anna went through in 17:52.
I wouldn't have thought the swim would take that much out of us, being used to continuing on with a ride and a run but the remainder of the day was taken up with plenty of much needed rest in preparation for Sunday's events. But that wasn't before breakfast in Noosa where we were lucky enough to run into Bondi Vet Chris Brown and get a photo with him!
The Sunday was the running events with myself, Ryan and Robbie lining up for the half-marathon and Maddi the lone DAT representative in the 10km event. For the boys the aim was to tackle this as more of a training event and to get through the distance without any hiccups (and considering my last half-marathon resulted in a stress fracture this is not as simple as it sounds!) but needless to say there is a competitive streak in all of us that takes over at times. The results show that me and Ryan finished 10th and 11th respectively in times of 1:16:01 and 1:16:05 but we both ran very different races. I took the first lap out fairly solidly and went through the first 10km in about 35:00 before backing it up somewhat whereas Ryan went out slower but brought it home over the last 10km in just under 35:00 and given any extra distance we would’ve crossed the line together. I haven't included the data file from the race from my Bryton Cardio35 for a couple of reasons; firstly I haven't actually had a chance to look at it myself yet and also because I am just in the process of finalising a review on this watch and thought it would be good to include some files with that so keep a look out for that in the near future. Robbie also ran a very controlled race to finish in a very respectable time of 1:35:22. In the 10km event Maddi finished in a time of 40:23 to just miss out on her goal of cracking that 40:00 barrier but still managed to record a 10km PB, be it fresh or off the bike.
That brought the weekend of racing to completion and with a stunning day on the sunshine coast there was no better way to enjoy it than by lazing around on the beach for the entirety of the day. It was a very solid weekend of training/ racing that has cured those competitive urges within all us for the time being before we look to tackle the next winter challenge. For myself there are likely to be a few more half-marathon events in preparation for a debut in the Ironman 70.3 distance in the coming months whereas Ryan will be leaving us shortly for his European stint of training and racing that begins in two weekends time in China.
