Well its been a while

It’s been a long time since I have written and there are some big reasons behind that. After “I climbed Everest” I was planning targeting two races in New Zealand to make the National team to race at the world champs on the Gold Coast later this year.

Training was hard but it was what I wanted, over the next few months I hit some huge milestones, these included bringing my official 5km time down to 21:38 in October, swim sessions starting to often average a pace of under 2:00/100m and often sitting below 1:50/100m when I was doing sprint sessions and my bike splits were coming back down to what it was at the start of the year.

Everything was going great moving in the right direction. infant I scored my first real podium on December the 8th at the Queensland Tri series super sprint at Raby Bay, I have done this course many times but never been in the shape I was in for this one, it was the first race I had ever done where my swim pace was less that 2:00/100m, my ride was the quickest in my category and then my run went really well with someone to chase down for the last km. I ended up placing 3rd and only 10 seconds behind 2nd place. Since that day he has become my Nemesis and will never beat me again in a proper race.

Training was going really well, I was making small improvements everywhere, then at the end of the month I came to a realization. Everything that I had been training towards was my two races in New Zealand, The Corsair Classic at the end of January and the Kinloch Triathlon in Taupo in February. These were great races, however it just simply didn’t make financial sense me making these commitments. I had racked up huge credit card debts in July and August going without work for 2 months with no form of financial support (I am not entitled to any as I am not an Australian Citizen, and even though my broken bones from the crash were causing issues for me trying to find work my income protection wouldn’t be able to pay as I was technically getting any form of income for them to replace) So how could I honestly say it was going to make sense to spend about $2,000 for travel and accommodation etc per race just to go there for 2-3 nights each time, yes I really wanted to make the team, but putting that money towards my credit cards was going to be the better option.

This realization left me in a really dismal position. What was I going to aim for, why was I training, would I still enjoy it as much without having a goal?

At this time of year I would usually create my goals for the year and do a recap of the prior year, however with my emotions as they were I figured that this would not be the best thing for me to do until I could come up with the passion that I’d once had.

I made my coach aware and took a week off to collect my thoughts on this subject, I reached out to friends trying to find new goals to really give me the drive that I wanted to get back. Between my coach and I, we came up with one, my new target was going to be the Gold Coast Triathlon. My result from 2017 was 1:15:27, the respectable goal that I came up with was to bring this down to under 1:10:00 and a stretch goal of 1:08:30, this was also going to bring me close to someone that I would love to beat in a race while I am still in this age group and to actually race them on the run leg would be amazing because they wouldn’t expect me to come anywhere near.

This goal would mean no official races in January, but then targeting a standard distance race such as Byron Bay at the end of the season and then Sunshine Coast 70.3 in August. With this in mind it meant that I would be able to focus purely on training with no need to spend time tapering etc.

I started my first training set after my break with a squad run session where I almost set a new 10km PB, I had the hunger back that I needed, later on that week I set a strong 14km effort at our monthly cycling time trial and then some more stronger sessions over the next few weeks. But how could I take it to another level, I got really excited and decided to buy a stages power meter for my bike, this brings a completely new element to training that’s more accurate than just using speed, cadence or heart rate, and wow has it made a difference.

I hit another PB, this time I brought down my 5km run time to 21:12 which was almost 30 seconds off the time I’d set only months earlier. I also wanted to take my swimming to another level so I added additional swim squad sessions, up to 3 a week now, with the additional motivation of other people and a coach pushing you every time will make you improve significantly and pushing past your own barriers that you set when you just swim by yourself.

We got my sprint sessions down to as low as 1:30/100m and my 500m time down to 8:46 which is fantastic considering in October the same distance would take me 11:05 and in 2016 it was 13:38.

So I must say a massive thanks to both Element Swimming and Barnett fitness for this.

The race was getting closer and Drew had got me to start peaking at the perfect time, I did the 14km Time Trial again and this time I was able to average 40.9km/h over the distance. I also got my best ever finish of a 3rd at a ParkRun in Redland Bay. I was having no little niggles, no aches and pains I was ready for the race. Drew had even loaned me his 88mm carbon wheels for the race to give me any additional edge over the competition, I put these on my bike to see how they fitted and as they were a little wider I needed to make a few changes and be really careful to make sure they wouldn’t rub on the brake pads.

It was race week and time to taper. As with most athletes I was frustrated by this time but knew it was necessary, I had 2 track sessions in my plan to test out the wheels, make sure I understood their braking capabilities and practiced at least one of each transition before the race, but then the rains came. Now I am not a fan of riding in the wet at the best of times, but with my accident last year I struggle even more mentally with any chance that my wheels will come out from underneath me. I woke up in time for my session on Thursday morning, had the racks on the roof and was about to put my bike on the roof when it started raining, after waiting a few minutes, I put the car back in the garage. Friday was worse so I didn’t even bother getting ready to go to the track. I guess I will do this all on race day.

Saturday came and as I do I like to make the most of it as a bit of a daddy daughter date day, I picked up Sapphire and we headed down to the coast. As it was still raining we went and played mini golf at an indoor golf place, and then with the rain easing we spent a few hours at SeaWorld, quality time with your children is something you should never forego when possible. After leaving we were able to head to race precinct, checked in and was able to rack, I found a good spot with a sign very close to use as a place marker and the end of a rack so I would have enough room.

I dropped Sapphire off at her mums on the way home (as we didn’t have a big crew going to race I felt it would be better for her to be there than alone on the side lines) and did my final preparations, packed my transition bag, organized my food and went over my race plan one last time with my coach. But low an behold there was one last change I hadn’t considered. With the huge deluge that hit South East Queensland over the prior week, the water quality coming from upstream was not good enough to race in so the Triathlon was being turned into a duathlon and as it was due to a change in the race it was going to be the shorter run first, WOW! What do I do now?

Well the first thing I know is I don’t need my goggles or swim cap anymore, time to chat to the coach and rework my race plan. We came up with something that was very manageable however the next major question which I thought about for at least a good hour was do I wear socks, no run would be over 5km and I had covered the inside of them with a lot of Paw Paw cream so I shouldn’t blister, do I go for comfort or speed? I think speed is more important in this race, ok time to get to sleep for tomorrows race.