I haven’t done a flat run for a while, so was quite looking forward to this one. The Run for the Kids course is one of the best too, going through the Domain Tunnel and over the Bolte Bridge (although the tunnel did mess with my Garmin a bit). All up, I’m not entirely happy with the run; I was hoping to average a bit faster than 4:26/km and I got a bit of a stitch around the 12km mark (this has been happening a bit recently and I’m not sure why, but is starting to piss me off).
I guess I’ve got a bit of work to do before the marathon, huh?
My last race for the 2011-2012 season and one of my favourite courses. Despite not having had the season that I wanted, I was feeling pretty good leading into this race; I’d managed to get a pretty solid block of training in and wasn’t carrying any injuries or niggles.
Despite all that, I came out of the water a bit slower than last time I raced here (back in 2010, the last time there was a swim, anyway… although I think the course might have been a bit longer than the stated 800m). Other than that, I clocked up pretty much the same times for the bike and run, so finished a little slower than last time. Still, it was a fun day out and Portarlington is still one of my favourite races.
Now that I’m done for the season, triathlon-wise, I’ll be starting to build up the run kilometres and looking towards my next “A race”, the Gold Coast Marathon… starting with the Run for the Kids in a couple of weeks.
For the first time in a while I went into a race with a decent training block under my belt, and was feeling ready for a decent race. Mother Nature seemed to be in a good mood as well, with near-perfect conditions for a triathlon.
After a couple of disappointing rides recently, I tried to push a bit harder on the bike today, which came off pretty well… I did pay for it a bit on the run, but still ended up with a PB for the distance (only by 20-odd seconds - hey, I’ll take it where I can get it).
And I still managed to look cool at the finish line.
[video]
This was a bit of a last minute decision: I hadn’t really thought of racing an OD race until Victor Harbor in March, but after some peer pressure was applied at training, I folded and entered Sandringham.
Apart from the crazy wind on the bike, I kind of enjoyed the race, and while it wasn’t a PB, it was still quite a lot of fun… and that’s why I do it.
My third time competing in this swim, and my second attempt at it on very limited training. Still, I went around faster than I had in my previous two goes, so can’t be too unhappy about that.
This was the second race in as many weekends, but one that I was quite looking forward to since it was also my first enduro format tri — it’s basically the same distance as a normal sprint race, but done in halves, so you do two swims, two bikes, two runs… and five transitions. Pretty good fun.
All up, I was pretty happy with the way things turned out (and I’m pretty sure that my 19th place in my age group today is my first ever top-20 finish). While not my fastest race ever, I really enjoyed the change from a straight-up, regular triathlon. The big thing that sticks out from this race (similarly to my last couple of races, to be honest) is that I really need to do some more work on the bike.
My second race for the season, and first triathlon in quite a while. I’ve actually been training pretty consistently for the last couple of months, so wasn’t too worried about my fitness level going into this event, but still wasn’t really expecting too much.
You can imagine my surprise when I checked my times this morning and found that I’d done a four-and-a-bit minute PB. I found this a bit weird because while I felt OK in the swim, I felt really heavy on the bike… I just wasn’t firing (but it turns out to be not such a bad ride when compared to previous races anyway). And despite feeling a bit sluggish off the bike, the run came together pretty nicely.
I still need to do a bit more work on the swim (nothing new there!) and try to figure out what went on with the ride, but it was good to get back into race mode again, and I’ve now got a bit more of a baseline to work from with the build to Victor Harbor in a couple of month’s time.
My first race for the season and first in quite a while. Due to the bad weather we’ve been having lately, the swim leg was cancelled and replaced by a 1.4km run, turning the event into a duathlon. I’ve only really been building into a proper training load for a few weeks prior to this race, so was a bit unsure I’d be race-ready.
All up, I wouldn’t say I was pleased with the race (especially that bike time) and can see that there’s a lot of room to improve, but the signs are good that I’m starting to get back to acceptable level of fitness. My next race isn’t until mid-January, so as long as I keep the training going (and don’t eat too much over Christmas!), I think things will be looking OK in the new year.