Hardwoman racing - to galvanise the mind!

I did my "lead in race(s)" for Hawaii last weekend.

Rather than enter the Sunshine Coast half ironman (which was this weekend, and would have meant spending a whole heap of cash on flights, accommodation etc) I chose to race the Latrobe Valley Tri Club's "Hardwoman" event. This involved racing the "Olympic" distance (1.5/36/9) on Saturday and long course (2/80.5/17.5) on Sunday, with the aggregate time deciding the overall result. 

I did almost a full week of training leading in to the race, just a slightly shorter run on Thursday and ride plus short swim Friday. But this week had more intensity than before, so I was carrying some muscular fatigue. 

I had 2 main aims for the weekend. The first was to nail my swims, and particularly the start. I tend to go off well, and get onto feet, but sometime between about 50-100m I lose those feet and end up killing myself in no man's land trying to get back to the group. 

The second aim was to finish my runs strong. With the run in Kona being my main goal, I wanted the positive feedback from the run this weekend.

On Saturday, I had a good swim (1.35/100) but failed to get on any feet after getting dunked a few times at the start. Frustrating but as I started the bike I just thought "let it go" and settled in. I had debated just riding at half ironman effort, to keep something in the tank, but quickly decided to up the ante, and I'd say lap 1 was an honest Olympic Dist effort, with laps 2 and 3 being about 5% less. Still much harder than I'd planned though.
I got off the bike and thought to myself "this is just like doing one of your XC races on a Saturday afternoon"; no pressure on fatigued legs, just see how I would go. Well they went pretty well! I was tapping out sub 4.30/k for the first 2k, then slowed up the hill, but stormed back down it onto lap 2. I was really happy with how I felt, and there were no signs of my legs failing. Back up the hill on lap 2, and I glanced at my watch which read 4.36/k average so far.

My next thought was "Try and get as close to 4.30/k average between here and the finish". The finish was 1.3km from the top of the hill, and I started to pick up my stride down the hill. 

And there ahead of me was a girl I'd overtaken on lap 1 of the bike, but who had come past and left me behind on lap 2. "Go and get her" I thought. But she was already nearly at the bottom of the hill. "No, just go for the fast finish, and if you happen to catch her, that's a bonus". So I focused on just winding up my pace, and lo and behold, I got closer, and closer, and by the finish chute, it was ON. I absolutely gave it everything I had; drawing on the old rugby winger muscles, which haven't really been called on for years! I just took her on the line, and only realised later that she was also in the Hardwoman event, so I finished day 1 in 2nd (by 1sec!!!). Looking back at my data, I did get back to 4.30/km average by running that 1.3km at 3.42/km, and my finishing pace was 2.32/km!!

Now things get interesting.

I went back to my good friends Janette and Murray Brady's house, refuelled well, and looked after my legs, with compression, foam roller etc to be as ready for day 2 as I could.
But I made one mistake. I got caught up in a new and "improved" goal for day 2. I wanted to hold that 2nd place, and beat the girl who I'd had the sprint finish with. I felt that if I had a better swim start, and got on Bern Dornom's feet (the leader of day 1) then I'd have a bit of a lead from 3rd out of the water. If she were slightly stronger again on the bike, but I could stay in touch, then hopefully I'd have the faster run. So I woke up on Sunday, very positive, thinking "I'm going out to get 2nd place".
All of these kind of thoughts are EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of how I really needed to approach day 2! Remember, this was just a hit-out pre Kona. Just a training weekend, with some racing thrown in. How I really needed to approach day 2 was to expect to have fatigue from the week's training, coupled with nearly 100% effort on Saturday, but just to roll through the longer event, and see what happened.

I got in a good position at the start of the swim - all eyes on Bern, whose feet I was aiming to jump onto. Off we went- yes, there they are, then within 100m, she went around another swimmer and "poof" GONE! I was gutted. "Lost her again. Oh well, regroup, try to find more feet. nope, none there. Ok, just push, push push". I was swimming alongside my mate Brendan, and on the other side, the girl who I'd raced to the finish yesterday. Started to pull away from both of them, and then at about the 1k mark, my arms just started winding down. My stroke rate dropped, and the other girl came past, and slowly pulled away. I was ok with that though,

I was doing what I could, given the fatigue in my arms. I thought "It doesn't matter, you'll be fresh in Kona ".
I came out of the water, and could feel the fatigue as I ran towards transition. I whinged a bit at Pete about my swim, but really I was still in a fairly good place.
I took off on the 5-lap bike, with the intention of starting out conservative and maybe building if I felt ok in the second half.
Oh dear!

Struggle town on the bike

Within a few kms, I knew the legs hadn't come to the party. For my long rides, I have been averaging something around the region of 155W average power. On Saturday I'd held 184W. By the end of lap 1, I was only averaging about 157W, and from then on, it dropped to a final number of 149W for the ride. The power just wasn't there after Saturday's effort, and as I've said, that would have been FINE, if I hadn't set myself up to compete. I won't list all the negative thoughts that started to go through my head, but the worst was the feeling of embarrassment that I was using our beautiful quad spoke wheels, and at times into the headwind, was barely riding at 20kph!

The first lap was spent trying to come to terms with having no "go" in the legs. I though "just treat this like its the final 80k in Hawaii", but honestly I hope my legs DON'T feel that bad at the 100k mark! The second and third, were just miserable! The 4th lap, I started thinking things like "you need to just get this done", and I started to just take my mind away from what I was doing, looking at the cows in the paddocks, and looking forward to seeing Pete and Nettie out on the course. 

Coming off the bike (thank god), I thought I was actually in last, although there were a couple behind me, and I thought "right, let's see how many I can chase down on the run".

I set off........and immediately realised my run legs were there! HURRAY! It's such a wonderful feeling when I can have a terrible ride, but still be able to run. I won't dwell on the run, because it was all good. I felt like I could have kept going at the end, and at 4.49/km, that was a very, very nice feeling going into my final 4 weeks. 

Quote: "Maybe I should do some marathons and ultras after Kona"

This weekend was an epic trip up to Bright, mainly to celebrate Wayne Hildred's 60th (a formidable cyclist - look him up). Spring sprang, and I got some incredible riding and running done, surrounded by jaw-dropping views. It's made me decide to plan a really nice ride for my final weekend in Melbourne next week (maybe the Great Ocean Rd). I'm feeling like I'm in a very good place with my last couple of big weeks of training left. 

4 weeks to go