After a few days in Queenstown, leaving with some big news, alot of smiles and some fancy bling for Leash :-D, heading to Wanaka was going to be very, very hard to top the beginning off the week. But saying that.... Wanaka….. WOW what a place…… I can see why this race has been voted one of the most scenic in the world and understand why the guys who have raced there say how amazing a place it is. We have travelled all around Europe and I have never seen such a landscape…..just amazing, at the foot of the Southern Alps with water so clear you can see everything all on a backdrop of snow capped mountains.
Anyway onto the race, to be honest I had somehow kept myself pretty calm for the lead up. Maybe the events earlier in the week distracted my attention but it wasn’t until the night before until it all started to sink in and that all this was actually going to happen. My philosophy to myself was to think about it as a big training day…..just a little bit longer. I had done some 8 hour days in the lead up, had run 42km in training and covered the bike distance a few times, so all I had to do was put them together at once. ……..of sorts….
Race morning was a little tense around transition. It wasn’t that cold but definitely cold enough to have the jumper and trackie daks on. I surprisingly wasn’t that bad, I think I kind of just knew that there was no turning back and it just had to be done, I Knew I had done the work in training I knew that I had prepared as best I could (for my first outing) and now just had to see how it all unfolded.
The Swim:
6:30 and it was time………a final good luck to R Mac and the Cobra (and Leash – racing the half) and we were off. With the pro wave starting only 15 m in front we were on them fairly quickly, which isn’t that fun for them, and after about 400m everything had settled down and I found myself swimming in the 3rd pack along with a few of the pro guys, girls and Macca. My philosophy for the day was patience. I’ve had a lot of races in the past where I have pushed hard to early and paid severely for it late on. Good pacing was one of the goals for the day. As a result I tried to swim fairly relaxed and just sat on the back of the group coming in at 57 min, by no means near what I should have swam but I was satisfied. I just wanted to get into the rhythm and see what happened. The Bike:
Onto the bike after a very long transition I was in about 20th position overall (about 6th Age grouper) and headed out into the New Zealand wilderness. The first section of the ride saw us head out around lake Wanaka for 30 odd kilometers before coming back into town by which time I had made up a fair bit of time on the guys in front and ridden into 2nd AG position. I was settling into a good rhythm riding fairly comfortably with one of the German pro’s until I lost my spare, which I stopped and reattached. There was no way I was going to leave that behind. This I think was a bit of a blessing, while I didn’t have someone to pace off it made me really think about my own race, my hydration, my food, my heart rate and any of the other random things that were going on through my head. I think at some stage as I was riding past the lakes and wineries I was thinking;
“Jeez this would be a good location for a wedding”. I’m going slightly off topic here but if you’re reading this and haven’t been to this part of the world, I cannot recommend it highly enough. The scenery around this place is amazing. Anyway getting back to it, riding well and truly by myself slowly picking my way through the field, most of which was the pro women who out swam me, I looked down at my bike computer and noticed I was sitting on around 58km/h… I know I can’t ride that fast unless there is a demon of a tail wind up my date. It was about this time I started to think “If I’m going this fast now how retarded is it going to be riding all the way back up the valley to Wanaka into this wind…..this is not going to be easy.”
Hitting the turnaround point in Cromwell I checked the distance - 110km this left the last 70km to climb the 300m back up the valley to Wanaka. A bonus I suppose was that just before we turned I could see the guy in front (the lead AG'er at the time) had been pushing pretty hard. As we headed home I could see in the distance that every small climb he was in and out of the saddle like it was on fire. It didn’t take that much longer to reel in the rope and as I passed I thought, I’m glad I listened to all those times Macca, Clarkey, Rod, Higgo and Alicia for that matter gave me a talking to about pacing and DON’T leave our legs on the bike!!!!!. In saying this I didn’t want to give him a chance to hold mainly because he was in my age group and I didn’t want this to end in a foot race. I just put a little effort in and looked back 5 mins later and he was gone. Again I was all alone and in the lead….well Age Group lead….not that special I know for the seasoned pros but for me in my first IM Distance race, relatively new to the sport to be in this position just 5 months after deciding to give the sport a proper crack…….wow, I was stoked. I think the most amazing thing was having the Helicopter scoot up the lake and slow down when they came up next to me, I don’t know if they were talking about me on the feed, but it sure felt pretty special. Saying the race got tough from here would be an understatement, there is nothing more psychologically battering than when you’re over your target heart rate, going downhill and struggling to get the Speedo over 30kph. But in my mind I just kept telling myself that this is the same for everyone else. Trudging on just watching the kms tick over I really couldn’t wait to get off the bike, just aiming to get to each aid station and the next. I was battling, I knew it would be tough but this was ridiculous, for probably the first time in my life in a triathlon I wanted off the bike. Just get me on that run pleeeease. I really expected to be caught over this last period but somehow managed to hold on and catch the back end of the pro guys over the last 10kms and bring it into transition in 9th overall and the lead Age grouper off the bike. The Run:
My lead on the run was very short lived, as Simon Cochrane smoked passed me shortly followed by the eventual age group winner. That was the last I saw of them. My goal for the run was to just run consistent Matty P gave me a good bit of advice before I left. “Have faith in your run mate, you’re running well have faith” For me that was pretty important. I’m not the best runner, I know that. I’ve never run 42km off a 180 before, I’ve only been running real volume for 3 months, and can I hold on. Anyway it took a few kms to get 
the legs going but finally I found some rhythm and was running well and headed through the halfway point at around the 1:45 mark, pretty much on par with what I wanted to hold. KM 23…. This is where things started to turn bad. I still couldn’t tell you what went through my head at this point, but it was now that everything got really, really tough. This one section (the only flat section) of the run kind of went out to a point in the lake, leaving it badly exposed to the wind which by now had picked up severely (I really felt for the guys coming in late on the bike…..it was hard when I was there but it would have been brutal later in the day), and to top it off the wind was picking up sand and just blasting you. I had been waiting for this time. I had been told that there will be a time on the run when you will be hurting badly. Well they were right I was struggling. I’m not sure whether it was mental, the fact I missed my coke on an aid station at km 18 (should have stuck to Alicia’s Plan), or was it just the heat but I was hurting. My assumption was the aid station and luckily I had packed a red bull in my special needs bag which I smashed down shortly before the trouble started.
the legs going but finally I found some rhythm and was running well and headed through the halfway point at around the 1:45 mark, pretty much on par with what I wanted to hold. KM 23…. This is where things started to turn bad. I still couldn’t tell you what went through my head at this point, but it was now that everything got really, really tough. This one section (the only flat section) of the run kind of went out to a point in the lake, leaving it badly exposed to the wind which by now had picked up severely (I really felt for the guys coming in late on the bike…..it was hard when I was there but it would have been brutal later in the day), and to top it off the wind was picking up sand and just blasting you. I had been waiting for this time. I had been told that there will be a time on the run when you will be hurting badly. Well they were right I was struggling. I’m not sure whether it was mental, the fact I missed my coke on an aid station at km 18 (should have stuck to Alicia’s Plan), or was it just the heat but I was hurting. My assumption was the aid station and luckily I had packed a red bull in my special needs bag which I smashed down shortly before the trouble started. 
“you can rest when this is done”, “How disappointed are you going to be if you let these guys catch you?”, “just get to the next aid station, fuel up and get to the next one and see what happens, but don’t give up…..for god’s sake don’t give up”.
It took me nearly 40 mins to get from km 23 to km 29 that’s around 6.5min per km, most of my lead to 3rd AG’er chewed while also being passed by each of the top 5 women. I am not sure what it was, maybe the red bull, maybe the young fella feeding me everything on offer and eagerly encouraging me along, but I somehow came good and slowly picked up some momentum. I was now running scared. I knew they were coming and I was stuffed if I was going to let them catch me. The last few kms I kept checking and checking. Saying;
“If I get around this corner and they can’t see me they won’t chase too hard, just hang on”. One last look before the km 18 aid station and then head down and dig in, think of the schooners….hahaha, the important stuff. The best feeling ever was running up the last rise and seeing the finish chute 400m down the road. I will never forget hitting that carpet, looking back again to see if they (the chasers) were coming only to hear someone in the crowd yell out;
“They’re nowhere mate, they’re nowhere”. That’s all I needed to hear, the sense of relief. I was done; this was easily a better result than I could have ever hoped for. As I searched all down the straight for Alicia I took a few minutes to soak up the atmosphere and enjoy the moment. I was so happy, the emotion you feel is amazing. If you could bottle the emotion you feel at that point in time and sell it they would make it illegal. Getting engaged to my best friend, partner and love of my life earlier in the week was the only thing that topped this moment. I know there are going to be people who read this who think I’m a dick and others who know exactly what I mean, but this moment was for lack of a better word euphoric!!!!
The hug I gave Alicia seemed to go forever. It was only when she reminded me that I still had to cross the line that I had better get a move on. Finally crossing the line just over the 10hr mark with a reasonable run just under 3:50, and good enough to clinch my Age Group title by nearly 30 mins, finish 2nd amateur, 16th overall and earning a free spot to race Challenge Roth in Germany in July this year.
I could not have asked for a better start to racing the IM distance, and although it wasn’t on the plan it looks as though there will be three Iron distance races on the agenda for this year. A very satisfying result especially considering I swore I would never an Iron Distance race...... LOL!!!!
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