The first foray to long distance tri

Why Auckland?

So why did I pick Auckland to do as my first Half Ironman? I think way back before I did Kepler, I was wondering what would go next, I had a mirco of a idea of prehaps doing Ironman instead of c2c, but quite frankly aiming for another big goal was tiring to me at the time. Around the same time, Mum mentioned to me that Olly had been making noises about when I would next be up to visit her. Thus the thought of Auckland half was born, I could join my need to have a small (but still decent) goal with a visit to my sister.

I didn’t consider the course or any other reasoning when I made this decision. The timing was good as well, I had 3 months to train for it, it was at the end of Summer, it gave me a time out from a pressure of going for something big. And when I was tossing the idea of Longest day around, I needed this.

The training

If you have been following my blog, you probably already know. But I started out a bit blah towards everything. The first few weeks back into training I could barely run longer than 30min. I was down on my training, and really trying to work out why I had decided to go back into tri’s. But I changed my training, decided to go with a coach, get a different perspective on things, and it started to work. Training got better, I started to feel better and was enjoying the training again, and understood why I was doing this. My running finally started too feel better and I was feeling really good leading up to the taper.

I had a couple of blah days during the taper, but not the normal lethargy I have had before, and I was getting really excited about the race. I didn’t have much nerves, just wanted to get out their and do it, and more importantly enjoy it.

I have some very stupid paranoia’s

I flew up to Auckland Thursday morning. What had been making me nervous for the last few weeks had been flying the bike up. I hired a hard case from Chain Reaction. I wasn’t all that concerned about the bike. Would have been quite happy if it got smashed and insurance paid for new bike, but only if that happened on the way home. If happened on the way up, then goodbye race… But case got on the plane and off it with out a hitch. I put the bike back together and all was good… I could relax about the bike.

I am not a details cook

So my sister and me are practically opposite, she’s and “neat” freak. I can just see her getting frustrated with me and stressed with me. I try to be on my best behavior, but I still feel the stress levels rising, as I carelessly put something here there or everywhere. I honestly do not know how we survived to live 16 or so years together in the same household. Only are few days together is all the 2 of us could handle together.

I consider myself a fairly good cook, I cook by feel and instinct, I don’t care about details… ie I cut up a pepper carelessly cut out the seeds but didn’t get all of them… much to my sisters horror.  Just made me laugh. I think I surprised her though, I was much more organised about the race than she thought. I just told her, I am organised on the focus, don’t care about the superfluous details.

Ok, so I don’t use a phone. I use txt, email and facebook to communicate with my family. Except Olly has a dislike of facebook, so lets just say, I don’t stay in contact much. Anyway, the last communca I had had with her on the subject, Olivia was going to do the half in a team, she’ll get someone to do the swim for her. But she couldn’t find the team mate and decided to do the whole thing herself.  Oh dear, my much more athletically gifted sister was going to kick my ass.

Race Day

You have to love Auckland, and the travel times required. Olly said it would be about 1hr to the start. I love that, it was 1 hour to the Canterbury tri, and that was a long distance to travel, in Auckland it isn’t far… So anyway we were up at 5am, slightly early for me and then on our way by 5.45. We picked up Olly’s friend, Sally, who was going to be support crew for the day. And headed on our way. We arrived at about 6:40, so it didn’t take quite a hour to get there. The plan was to get there at 7. So it was still rather dark, I had trouble getting the back wheel on my bike. Maybe I was getting nervous, as a rather simple task got difficult. As we were so early we managed to get a good spot at transition.

After getting ready, going to toilet, admiring the sun rise it wasn’t long to race briefing. Decided to get wet, and the water warm! Shock to the system really, after the coldness of the ocean down south. Practically tropical.

The change of course

They did send us a email, but I didn’t get it until about 30min ago. Because of this briefing was the first time I was informed what the change of course for the bike was. Basically, 11K had been cut out at about 60K, because of road works. This stretch of the course was going to the fast flat bit (where my strength lies). To make up for this, they added the extra 11K  of hills (my weakness) on to the start. So instead of turning left at transition, we were to turn right and start by climbing a bloody hill! Ahh well, I roll with the punches and shrug it off and concentrate on the swim.

Awesome swim

The swim was 2 laps of a triangle course. We had to get out of the water and run around the wharf after the 1st lap. (I hate that, why we can’t just swim around a buoy in the water is beyond me).

It wasn’t long before the honker went and we were off, there was the initial argy bargy at the start, I was going too hard, and kept on telling myself to calm down. It took me longer than planned to get into a calm state. It was hard spotting the bouys, they were white and black, and didn’t stand out that well. I just hoped that the person in front of the person in front, in front of the person in front etc, could see the buoy.

The first lap was over fairly quickly, and then on to the secound lap. I found my mind wandering at this time, thinking forward to the cycle. Kept on telling myself to concentrate on the now, and start adding some pressure to my swim and not drift my way through.

I was out of the water and off towards my bike. I hit the lap time on my watch here at 36min, I was really happy with that, I planned just under 40min, so was on a high as I headed out on to the bike.

Shite, what gear is my bike in!

When I set up my bike in transition, I didn’t know about the change of bike course and that the we would be heading straight up a hill. When I crossed the road and prepared to get on the bike, I just thought “Shite, what gear is my bike in”. I looked down and was awesomely happy that it was in a low gear. I pushed off and was off.

I spun my way up that first hill. I had people huffing and puffing past me, and I was wondering how far they were planning the ride to be. I had two things written on the inside of my lower arms in vivid. One said “Control”, the other “150″. This was done to remind me to keep my HR under 150. For first 11K, I failed miserably, the hills made it almost impossible. I completed that 11K, and looked at my watch and it was 25min. Was feeling happy with that.

The next 30K, was a fairly rolling fast stretch to Kawakawa bay. This is a fairly narrow stretch of road, and there was quite a bit of traffic on it. So it was at time hard to overtake, and some bunching and drafting occurred. I tried to avoid this as much as possible, I wanted to do this with out breaking the rules. I never saw any draft busters, but it was for my own self, rather than the rules.

So I am slow at climbing, I kick your ass on the flat though

I started to get really frustrated with some of the riders. I was not climbing the hills fast. I had “control” written on my arm. I didn’t want to push my HR up, so the hills were kept at a steady rate. But people kept on over taking me just as I crested the hill, only for me to over take them on the descent  flat bits (it really started to annoy me).

Oh I am about to go down? must be at the top

Just after Kawakawa bay is snake hill. It had been described to me like Gebbies pass but longer. I was expecting a much longer climb than it was. It wasn’t that steep, except in some place where the road took a corner. It wasn’t however something nice to have in the middle of a ironman course.

Olly, had organised to have Donna at the top of the hill with a extra water bottle (its the only point of the course external assistance allowed). I meet Donna the night before, so I would recognise her. I didn’t however, recognise that I was at the top of the hill. I honestly thought that this hill must be longer than it was (Oh did I mention, I never got around to driving the course). There was a fair number of supporters around, but none that seemed to be handing out water bottles, so was expecting something more. However, the road looked like it was going down… so I looked around and spotted Donna across the road, so put on the brakes… I didn’t want to miss that bottle, it was key to the nutrition plan.

She spotted me and I was off again. It was then a fast down hill from here to the coast… with a couple of climbs to break it up. I was feeling good, the legs was feeling good. I was ready for the ride to be over, it was just a formality, I was looking forward to the run. Thats where the key to the whole race lay.

The course continued along the coast, for what seemed like ages, I so was waiting for the turn around. Finally the turn around arrived. Here was a aid station and the plan was to pick up a water bottle. I yelled out water. The guy passed me a bottle (I was rather proud of my co-ordination at picking up bottle, and throwing out old). I was a few 100mts down the road when I took a sip of it, and it was leppin not water! Crap change in nutrition plan. I was on course for a 3:20 time, so the water wouldn’t be much required. I almost threw the bottle away, but decided, not to.  In case I needed it. This last 25K was the toughest. It was basically a long climb back up from the coast to snake hill. Snake hill wasn’t as hard from this side, but my legs were starting to hurt quite bad.

I was really happy to see the 9K to kawakawa bay sign, but most of that was up. I tried to take it as easy as possible, I needed to save the legs, but it was getting harder, and I was getting to the end of my ability to do that, the legs started to die slowly. I was glad of the down hill all the way down to Kawakawa and try and relax and get ready for the run.

Where the plan didn’t work

I got into transition, and my watch showed about 3.20 for the cycle. I was happy with that, I had budgeted 3.30 for it, but had the possibility that it could take me up to 4hrs. I stuffed my pockets with gel and headed out on the run.

I was very glad that there was a aid station just down the way, which gave me some water, my mouth was feeling sticky and just hadn’t had any water. The plan was to jog it off for 5 or so min, and then get into a harder pace. I had done this in training and was feeling really good. So thought my plan for 2-2.10 half marathon time wasn’t too outrageous. But I couldn’t get into that harder pace. I tried a few times, but the body didn’t want to get there.

So at this point I knew the time planned for the run wasn’t going to occur. Maybe that was when some of the motivation dropped off. Maybe it wasn’t a motivation issue, my body wasn’t capable of it.

The run course, started flat for the first 1 odd K then turned into a slightly rolling road for the next 2.5K, before returning the same way. It was 3 laps of this.

The first lap was ok, the hills didn’t seem to bad, and then it was a slight downhill on the way back. Just before the end of my first lap I saw Olly just starting out. I was a little amazed, I had expected her to catch me on the bike, if not catch me early on the run. But with that much distance between us, I just thought she couldn’t catch me. The 2nd lap, some walking occurred, I hadn’t planned on walking at all, but I walked fast for a few hundred meters and started again.

The last lap the screws came of… I kept on telling myself the Kepler was way harder than this and I managed to run most of the last 10k, and this was only 7. It didn’t work though, so run the down hill, and walk the up hills. Those hills that didn’t seem so bad in the first lap become unconquerable mountains on the the last lap. I eventually got to the finish and was incredibly happy about it.

I stopped my watch at 6.28. 28min longer on the run than planned, that was all there was to it.

So in conclusion

This race was never going to play to my strengths. Even though I played a good controlled game on the bike, the hills overcame my plan and took too much out of my legs. Was majorly surprised that I had beaten my sister. She didn’t have a great race, stomach cramps, and she didn’t train enough.

I had a seriously big blister on my secound little toe, on both feet. Haven’t a clue why, never had a blister there before.

Planned times

Swim : 40Min

T1 : 4 Min

Bike: 3:30

T2: 4min

Run: 2- 2:10

Total: 6:10 – 20

Times (as done by my watch, i wasn’t very accurate with my timing)

Swim : 36.11min

T1: 1:58min

Bike: 3:18

T2: 40 sec (I think I hit that a bit late)

Run: 2:31

Total: 6:28