Jimieke

Mieke and I did our second triathlons down under over the weekend. This one was 400m swim, 15k bike and 4k run. Mieke is now two for two on completing triathlons. We met a number of first-timers at the race and Mieke found she was no longer the least experienced - she is officially a seasoned competitor now! Mieke survived the swim (two for two) and wasn't the last one out of the water (yeah!). Once on the bike, she screamed past loads of slowpokes at like 110kph (or something like that). Check the photos - what a machine! Then it was time to run, she went out with her game face - but mumbled something to me about wanting to walk on her way past. But there would be no walking, in fact she felt better over the run and ran faster on the second half. In the end she finished 12th out of 33 in her age group and had the 5th fastest bike split in her age-group.

My race on the other hand was a bit of a bust. I raced open again and found myself struggling on the swim. I'm just a bit short on speed - not much - but was probably way short on aggressiveness. I think in order to make it work in the open category, you need to be super aggressive and brutal to get and hold a good position. Like the last race, I came out at the back of the group. I half expected this, so I ran hard through transition and took off hammering on the bike. I was able to pull from the back of the group all the way up to the lead pack. It is supposed to be a non-drafting event, but in the open nobody follows that rule. Coming into the second transition I was right with the lead guys. Then we started running. This is where my race went bust - I got a massive side cramp that wouldn't go away. My belly was feeling a bit heavy before the start from the cheap supermarket muesli bars I had for breakfast. I usually have a PowerBar before a race, but those are like $3-4 each over here and we've been too cheap to buy any. The side cramp had me walking shortly and I struggled through the rest of the run. It was a long 4k. On the bright side though, I did post the fastest bike split of the day, so that was cool. Someday I'll run well too. The guy that won (Matt Hopper) ran a 12:07 for 4k which works out to like 4:53 per mile. He is a pro was ranked around 4oth in the world last year.
So back to training, the next race is the Luke Harrop Memorial on the Gold Coast on March 5th. Check out the results here: Caloundra Results.

# posted by Jim Meyer @ 7:00 PM