Weekend Highlights July 17, 2018

Quick recap of Vitoria Half by Andreas:
The setting of this event is really beautiful. With a swim in a nice lake about 20km from town, a nice bike ride through green pastures (which is a constant up and down, though!) and a two lap run, very shady, through Vitoria’s old town, finishing in Plaza España.  That said, the logistics are kind of messy, driving in and out of town a few times, leaving bike and transition bags in different places…

Alas. Race day: The swim was the toughest fight I’ve ever done in a triathlon, dunno why, but got boxed in the face four times (I think), having to realign the goggles twice. Ended up doing 31mins, 20th (of 230) in my AG anyways, not too bad!

The bike ride started good, got into a nice rhythm, I passed 40 people on the first 40km, then things got messy. A peloton of 20 or s o riders passed me slowly. I got annoyed, passed them back and dropped them, putting down too much wattage for 15 minutes or so. Half an hour later they passed me again… Then my back wheel started misbehaving, it took me 3 minutes to realign it, two other pelotons passed me… which lead to me going slightly harder on the last 15km again, passing a lot of people again. 1:29 for hilly 93km, including the 3 minute stop….

I was about 2km into the run, when I realised my legs didn’t do what they were supposed to. Dropped my pace from my 4:30 “slow pace” to 5:30’s around km 7 and never was able to pick it up again. 1:47:51 for the run left me with a 4:54:36 overall and a 56th/230 in my AG…

Lessons: Don’t try to go at the cycling pace you know you should have been able to maintain a year ago… don’t let your annoyance at other cyclists behaviour affect your race.

Now up with the legs and into the summer vacations 🙂

Over the last week, we’ve had several of our junior athletes attend the Southern Stars Development Camp, as part of the Triathlon Victoria Development Program.  They were joined by athletes from Triathlon South Australia and Triathlon Tasmania, for up to 6 nights/7 days down in Mt Eliza.  Athletes were honing their skills for the upcoming triathlon season, with early morning swims, strength and conditioning sessions, bike skills, run technique analysis, meditation sessions, nutrition talks, ASADA Level 1 Course & presentation and loads of other exciting things to keep them out of trouble!  Can’t wait to hear all about it when they return…..and possible recover a bit from the action-packed school holidays!

Well done – Tegan, Monty, Nichola and Lara!

Look who received a special mention in their school’s community news publication.  And not just a mention really, a full page photo to be precise!!!