BRW Corporate Triathlon

Massive transition compound. Image from Supersprint website

Pre-race routine: Checked my bike in on Saturday. Found out at that stage it would be a duathlon. This tri/du involves teams of three each completing the three legs as a relay. I was to be run/ride/running second.

Stayed at my parents on Saturday night, they live a suburb away and in the early morning I scootered to Elwood so I didn't have to worry about the disaster that is parking. My team mate had kindly pumped up my tires so I had little to do in transition other than attached my shoes. I opted to go barefoot for the sand run.

Event warmup: Eh? I'm not much of a warm up person. Some hip swings and then a lot of standing on tippy toes in team transition to make sure I saw Ian run in so I could grab the timing band off him.

Run: 6:10 | 800m | 07m 43s/km. Opted for no shoes beach run. It was better than last week as there was opportunity to run by the waters edge where it was relatively solid ground. While the beach run was 400m, there was another 400m or so getting there and back to transition!

T1: Pretty smooth transition this one. Just had to grab my bike.

Bike: 26:36| 10km | 22.56 km/hr. The aim was to go hard. I think I was passed by two females and a dozen blokes, but for the most part I was doing the passing. My computer had a total bike time of 23.38 with an average of 27.5 km/hr which included the run in and out of transition. The official bike time includes T2 time.

T2: I wasted a minute or three looking for the bike rack. Terrible oversight. I swear I ran down the correct row. Apparently not.

Run: 21:44 | 4 km | 05m 26s min/km. I'm not sure the course was really 4km... However, my main goal this week was to run better than last. And to focus on midfoot striking in my runners. I used the first km to warm up and get my heel striking out of the way then I tried to pick up the pace for the last two km where we had a tail wind.

Warm down: Got to cheer on several members of the business I was racing for and talk triathlon. I haven't done that in ages ;).

Awesome event, pretty stoked to get the call up and have the opportunity to make amends for last week.

Total time: 54:30

Omara Cycles Tri-it Women's Triathlon 2011

Pre-race: I had everything packed the night before, so I just had to dress and make breakfast (toast and honey) to eat on the long drive there.

As I'd anticipated the swim was canceled due to high e.coli levels and it was converted to a duathlon, with a 1km barefoot beach run to replace the swim. My preference would have been to swim!

Run: 8:14 | 01 kms | 08m 14s min/km. Ugh. Sand running. The beach was pretty chopped up by the time we got to it. I tried to run as close to the inside as possible where the divets weren't quite as big. All in all, hard and slow. I had a couple of sections where I thought I was in a good rhythm but it didn't last long.

T1: 39s. Transition went smoothly, just had to grab the bike. Hands down transition was the best part of my race.

Bike: 32:14 | 16 kms | 29.78 km/hr. I had a lot of time to make up on the bike and I tried. I don't think I could have ridden any harder. I was hoping for an average of 30km/hr and I was almost there.

T2: 52s. Running into transition totally fine, racking bike all good. Putting shoes on I seemed to fumble a bit. One of the shoe tongues got caught.

Run: 25:44 | 04 kms | 06m 26s min/km. Meh. Let's face it I probably went too hard on the bike. This is a pretty slow run for me. I was passed by a whole lot of people. I think I passed two, one was walking!

Total time: 1:07

Event comments: I was there to have fun and maintain a good attitude throughout. I really enjoyed myself, even if I am a little disappointed at my performance at current fitness levels.

If you're looking to try a triathlon in a friendly environment this is it. It's not a massive race but there's plenty of support from fellow competitors and the event staff. Plus there was the added bonus of a great fitting 2XU technical t-shirt and there were plenty of goodies to try.