Wellington Contact Triathlon Race Report

It’s Funny How Things Work Out!



The Great Arthur Lydiard



I spent the best part of a year training for the NZ Ironman, focusing on a slow and consistent pace which incidentally led to my fastest Olympic Distance Triathlon and landed me a spot on the New Zealand Triathlon team.  Maybe that ‘Kiwi’ guy, Arthur Lydiard was on to something.

The big question for me was, ‘How do I recover from a half ironman in 5 days???’  I came up with, CCCD - (Chocolate – AKA Easter Eggs, Coca Cola, Compression tights and lots of Deep Heat), rest was a given.

I had a very easy week and didn’t start easing into exercise until Thursday morning which consisted of a 5 x 100m swim followed by 100m of aqua jogging.  In the afternoon I went for an easy 45min spin on my road bike.  Friday, repeated Thursday’s pool session and in the afternoon a 15min spin followed by a 15min jog.

Saturday morning (race day), the weather Gods decided to come to the party and everyone woke to a still calm day, the harbour could have been mistaken for a mirror.  It’s true what they say, “nothing beats Wellington on a good day!”

 

I arrived at the transition nice and early, racked my bike and headed back to my car to ‘suit up.’  As the competitors were putting their wetsuits on, the announcer informed us that the water was a fresh 13 degrees.  I don’t know where they took their reading but thankfully the sea felt a lot warmer than that.

Age groups went off in 5 min intervals. As usual, I was on the FAR right.  I don’t know what happened in the bunch, but I had a clean swim and made sure I was aiming for the correct buoys.  Dear I say it, I was actually enjoying the swim until about 100m from the finish when someone’s heel collided with my eye.  Luckily my goggles took the impact and stayed on.

Transition was smooth with no one in my way.  On the bike, it was business as usual, to make up for lost time during the swim.  There were two guys willing to push the pace with me until we caught our age group’s front bunch.  It seemed people were happy to sit on BUT not let anyone ride away.  The bike ride felt like a PNP road race.  A few of us even caught the lead bunch from the age group that started 5 minutes before us which had Luke in it.  Luke and I prefer cycling to running and the last thing we wanted was for a big bunch to arrive at T2 together because we knew it would then come down to a running race and no one wants that!  

The bunch got whittled down to about 10 of us from 4 different age groups (25 – 29, 30-34, 35-39 & 40 – 44) as we rolled into T2.  Putting on tight socks was a mistake as I was easily the last person out of transition.

On the run, I was feeling good and knew I had to limit how many people in my age group passed me.  There seemed to be quite a few and unfortunately, I had no control over how fast they could run.  At the 7.5km mark, Luke shouted out some words of encouragement and something went off in my head.  I knew I could run faster than I had been and survive the last 2.5km so I went for it.  The finish line couldn’t come soon enough! Only one other guy in my age group passed me on the way back (he ran 36min)!

The big question was, was I still in contention of qualifying to make the worlds team?

At the finishing area it was great talking to people from all over New Zealand and hearing how their races went.  One guy did mention how rough the roads were around the bays – you mean there are roads out there that don’t have potholes every couple of hundred metres?



Since I had a few hours to kill, I went home, packed away my TT bike and dusted off the mountain bike which I’ll need for the Porirua Grand Traverse in a few weeks.

4 o’clock finally rolled round and it was time to see if I made the team.  There, in the last slot for my age group was my name. 



Arthur Lydiard and Peter Snell

In the finish, it was my run that got me there, 10km in 40.16.  I don’t really understand the science of how I was able to run that fast (fast for me and by far a P.B) without doing any speed work, but I will certainly be spending some more time researching Arthur Lydiard’s training principles, they work!!!!