What a great event. Early start, very leisurely swim (the downside to the pro start being 35mins earlier than the mass start is the lack of feet to choose from) - I chose badly andafter the first loop, there was no group in sight ahead to bridge up to, so I just sat in and took it real easy. The bike is beautiful, and fairly challenging - its undulating through the middle section of each of the two loops and there was a headwind on the flat return which slowed it down a bit too. The Trek got tested in earnest today and it passed with flying colours. What a sweet ride! Given there were a few teething problems - I'd only managed to ride it for about 4 hours since I arrived on friday with the race set up, so there's still some tinkering to do, and i managed to knock the front derailleur on mounting so I had a grizzly sound coming out of it in the big ring for the whole 180km. Oops.
And despite nearly talking myself into the run leg yesterday (and putting shoes in T2 bag and some gels etc, 'just in case'...) I managed to control myself and only ran the first 2 miles just to cool the legs down after the ride, and get the benefits from doing the race sim. Very proud of myself for showing such self-discipline! There was a BIG part of me that wanted to carry on, but that would have defeated the point and probably ruined me! Thought I rode OK given lack of race prep and no taper (though given some time off to let the bruising go down after monday's clash with the bus/road... does that count as taper?), so thumbs up for the nice intensity training ride today. Power meter (powertap) also makes for interesting viewing - having never trained with power before, I was very interested to see the live feedback. Not looked at the detail yet, but the average was 2 watts off what I'd figured I rode at (or what I 'targeted' for the ride as normal effort). Think the variability around this might be horrendous though! Something to work on at least.
Great to meet Blake, Gabriela and Emily - and Tristan in person from Team Timex. Blake (Becker) came 10th pro, Gabriela 6th woman pro, and Emily wa 7th I think in her age group. Good day! Headed back to the finish area in a little while to watch the finishers up to Midnight... amazing stuff. Saw Mark P and Albert briefly too - they are both ANIMALS! :)
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