For those of you who have talked to me
about and/or read my recent blog detailing, in as fewer words as I could, my
trip to Europe then my sincerest apologies. Unfortunately I’ll be bearing more
bad news (performance wise) in this report.
The camp was in mine, and Keiran’s, mind an
excellent thing. Coming back from Thailand having lost 6 kilos and having no
training done for 10 days due to falling ill I needed something to get me as
fit as possible before this Asia Cup. 2 days before leaving I was in a deep,
deep hole. Fortunately, for my mental peace of mind, I didn’t realize it. I
figured it was just fatigue from training hard and I’d be right for the race.
To avoid boring you with useless
information I’ll skip all the flight shenanigans because the funnest thing that happened was putting my legs up and getting in trouble for it
We touched down at the Mei Xian Airport in
China. While waiting for our bikes we got to know a few of the Dutch athletes.
For an airport the size of my house and one single airplane on the entire
tarmac, which was barely one third full on the flight over, they seemed to take
an awful long time to get our bikes out. Probably due to the fact that they had
no heavy lifting machinery, forcing them to man handle the bikes out of the
hull.
Once all was sorted and the bus driver had crammed
as many bikes as possible under the bus and the rest strewn across the inside
of the bus, across and over chairs we were finally ready to leave for the Yamng
Lake Resort. On the drive there things weren’t looking great, I was certain we
would be sleeping with all kinds of ungodly vermin.
However, things were gradually starting to
look more modern and clean. Suddenly we were ascending a mountain along narrow
roads with steep drops mere meters away. The bus driver was fearlessly taking
the shortest line and repeatedly beeping his horn on the blind corners, pretty
much just saying move or we’ll have a head on collision.
Thankfully, we got to the top and
everyone’s jaws dropped. The scenery was absolutely stunning.
I had other things on my mind though. Like
the fact that the ITU website said flat ride and run courses. I knew there was
not one single chance that there would be a flat 6-kilometer loop within the
entire establishment, let-alone a flat 2.5-kilometer loop.
Normally I’d be jumping for joy, but given
that I’d been on Struggle Street, I began to worry about whether I’d even last
1 loop on the bike.
Following our arrival, of course, there
were dramas. Exactly how many days we were supposed to be staying at the resort
was unclear to the staff. Much to our delight however, the Italian team had
already sorted out the accommodation catastrophe and we didn’t have to
communicate through one English speaking volunteer to 10+ receptionists who
were crowding around one passport at a time as they moved without ease through
the check-in procedures.
Finally we were up in our rooms. After the
volunteer insisted on an unnecessary tour of the apartment and our rooms Mitch
and I got our things sorted and went for a ride.
Unfortunately we didn’t exactly know the
bike course, we had a look at a course map, which we spotted on the drive in and
it was simple enough. An easy-to-follow oval shaped loop. After we had made approximately
20-25 sharp corners, each turn being no more than 150m apart from the next. We
decided to turn around. Despite the fact that there were no turn offs along the
road, we thought there’s a chance we could have gone wrong somewhere.
Race day was less than 24 hours away. Mitch
and I decided that we didn’t want to have assorted domestic animal meats and
noodles along with other local cuisine for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Breakfast especially on race morning. Oh and being quite obviously laughed at
by the entire wait staff at our feeble attempts at using chop sticks Didn’t
make us overly keen on going back 3 times a day.
So we grabbed a volunteer and organized a
taxi to a supermarket. After three stops, and visits to four of the closest-to-western
food stocking shops we could find we had oats, honey, bananas, bread and milk.
Happy days!
Race morning was upon us. Unfortunately there
wasn’t one day or a single training session that I wasn’t feeling utterly
terrible. My entire lower body was aching and the only time I wasn’t in pain
was during strides and still they felt very uncomfortable as I did them.
So as you can imagine during the warm up,
registration, nervous wait in the athlete holding area, the run down to the
pontoon and the wait for 60 odd athletes to be called down there was quite a
lot of doubt running through my mind. However, I did what I believe I do best
and changed my focus to the processes of what is to be done rather than the
outcome and how terrible I felt.
The buzzer went and we were away. I had an
amazing start and found myself out in front. Not long toward the first buoy a
few athletes came passed me and before I knew it I was mid pack and dropping
further back. Not good!
Turning the buoys wasn’t too bad, not many
people were swimming over me and throwing punches and kicks. On the way back in
either I managed to find another gear or others were dropping off fast. I hit the
ramp within sight of what was to be the lead pack. I knew I had to be fast up
to transition if I wanted to be in the front pack so I ran hard and managed to
gain valuable time.
As I jumped on my bike I couldn’t see where
they were mainly because you couldn’t see 150m down the road before there was a
sharp corner. So I just put my head down and chased hard. Being unsure of how
sharp each turn was, and unable to judge from who was in front of me I took
caution with each one. Therefore having to accelerate harder out of the
corners. A few others and myself caught the front pack after roughly 4.5km and
pretty much stayed there the entire ride. Getting to the front was more
difficult than you could imagine. The pack was using the whole road to navigate
corners and if you weren’t in the front 5 then you weren’t getting there
easily.
Surprisingly, the hill on each lap proved
an advantage for me. I moved up it with ease in comparison to the speed and
perceived effort the other athletes were putting in.
Before I knew it we were running through
T2. I felt good and ran well straight off the bike so I was feeling pretty
confident at this point. Running out of T2 I repressed the aching my legs were
giving me and tried to finish the race strong.
Less than one kilometer into it Matt Brown
came flying past me. Then a big, tall, beefy lookin Dutch bloke came past me as
well. The sudden realization of how I was running hit me. Many things ran
through my head, none of which were positive.
However, within seconds I seemed to have
forgotten about all the negatives. And I can only recall some points of the
run. So I guess I just switched off, went through the motions and got myself
across the line. Barely.
Which brings us to the present, planning
has been done and priorities have been organized. Focusing on next season and
getting myself back to 100% saw me having to pull out the Nepean race, I was
really looking forward to this one but as it has been put to me; (here’s that
negativity) doing your HSC and trying to make a World Junior team, not making
it, then trying to work full time and make a World Junior team, not making it
again. Having your wisdom teeth out and losing fitness just days before going
overseas, then getting a chest infection, just making it back to reasonable fitness,
then competing and setting yourself back to square 1 – unfit and unhealthy –
then playing catch up with every race all the way up to this Asian Cup race and
including two world championship level races.
Stress levels for the last 2 years were
through the roof. So yeah, currently in my final days of a break. Skipping
Nepean and hitting next season mentally and physically refreshed. Can’t wait!
