Considering the history that would be behind the veil of Australia's oldest triathlon it almost feels like a privilege to be able to attend this event. Let alone compete in the professional men's race as history is being made.
I'd always dreamt of doing the Nepean Triathlon at the end of a season. There is something extremely enticing about entering a non-drafting event where you still race against guys you have been competing against for years in the draft legal format.
Timing was always an issue for me when the Nepean triathlon came around. Coming home from a long European stint physically and mentally worn down, the last thing I felt like doing was continuing training solo at home for another month or more to then jump into another race equivalent to World Cup level of exertion.
Admittedly it is far from a World Cup; in terms of the depth of athletes. However, in terms of exertion it's certainly is equivalent. At least I thought so anyway.
It seems as though the non-drafting scene is a game of strengths. With the exception of Jan Frodeno of course, it appears as though you need to play to what you're best at in order to perform to your potential.
Every now and again in draft-legal races I find myself going easier than a maximum-sustainable-effort over the given distance, especially in the water and on the bike. I suppose you could say there are higher-highs and lower-lows in terms of how much it hurts. With non-drafting it's just a different kind of hurt, more levelled and consistent. Which I wasn't used to.
Pre race training in Brisbane prepared me for a hard swim. As soon as the whistle blew I pulled through hard and began sprinting...for longer...and longer...and longer.
Ben Shaw was right on my hip, eventually I began to fade a tiny bit and he noticed this and shot off to the left where Aaron Royle and Ryan Fisher were ahead and gaining. Without a second guess I darted straight across and sat on Ben's hip.
I was slipping further and further back and by the time we'd gone round the first buoy and again the second, I had dropped to Ben's feet. I had gone absolutely mad at the start and it was beginning to affect me as the swim dragged on. We were approaching 300 or so meters to go and all I can remember saying to myself don't you dare f***ing drop off now. Like I said about strengths earlier, I knew I had to play to this so I pushed harder than I ever have in a swim to maintain contact.
Coming out of the water I had dropped off about a meter, knowing that fisher and Ben are both strong riders, I knew could miss them by a matter of seconds if I didn't get sorted and consequently have to expend a lot more energy to catch back up. So I ran through transition and got to my bike as quickly as possible, and I managed to jump on right next to them.
We went out pretty solid and tried to gain on and gap as much as we could to athletes ahead and behind respectively. It was tough to gauge whether or not we were doing so. At about 30 minutes into the bike we saw Aaron heading back and, after we turned, Matt Pellow and Jake Birtwhistle on the chase pretty close behind.
There was a certain element of complacency within our group, we didn't necessarily want to rail ourselves but none of us wanted to get caught. Eventually we were caught by Jake and Matt ultimately because of the lack of will to dig deep on the bike. That being said it was still a tough ride considering we weren't allowed to draft off each other so as much as we were relatively complacent we still rode strong-ish.
After Jake and Matt bridged up things became a little cruisy. Eventually Jake moved toward the front to which that ignited some motivation and fisher began to roll up as well. Eventually Matt got sick of sitting and went to the front and pushed the pace as we headed into T2.
The dismount wasn't as manic as most races we do but there was still a sense of urgency and we all shuffled around and ended up dismounting quite close.
As we were running to our racks Jake almost parked up in my spot, I laughed on the inside and said "that's mine man"
The struggle of having half the field in Asics!
Any who. As we ran out I knew that having the u23 world champ hot on our heels meant it was going to be a quick 10k from the get-go.
He passed me as we were running over the bridge and his long legs got the better of mine as he descended the other side. Jake quickly caught up to Ben and fish and I was holding pace about 20m back. Eventually Ben began to fade and I caught him by the 2km mark. As we approached 5km, much to my surprise I hadn't lost much time on Jake and fish. I had started out fairly conservatively so with that in mind and because I was feeling strong I kept telling myself I can hold them there, which was roughly 30m ahead.
I had no idea where the chase group was at and if anyone was gaining on me so I just kept looking forward and running as hard as I could. With about 1 kilometre to go I began to feel myself fading, at this point I gazed back and noticed a black figure which I knew to be Brendan Sexton.
I had a moments hesitation and almost confided in an easier pace. Thinking that Brendan was too far back to catch me, I almost let auto pilot take over to cruise me in. But knowing that when he is having a good day he can run like the wind I regained focus and didn't take any chances. I pulled myself together and pushed to maintain the pace I'd held for the past 9km.
It wasn't imperative for me to have a good race at Nepean, ultimately I just had a burning desire to prove to myself that world championships was just an off day. In the end I feel like I did just that so I am reasonably content.
All in all I was pretty stoked with how I performed and it has made me all the more excited to head to Noosa for the final race of this season.
.JPG)
