Chengdu World Cup

I have a methodical approach to race day. Typically for a morning race my gear is pre-packed (obviously) and as I lay in bed I work backwards from athlete line up and allocate times of where I have to be and how long I’ll have.

I didn’t have a whole lot of ‘spare time’ for this race so I knew I’d be cutting it fine as it is. Of course, as luck would have it: there was a dilemma.

I’ve always wondered how a few pieces of timber strewn together in Burke’s Backyard are the dictators of compliance or rule breaking. It is imperative that your bike set-up complies. At the ITU events of which I competed in previously (Elwood, Devonport and Mooloolaba) I checked out 100% fine, so worrisome I was not.

I handed my bike to a man perched behind a seemingly homemade timber contraption that was to tell me if my position complied with UCI rules.

“Sorry sir, your seat position is 2cm too far forward.” Said a feint voice in a local Chinese accent.

You, Have to be kidding me.

Jesse Featonby was with me and had his checked once I moved my bike to the side. He too was not cleared; we were pretty dumbfounded especially because Jesse had participated in ITU sanctioned events not unlike this one.

This sparked confusion and debate between the officials and us. After a good amount of time wasted it was clear we were going to have to change our seat positions. With obvious unimpressed and hateful body language we did so and moved on.

Already hard-pressed for time I had no option but to skip some of my run warm up in order to fit in a swim.

I managed to get to get the swim completed and two of three dive starts. I felt quite ignorant doing the third dive right in front of the whistle blower who parades along the pontoon signaling to get out of the water, thankfully there were many people still swimming.

I jumped out, removed the wetsuit and wrapped myself in clothing and towels to stay warm. We approached the line up area and had been approximately placed in order. There was barely a gap in the crowd as spectators gazed upon the foreign bodies jumping up and down, swinging limbs around and doing last minute activation. It was a pretty surreal feeling, even though half the crowd was most likely paid to attend.

The minutes seemed to fly by and in no time I was under the water streamlining like this guy

I was out front for a while, until some American seemed to come at a 90-degree angle straight into my ribs. I looked up and noticed I was heading dead straight toward the first buoy, all I could think was; “what was that, guy?” then carried on swimming.

I’m not sure if that set me back a few strokes or not but seconds after that there were humans every damn where. Being a new experience and all I became quite panicked as I was getting sucked further and further back with every limb that found its way to my head, back or legs at a thousand newton meters of force.

So I did a fairly rational thing, said sorry in my head and swam straight over some poor soul to get the inside line.

All was well until I realized it was going to be one hundred times worse as soon as the 10 wide and 30 deep group of guys would too want the inside line. Fortunately it wasn’t as predicted. Still rougher than any swim turn I’ve ever been involved in, but I survived.

It was pretty cool having to get out and dive back in. Apart from having to deliberately muck up my dive so I didn’t land on someone, the rest of the swim was pretty similar to the start. Inside lines here, get on feet there, pass this guy blah, blah, blah you know the drill.

Running through to transition I could see a big group of guys 100m down the track and I knew I couldn’t waste a second so I ran as hard as my body would allow.

It was easy to spot my bike with the yellow wall tires so I’m thankful for that trend that I followed.

Got my helmet on and raced out of transition, was nearly taken out by Boxy (we had a good laugh post race about that) then got one foot in before I spotted an Irishman drilling it just ahead, there would be plenty of time to put my other foot in so I dropped a few gears and caught up to him. Instead of staying on his wheel I darted to the right and hammered it past him. There were 3 rises in the first half of the lap. I lead over rise one and the Irishman took over on the decent, I came back around for rise two and decided to stay on the front as we sped past a small group of 10 and saw the front pack heading over the third rise. I stayed on the front and drilled it over the third rise and tried to peel off on the decent but the Irishman didn’t want to take a turn. I tried waving him through, but there was no chance so thankfully the pack was less than a hundred meters ahead.

None of the athletes we passed managed to get on as we passed them, but before long there was roughly a 60 man lead pack. Some of the skill of the athletes in the bunch made me less than miserable. It was painful to watch and scary to be in close proximity of a specific few. So I stayed clear of the back for as much of the ride as possible. I felt that a crash was inevitable so on the final lap I made sure I was no deeper than 5^th wheel and in the closing 3km I was on the front and didn’t let anyone drag half the pack around me. I was on the front around the two right-handers in prediction of ending up on the inside of the final two left-handers. All went to plan and of course there was a crash around the first left-hander. I put the pressure on out of the corner and made sure I would be first into transition.

One of the Russians had a ‘balls out’ sprint around me in the final straight but no one was on his wheel so I let him get the jump on me. I was second into transition and 2^nd (I think) out.

Not much is mentionable on the run. My goal for this race/season has been to find my feet over 10k. So the plan was to build into the run instead of trying to smash it and end up running like it’s a Sunday jog.

Being, now, in Spain and having to get settled in etc. I have only just had the chance to chat about the race with Keiran. We discussed it all and he was pleased with how I raced and how I paced myself but asked if I could have gone out harder.

Of course, I said.

You may be thinking that was a “Well, why didn’t you?” kind of approach by him, but my run has had a tendency to be like:

Good à drop off dramatically à come good in the final kilometers.

So this was more of an experiment. I said what I did in the opening 2.5km was more than manageable.

Good, so next race you try for less manageable and get to a ‘balls out’ effort earlier on, said Keiran.

Seeing yourself drop from 2^nd all the way down to around 45^th in 5km isn’t very encouraging. But the feeling of making up places certainly is.

Sure, I only made up about 10 places, but in this race alone I probably doubled the amount of places I’d made up on the run leg of every triathlon I’ve completed over the past 3 years. They certainly aren’t average athletes at this level so I was pretty stoked with that run.

The plan is to experiment again at a local race here in Spain then head to Holten in July for a good hard hit out.