Southland ½ Ironman

On Saturday I headed down to Gore for the Southland ½ Ironman race as a final hit out before the Taupo Ironman. Since having to pass up Challenge Wanaka due to illness and a fair amount of fatigue I’ve had some great training and have been feeling really good. But Ironman is a slightly different race to what I have been use to over the last few years and so the ½ seemed like a great opportunity to see if the training has me heading in the right direction.

Jamie Whyte who was 5th on the Tauranga ½ was suppose to be racing but had to withdraw with illness but they managed to rope in Luke Drakstra who had been at Challenge Wanaka 2 weeks ago and is also a previous winner there.

The swim started off pretty well and I managed to get into a small bunch of swimmers and after the first lap I could still see Luke’s distinctive yellow cap. One of the major goals was to see how the swimming is going so it was going well at this point. On the second lap the bunch disintegrated and I just missed moving up fast enough to get on Luke’s feet. He gradually pulled away with Dunedin athlete Chris Bisley and by the end I had lost 30 seconds. I have a feeling Luke wasn’t at 100% as he pulled out shortly after the start of the ride but my swimming is still on the way up and so hopefully I will be a little closer to the top guys come Taupo in 5 weeks.

Onto the bike and I had decided to push reasonably hard in the bike despite a big week of training. The course in Gore is a loop course and with 9 laps for the bike and 2 and a bit for the run in the opposite direction we were going to get to know the way pretty well. It is also quite a hilly course so combined with all the changes in direction it makes for a lot of accelerating, decelerating, cornering and generally makes it very hard to keep a constant pace.

I managed to get into a reasonable zone on the watts meter but on the down hills I would run out of gears and on the up hills the numbers would go through the roof as I also ran out of gears to keep spinning and it turned into a grind. So I had about a 3 km section of the lap where everything was constant and that became my gauge.

One good thing about the short loop is it didn’t take long to start lapping people and it always gave someone to chase just up the road. I kept an eye on the lap times and I was managing to hold the lap times within 20 seconds of each other the whole way through. The hill was starting to take its toll a little by the end, I could have used a bigger sprocket on the back but it was good to jump off the bike and get onto the run.

It is still a nervous time getting off the bike and wondering what the legs will respond like but as I took off on one of the flatter sections I was pleased to see my speed was good. The real test came a kilometre later as we climbed out of the town on one of the steeper sections of the course. From here it is a long gradual uphill for about 3km and it was a good test to keep the legs spinning over until the top.

Once through the first lap I knew if I could hold onto the pace then the time would be good. I also had the added incentive of my friend Adrian Bailey chasing me on the run as part of the top team. I was happy the legs didn’t show any signs of giving out on the uphill but they were feeling the pace a few km’s later as I tried to wind it up for the final few kilometres to ensure Adrian wouldn’t catch me.

At the finish I stopped the clock in 4 hours and a few seconds, a fair bit faster than I’d thought I would go on this particular course. Adrian brought his team home in second place with Chris Bisley second individual 17 minutes later.

The race showed the training has been working for me and I was especially happy to run 1.15 for the ½ marathon off the bike. Last year in the Ironman I’d been a bit unprepared for how running on the road hurts the body so much more than the trails. If the race was anything to go by I seem to be adapting to it more this year.

In two weeks Elina has Coast to Coast and Taupo is now just under 5 weeks away so it will be a busy time for training and making sure all the gear is spot on.

For full results see  http://sportsouthland.co.nz/files/southland%20summer%20challenge%20results%2009.pdf

Thanks for your support

Rich