70.3 Geelong, Australia
So Geelong IM 70.3 marked my first 70.3 in Australia. Just 90 mins from home, was a weird experience to throw bike in back of car rather than pack it up and fly and bus and hotel and hope it re-assembled ok!!
Geelong is a great venue with a bay swim with water temp of about 18 and flat. If had a short preparation after Christmas lay off so Feb race was a good kick start to the year. Usual Sat preparations went smoothly and weather shaped up well. A decent sleep and usual pre dawn prep.
Swim went well, Aussies a bit rugged so a few kicks and blows but all in all pretty smooth. Great course and happy to post a PB of 33 mins.
Bike course was 2 loops with a few rolling hills and one fairly steep one but overall good course. Went fairly well all up, had bit of mechanical with seat nose sliding down about 30 degrees early on. Debated stopping to fix it but decided would lose more time stopping than riding with it. In hindsight maybe wrong decision as I spent whole race sliding my butt back on seat. But overall ride well with good power, but was a bit disappointed with a 2.52 bike but no great harm done.
Run is my thing. Was a 2.5 lap run with constant rolling hills. Along coast and promenade which was great. Struggled a bit on the day as it was quite hot by run time and legs weren't quite there. But pushed through and ground out a 1.41 run for an overall 5.16 also a PB.
Overall a nice race and happy for the season opener and my warm up for Taiwan 3 weeks later.....or so I thought....
Highlight post race was not roll down.....in Australia a 5.16 scrapes into top 30 and no sneaky roll downs....highlight was bumping into Josh Arngerber who had won the race and he was happy stop and chat and pose for a Damo selfie. Was a great bloke with a good sense of humour....and a ginger....we are kinda like twins really!!!
