Wellington National Triathlon Champs 2010!

An article by Debi Hazelden    4 Comments

• Tweet

• Tweet

The final Contact Tri race of the season! This is the race which qualifies us for the olympic distance World Champs in Budapest if we are in the top of our age group.

Day Before

My partner Scott and I flew to Wellington on the Friday morning. We took the shuttle back to his sisters house and started putting the bikes back together so we wouldn’t have to worry about it later. Well actually Scott put the bikes together, I put my aero bars on

I fell asleep on the couch after another week of 5:30am starts. By the time I get to Friday I’m always pretty stuffed from all the early starts. I’m still trying to get into the routine of going to bed earlier. Who would think it’d be so hard?

We went down to registration at 4pm on Friday. One minute it was sunny and all tomorrows competitors were lined up down the stairs for registration out on to the street. The next minute there was a massive storm. The sea chopped up, wind was up to 130km per hour with roofs blowing off. It was crazy! We were thinking the triathlon would turn into a duathlon and the swim leg would be cancelled.

I was quite nervous since it was my first olympic distance triathlon. (1.5km swim, 40km bike, 10km run).

Race Morning

By early Saturday morning the wind had calmed down, the air was pretty chilly and I’d had a crap sleep. We headed down to the transition at 5:45am. Just as the sun was rising over the horizon we were all lined up along the wharf in our wetsuits. Our feet were numb, we were all chatting nervously wondering what the hell we were doing there, while shivering and shaking.

Swim

After a 3 minute paddle it was time for the deepwater start. The horn went off and it was all action. My plan with the swim is to go hard for the first 150m to get past the main pack, but not too hard so I end up gasping for air, slowing down and freaking out. It’s a fine line which I’m still learning. This time I didn’t go fast enough, I was stuck behind heaps of swimmers, trying to scoot in between a couple with some swiming on top of me. I got a few belts in the body, trying to get through a couple of gaps but couldn’t get in. Eventually I swam behind them until a gap opened up. By that time I just plodded along for the rest of the swim. Trying to swim on their hip to conserve energy. I did the swim in 27min which I was happy with, I definitely know I can improve on that.

Bike

Quickly out of the wetsuit and onto the bike. I had quite a bit of trouble getting my feet in my cycle shoes while riding. Got them in and I was off. It was a gorgeous ride along Oriental Bay and out alng the coast. The ride was pretty rough in areas. It was like they had put down new gravel which seems a silly thing to do before a race. Quite a few competitors got flat tyres. I’ve never seen so many in a race. Cycling past them was sad to watch. One of my main competitors is always ahead of me got a flattie. Gail is always ahead of me and it must have been so frustrating to see me cycle past her holding her bike on the side of the road. I felt so bad! She had overtaken me at the 20km mark of the cycle. However, she is lucky enough to have great friends. After 10 mins her friend Michelle cycled up, and lent her her bike so Gail could finish. What a friend!

With it being a cold day I didn’t feel like my leppin gel. I made myself have some, although I didn’t have as much as I usually would. I also use Leppin Enduro in my drink bottle which is so easy to drink.

Nearing the end of the cycle I could spot 2 girls, I saw one of them had the same age group as me written on her leg so I went for it. I over took her and the next girl. It turned out she was in my age group too. We all finished pretty close. The 40km bike took 1:18:40 which was ok.

Run

With a slippery run over mud back to transistion it was time for the run. With numb hands I struggled to get my shoes on. My claves were very tight, not cramping but tight. I ran just hoping I wasn’t going to cramp up. After the first km both the girls in my age group had passed me. With tight calves and numb feet I really felt I couldn’t go faster. I was running pretty slow it felt. I thought I felt the onset of the stitch at the 5km mark, took some deep breaths and it seemed to disappear. The 10km run took my 45:30.

Really stoked I’ve now completed my first olympic distance triathlon. Total time 2:31:23, 6th in my age group so I qualified to go to the world champs in Budapest. Bring on the next one, I can’t wait to do better!