Post Race

Well there we go, race is done and dusted.

I would like to proudly declare that I won, which I did, but as there were only two competitors in my category I am not sure how much of a claim to fame it is.

Given the small field the race was always going to be mostly against myself and the clock and that was about how it turned out. While the race was only 11km, that is a fair way on flat water on a SUP and so it was a pretty solid morning out. The 11km was made slightly worse by the fact that I did 12km by mistake. Not a great start.

Besides going 1000m too far the race went alright. I suspect I got the pacing a little wrong, going out too hard and then fading a little in the middle when we were fighting the wind and the current the most. I think if I had taken those first 2km a bit easier I probably could have held a better over all average pace between kilometres 4 and 8 when the going got a bit tough. Other than the pacing there were probably a few other things I could have done better, but all up I was mostly happy with the execution of the event.

Going too far was another classic example of a person getting the course plain wrong, the same issue we see in events all the time no matter what the sport or the country. As I have written about before I have no one to blame but myself for the stuff up as the mistake was mine. As is often the case with these sorts of mistakes I feel there were some extenuating circumstances, but in the end the responsibility was all me.

In this case the extenuating circumstances were mainly a last minute change to the course. I had studied the course a fair bit (plus I have done this event in the past) and so I was confident I knew were to go, however, in the briefing they announced a different course that caught everybody a little of guard. I must say I knew roughly where the new turn around point was, but I wasn't 100% clear. We were told the new turn would be marked by tape and a boat and so between that and the fact that I would be following people I figured I would be okay. That is the problem about making assumptions, particularly when it relates to a race course.

In the end the person I was following had less of an idea about the course than I did. To make it a bit more confusing there was no boat at the turn and so the thing most of us were looking for wasn't there. By the time we realised we had gone past the turn we had done about an extra 500m, which we had to cover again on the way back.

So while I will cop this one as being my mistake and my responsibility I think the mistake was a fairly understandable one (I wasn't alone in getting it wrong). As frustrating as it was I am not going to lose that much sleep about it as the extra distance didn't change the over all result, it just meant I was that little bit more stuffed by the finish.

So that is one race down, one more to go. Next weekend I have another paddle race, this time it is even further 16km and many hours drive away (up in Kalbarri), but it will be part of a nice family holiday, so that will be pretty cool. All up I am really looking forward to it.