Race Result

Well the race today went a lot better than expected. Just goes to show that sometimes you just don't know what you are going to get.

Not exactly sure why the race went well. Perhaps I am a bit fitter than I give myself credit for, or perhaps the taper went particularly well. Perhaps a bit of both.

I think one thing that definitely worked in my favour was that the race was a lot shorter than expected. We have had loads of rain in Perth recently which meant that the river was really flowing at a rate of knots, sort of like cycling with a massive tailwind. Anyway, what I expected to be a 90 minute race ended up being a 70 minute race. Certainly enough to hurt a whole darn lot, but perhaps not so long that I faded too much. If the event had taken me another 20 minutes I am not sure I would have still been holding on. Happy to claim it though and walk away with 3rd.

Quite happy with that third too. As I mentioned yesterday there were some quality paddlers there today who I wasn't really expected to compete with, but in the end I managed to hold on to them fairly well, coming in 80 seconds behind the win. I'll settle for 80 seconds in a 70 minute race.

Darn race hurt a bit though. Like I tend to with these events I went out too hard again. This time I worked to reign it in before I exploded, but I think I only achieved that with mixed success. Certainly I was able to hold pace until the line, but there was a bit of a fade in speed and technique towards the end. Not disastrous, but still something to work on.

Plenty of other things to learn from the race too. I am still pretty new to this paddling thing so there is some technique improvements I can definitely make. As I have already mentioned the pacing could be better. The technique would help with the pacing too as I could generate speed with less effort, which would be nice. A good race is always nice, but no matter how things go, I always think there is something that can be learnt and today's race is no different.

All up though I am going to chalk this one down as successful. As I mentioned yesterday I had identified this race as one that I wanted to focus on, so it was great to finish it feeling like I had got all I could out of it. Even if my preparation had gone a more to plan I don't think I could have done much better result wise and that is a very satisfying feeling.

Time for some well earned sleeping.