Race Day

So my little race is all done and dusted. It went okay enough, probably could have gone better, but wasn't a disaster either.

In the end I think I achieved my planned objectives for the day, well most of them anyway. So I think that mostly counts as a success.

As predicted yesterday the conditions sort of meant that drafting wasn't really a factor. The conditions were a bit windy, choppy and technical which posed other challenges and meant that a whole different set of skills got some practise. I probably didn't handle those windy conditions as well as some of the more experienced guys, but I managed them better than others. When the wind picks up and the water gets choppy is when the difference between myself and the quick guys is most pronounced as I can't simply make up for the lack of skill by being fit. I suspect that is what happened today. Still practise is the best way to improve in those conditions and that was exactly what I got today.

While I didn't get much drafting practise I think I did manage to pace the event a bit better, which was one of my race objectives. However, I am still not sure I paced it well as this is my HR graph.

As you can see it started off pretty high, which I recognized and so deliberately tried to bring it down, which I did. Probably just over half way through, as I started to fatigue and the conditions got a bit harder I probably let the foot off a little and the HR started to drop a bit more. In a well paced event ideally the HR should start off lower and then gradually build over the course of the event, which is kind of opposite to what I did. I am happy that I kept the HR more in control, but I am also less happy because it is really the opposite of what you should aim for when it comes to long races. These events are complicated by the fact that everybody starts hard to try and secure a good draft, however, that is no different to an open water swimming race and I always tell my athletes to not go out unsustainably hard in order to secure a draft, which is more or less what I did.  I suspect I should probably take my own advice there. So improved, but still loads of room to improve further.

So after all that I ended up with 3rd, which is about where I expected to come. The first two guys are pretty nifty paddlers, the winner is a member of the Australian Junior team, so you know, he goes okay. I probably wasn't going to knock either of those too over today. I would have liked to been a bit closer to them both though, I was seven and a half minutes behind the winner over the 90 minute race. Last time I raced them the event was about 70 minutes long and I was around 2 minutes back, so the gap today was much bigger. I suspect that additional gap was partly due to the trickier conditions and also because I didn't do a full taper for this race, which I did last time. Also, as I mentioned above, I think I kind of took the foot off with a few kilometres to go, which I certainly didn't in the earlier race. All legit reasons, but still a little disappointing if I am honest.

Still, I am not going to be too annoyed with 3rd place plus I got $30 for my troubles, so you know cha-ching. The race had some good bits and some frustrating bits much like every other race in the history of ever, but over all I think the good outweighs the frustrating and I have got plenty of things to take away from it. Going to put it down as a win I think.