Challenge Gold Coast

Well that is Challenge Gold Coast all wrapped up, for better or worse.

To say it wasn't my best day would be putting it mildly. I am still not entirely sure what went wrong, and I may not ever really figure it out, possibly just a bad day.

Anyone who has read the blog over the last couple of days will know that it has been raining cats and dogs here on the Gold Coast for a few days now. That rain led them to announce last night that the ride had been reduced to just 40km. To be perfectly honest that sort of works against me, since the bike leg is where I usually gain the most time. The shortened course also took out the toughest parts of the course, all those hills I have been training for over the past few months. But I took a drive over the course last night and I have to say, the organisers really didn't have a choice.

The biggest factor in the decision to shorten the course were the hills. This course has some massive, very steep hills. The organisers where making a big deal about how tough the hills would be to climb in the lead up to the race, but in the end it was the potential descending disasters that made them shorten it. Quite frankly putting people down an 18% gradient hill (I have driven it and it really is 18%) on wet wheels, on wet roads, would have been signing some people up for hospital. As it was there were a number of nasty crashes on the short course. On the 90km course, there would have been a lot more, guarantee. I imagine the organisers would have a tough time signing off on a course that they that they knew would hurt people.

A lot of people have been saying that if you can't handle a bike, then you shouldn't be on the course. That is all fine to say that, but the truth is that a large part of the field aren't that familiar with tricky handling, that is just the reality of it. The organisers have to make decisions to keep the whole field safe, not just some of them. Plus, I don't care how good a bike handler you are, I have my doubts as to whether anyone could have descended that hill safely in the conditions we had.

I should mention at this stage that during the race we actually had very little rain. In fact it is mostly blue skies at the moment and it has been a pretty lovely day. But (and it is a big but) the roads were soaking wet the whole way during the race. In the end it is the wet roads that are the danger, and they would have been with us no matter what.

Anyway, so moving on, 40km ride, that is what we had. It sort of changed the dynamic of the race a bit, making it a kind of Olympic with a long run. I didn't really let it phase me though, the plan didn't really change.

Anyway, the first part of the race went fine. The swim start was one of the more chaotic I have been in for a while. Very aggressive. My wave had all the age groups from 18-39, so quite a big wave. It started fast and didn't really calm down. Usually in races like this the field settles down after a few hundred metres, but in this case that settle didn't really happen. In the end I worked my way to the front of the second group. But I missed the toes of the lead group. Still I was happy with the swim. My time was 22 minutes something, indicating a very quick swim. In relation to everyone else, I was about 2 minutes off the pace of the quickest swimmers, which is probably a better metric to use. I was happy enough with that.

I got on the bike near what felt like the front of the age groupers, although looking at the results I think there may have been a group in front. After 6 of 7km I got caught by a couple of guys and for the first time in any race I have done, I managed to stick with them after they came past. Riding with people in a race like this is a new experience for me, most of my rides are done very solo. Having people to work with was great on this course. I was being very hesitant on the corners and descents, but having these guys to work with forced me to push those tricky sections bit. As a result I think I covered the bike course much quicker than if I had been alone.

The obvious question is whether chasing these guys made me over cook the ride. The short answer is no, I don't think so. In the end they weren't going much quicker than I was capable of, I even had a couple of shots at going off the front, I just didn't have the speed. Since I couldn't get away I made the decision to just stick with them, and if anything that made me ride within myself a little bit more, there were a couple of sections were I was even coasting in order to maintain the draft distance. The power level recorded for the ride was about what I would expect for a ride like this. Certainly at the end of the ride I didn't feel like I was in any particular world of pain.

Then the run happened. I got out into the run feeling okay, but just not great. From the word go I was feeling flat. I managed to pick it up and have a couple of quicker kms towards the start, but that passed fairly fast. In the end I managed to survive my way through the run, but I had nothing to actually attack it with. According to the results I started the run in 7th position in my age group (I felt like I was much higher), but the whole way through the run I was hemorrhaging positions. In the end I crossed the line in 13th position age group wise. Overall I was in the range of around 72nd.

With the shortened bike, this had to be a day when the run was on song. For me it wasn't. The short ride was always going to make a good result tough here for me, but when my run didn't turn up, it became impossible.

Why didn't my run come to the party. The short answer is that I really don't know. I have a couple of theories, but nothing I am certain of at the moment, and in the end it probably wasn't any one thing. I have a few things in mind to try and work on and I am hoping they will make a difference. For now it is probably enough to say that running has not been going well in training (although it has been going better than what happened today) and I think that came out in the race. Mentally I feel I was here, I don't feel like I gave up on the race, I think if I had done that I would have a dnf, the body just didn't play along.

Speaking of the race, so how was it, beyond my own personal experience. It was okay. There are definitely some areas where they could improve. The run is just a little bit of a dogs breakfast, you are kind of all over the shop, up this path, down the other path, over here, up there etc. That was okay, but some of the sections of path were just plain too narrow for the number of people on them. Especially on the second lap once the whole field was out there. Certain areas got pretty congested and I saw more than one incidence of aggro coming out. The only area that really concerned me was part of the return leg of the run where you had to run on the road for a while. It wasn't a closed road, rather you ran in a bike lane that was segregated from traffic with witches hats. Basically you had a lane less than a metre wide to run in, with nothing between you and the oncoming cars but orange cones. It wasn't very comfortable, particularly if you were trying to overtake. There simply wasn't enough room in the bike lane for two abreast. Sections of the course got fairly muddy too, but that is a little out of the organisers control.

Ride wise, what we saw of the course was quite nice. Very pretty. Fairly average road surface, but not much the organisers can do about that. On the whole the ride worked okay I think. Interesting is one of the words I would use. Faster than it looks too.

The swim was fine too. I would be interested to know what caused it to be so quick, there was certainly some flow, but we swam both up and down stream, so the flow should have been neutralised. It could have been a little short, I am not sure about that.

Beyond that, just silly little things. Like testing the starter horn with the pro men on the start line, they all then took off (what did you think was going to happen) requiring them to be stopped and brought back to the line. Then the confusion over whether it was supposed to be a shallow or deep water start, resulting in the pro men heading out of the water and then heading back in. All just little things that shouldn't be happening on the start line. No coke on the run too (who does that).

All up, the basics are there for a good race. For me it wasn't an amazing, you have to do this race, sort of race. Not yet anyway, it needs a few tweaks first (and less rain). But those stand out races aren't that common and this one wasn't bad. If it there was a gap in the calender that I was looking to fill I would certainly consider this one again.