I had to wait a good while before writing this blog as I had some technical "issues" during this race. Not so much personally but officiating technicalities. I won't go into details but lets just say I was more than angry leaving Goondiwindi and the few days following.
Anyways..... the race. Interesting format. Due to the floods in QLD the weeks leading up to the race they had to move the swim leg from the MacIntyre River to the botanical garden's lagoon! This however was located 3.2km from transition! So the race was: 3 laps of the lagoon of about 750m (swim was very long!), 3.2km run to transition, then 2 x 40km laps on the bike (normally 1x 80km lap but water was still over the road at the 30km mark!), then to run the final 16.8km to make up the 20km run leg. So the swim was blind! Dirty/ murky water and the race starting just on first light at 5:05am. Then battling with the slower swimers on the 2nd and 3rd laps! Came out 4th (wow!) and got myself into 3rd by transition. Then smacked the bike hard....into 2nd by about 2km then into 1st by about 10km....then a big pack caught me and i was unable to shake them until about the last 10km of the ride. So got a little break away but it wasn't enough. Headed off on the run in 1st but was caught by 2nd by about 5km and couldn't hang on. Combo of training through this race and going really hard on the bike.
Still 2nd is not bad. Fun race, great volunteers and good atmosphere.
Only have 2 and 1/2 weeks left of work before full commitment to this passion of mine. I'm scared but now I'm so excited. A big thankyou to 2XU for my two new race kits coming in the post, to Mizuno for our ongoing partnership for 2011, to ISM saddles for a new bike seat and to Arch financials for helping me plan the transition to full time pro.
A quiet month planned before some really big races. I'll keep you updated....
Rachie xo
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