Taupo Half Ironman Race Report

The Lake Taupo Half Ironman ... first and foremost, the race was for reconnaissance. Most of the course shares parts of the full Ironman course. Race day greeted us with rain and there was a lot more to come.

Swim. The course was a straight line swim, starting roughly where the turnaround of the out-and-back swim for Ironman will be. 2k all strung out in a line looks very long. The water was cold, but not brain-freezing so it was alright. Once we got started, all seemed fine. There was only one buoy and that was at the end. So, it was hard to really go in a straight line. The field split out into two lines, seperated by probably 20 metres. I followed one line for awhile and wasn't happy with them, so I slowly switched to the other line. Not sure if that was wise. I felt pretty good but my time didn't really reflect how fast I had been swimming recently.

Bike. After a fairly long transition of running on really rough pavement, I was majorly happy just to have my feet in cycling shoes. It was pretty wet now but at least it was reasonably mild (Taupo is known for it's cool mornings). The plan, as before, was quite simple. Don't eat or drink until the heart rate settles in under 165, take 2-3 drink bottles and 3 gels. And, take some caffeine at about 30k into the bike. Heart rate settled quite quickly, which is a bit suprising since you immediately get into an approx 10k climb out of town. Was moving along reasonably well, passing a few people going up the hill. After reaching the top and beginning the decent, a dude on a Cervelo P3 Carbon w/ Zipp 404 fronts and disc rear blew by me (I noticed this guy in transition. He was wearing Team Canada tri suit). I figure if he was willing to spend that amount of money (~$13k AUD, at least) on equipment, then I'm happy to let him pass. There was a really rough section of pavement about 30k out from the town, but I knew it was there (from last week's ride) and was expecting it. As I approached the turnaround, I figured I would count what position I'm in just to pass the time. The two leaders were way out in front. I was 19th overall. Heading back into town, I was slowly (and I mean slowly) catching a group of 3 guys. About 15k later, I had finally passed them. 16th, great! Some heavy sessions of rain. Off in the distance, I could see Cervelo dude, I was slowly catching him and that made me feel pretty good. There is a fairly long and gradual climb back to the 10k descent into town and that is where I passed Mr. P3C (I later found out that he was in the Master's category -- 40+ -- damn). Passed another guy coming down the hill at 60kph. Came into transition in 14th (12th fastest bike split -- not bad for no race wheels). Another painful run on the hard pavement and off on the run.

Finishing off the 90k ride.


Run. For once, felt reasonably fresh at the beginning of a triathlon run. No cramping in the medialis -- great! Pretty stoked about running in 14th place, I figured if I could hold off a few people and stay in the top 20, I'd be quite happy with that. To my surprise, it took a long time before I heard any footsteps. One dude passed me around the 9k mark. I managed to pee while running! Yes, I know it is one of those things few try to achieve, but I did it. On my second lap, I got into a running battle with some guy on his first lap, but that helped me move along. With less than 2k to go, Brandon (an American guy I had met the night before) blew by me. I saw later that his run split was no less than 10 minutes faster than me and I was really suffering by this point. The differential in speed was truly amazing. Still, I managed to break 90 minutes on the run, a nice psycological barrier and a 2 minute improvement over Shepp.

Reasonably fresh at the beginning of the run.


As always, happy to be finished.

Lake Taupo

The pronunciation of Taupo seems to be a moving target. Some say to-po, touh-po, taw-po ... call it what you will. My co-workers constantly wonder what planet i'm on when it comes to pronouncing english words, so maybe i'm just phonetically disfunctional.

Reminds me somewhat of Penticton, partly because it's host to one of these silly events called 'Ironman', but also because it's a small town on a large freshwater lake, with nearby mountains, and it serves as jumping point to a lot of outdoor activities.

I'll be back there in 10 weeks. Let's get this straight: so, I'm going to train 20+ hours per week swimming, biking, running for the next 2 months ... then cutoff most fruit/veggies, fibre, caffeine for a week ... wake up at 4:30 in the morning ... go and abuse myself for 10 or more hours on race course ... eating out of tiny packages of sugary goo ... all in the hope of joining 1500 other freaks like myself who want to do the same thing all over again ... but in the heat, humidity, wind of Hawaii ...

Sounds pretty good to me!

Parts of both the swim course and run course ... the cool thing about the swim course is that the water tastes like water from a spring water bottle ...


The start of the only 'real' climb on the bike course ...


The middle of the same climb ... a little geothermal activity happenin there on the left ... mmm, sulfur.


Near the top of that climb ... it is about 8km long ...


After the climb, the start of a nice long 20k of very slight descent ... meaning of course a minor ascent on the way back to town ... let's hope for a head wind going out, tail wind coming back ....


Heading back to town, you can see the lake in the distance ... the 8k descent is going to be fast ... like 60kph fast. Hopefully the roads will be dry.

JAFA city

New Zealanders that don't live in Auckland have a certain unconditional "love" of Aucklanders ... so much so that Aucklanders are commonly referred to as JAFAs, JAFA meaning Just Another F---ing Aucklander. If you drive an hour south of the city, you see warning signs like "J-ust A-nother F-atal A-ccident" or "J-ust A-nother F-oolish A-ccident", playing on the acronym to shock you into better driving! Roughly equivalent to Australia's "Tired? Take a powernap now" signs that are ubiquitous on the freeways here.

That said, Auckland is beautiful place. Though shockingly reminiscent of Seattle. The tower, the coffee, the bay. Fewer SUVs of course, thankfully.

My brother lives in an area that is under a lot of development. In one direction, you have an abandoned train station. In another direction you have an abandoned stadium. Kinda weird, I'm thinking. Though in another direction, you have a very scenic drive along the Bay overlooking Rangitoto Island (equivalent to Melbourne's Beach Road, Vancouver's Marine Drive, ... umm, yeah, that's right, Toronto has no equivalent). 5 minutes beyond the train station, you have the heart of downtown Auckland. I suspect this will all change in the next few years.

Check these out ...

Auckland from Devonport, attached by land but much quicker to get to by ferry.


Volcanic 'Rangitoto Island' ... what hill in Auckland wasn't previously a volcano? Umm, none.


The crater at the top of Mt. Eden ... surprise, surprise, formerly a volcano.


The view of downtown from Mt. Eden


Devonport and North Head, from Mission Bay


Cool place.

Part 2 of the 'A-NZ Capital Conference Tour'

Recently attended a conference in Wellington, New Zealand's capital. It was quite a different conference than I'm used to, since most people had no clue of what bioinformatics was, so it was quite different standing up in front of some serious statisticians and being the 'expert' on biology. Talk went surprisingly well. There were more questions at my talk than any other. Though, partly that was due to the fact that I had only 20 minutes to talk about it all, and I gave the talk in a 'memento' version (like the film 'Memento', where the plot is shown in reverse) -- so I talked about the data analysis first (since the audience were experts in the type of model I used), then talked about the data, then talked about how it was generated. I did this as an experiment to see if it could work. I'd say it was reasonably successful.

So .... Wellington is a strange but interesting place -- rains a lot, generally very windy. Very hilly, most houses are built into the side of a mountain. Some excellent cycling, if you're into either steep climbs or roads along the bay ... both of which I'm a fan of.

A shot of downtown Welly.


Some artwork along the bay.


A seaside suburb, very good spot to do some 1k intervals!


Hah, a cattery! I've never heard of one of these before, but they are everywhere!

Multisport in NZ

Did my first half ironman in New Zealand, on roughly the same course as the full ironman in less than 10 weeks. Triathlon is really taking off in this country, as they have some excellent elite-level capability around.

Here's the skinny ...

Swim 2k (w/ trans): ~34
Bike 90k: 2.27
Run 21k (w/ trans): 1.31
Total: 4.33 (16th overall, 2nd Canadian, 2nd CBDer)

Few minutes slower than Shepp, but longer swim, longer transition and tougher course, so I'm quite happy with the result. Most of all, I like the course! Very wet day. Brother J had a very solid performance, coming in easily under the 5 hour barrier. The training is paying off.

Full race report and a whole wack of pictures of NZ once I get back to Melbourne (tomorrow).

Australian "tolerance"

I actually saw this one on Canadian news first ... pretty shocking stuff.

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/12/11/australia-violence051211.html

http://au.news.yahoo.com/051130/2/x0r0.html

NZ

So, I've been in New Zealand for about a week now. Had a conference in Wellington, completing my two week conference tour of A-NZ capitals. Here are a few notes:

1. It takes a long time to get anywhere in this country. Even though Auckland and Wellington are only 650k apart, it took us > 9.5 hours to drive there.

2. NZ is beautiful. It's like Cape Breton Island, Rocky Mountains and interior BC all wrapped in this compact package. And, I haven't been to the south island even!

3. Wellington is especially beautiful. Lots of hills, lots of wind, lots of rain, lots of politicians.

4. The roads are rough, which is very noticeable when cycling.

5. Kiwis are very friendly. The atmosphere is much less subdued than Australia. My brother describes it as Australia is the bully next door, much like the USA is the bully next door to Canada. Much like Canadians prefer to distinguish themselves from Americans, Kiwis like to distinguish themselves from Aussies. And, rightfully so.

6. Taupo, the site of the my race next week and the ironman next year has a very Penticton feel to it.

7. A lot of the town names are Mauri names, which can be phonetically challenging for a rookie like myself.

8. Auckland has a lot of abandoned areas very near the city centre, like old train stations, stadiums, etc.

Photos later.

Canberra

So, Canberra is Australia's capital and is well known to Australians as being a sleepy town. It certainly does emit this aura of boredom. Even the pub closed at 10pm.
Nonetheless, I blew off one morning of my conference there to walk around the city. The "polies" (politicians) were sitting this week, but I was unable to attend the question time, which apparently is quite entertaining.

Here are some photos:

Lake Burley Griffin, Parliament House in the distance.


Parliament House


One angle from Parliament House


Another angle from Parliament House (Falun Gong protest in the front, Mt. Ainslie in the back)


And, yet another angle from PH:


Who knew that the Senate President's CHAIR was donated from Canada?!


The "Tent Embassy" (indigenous people claiming rights to land) just below the grounds of Old PH.

Yay for crackhouses

Hmm. So, in the span of 4 days, people in neighbouring crackhouses have driven their car into the fence of our house in Toronto, broken in to our's tenants car (among several others on the street) and scared our tenants to move out.

Good times.