shepparton half ironman -- hot and smoky

Skinny:

Swim: ~30min
Ride: 2h 24min (pb)
Run: 1h 31min

Total: 4h 25min (pb)

Click here to find out when the hottest day of December was in Shepparton, a town about 1.5 hours north of Melbourne.

That just happened to coincide with the day Lynn and I were doing a triathlon, me a half ironman and Lynn a sprint distance race. I did this race last year, when it was scheduled in mid-November. December in Shepparton can be very hot, and we drew the short stick for this one.

A couple of weeks before the race, I had high hopes, felt I was in good form and thought, given a good day and a good effort, I could smash my last year's performance. Once we got the forecast about 6 days out, all bets were off. A top of 42 degrees! I had done some long runs in the heat of the day, but expecting a temperature of ~38 degrees for the run was far beyond my tested limits.

Thanks to the forest fires in the northeast (... still burning to this day ...), there was reasonably thick haze and a strong scent of smoke. This would affect the ashmatics more than I, so I felt pretty lucky. Its the same for everybody. Actually, the good thing about the smoky haze was that it blocked the intense early morning sun, already 25 degrees at race start.

So, off we went, into muddy lake. For the first time, I wasn't in the first swim wave. Now being the ripe old age of 30, the young guns got a 3 minute lead. This has some benefits of course, as there are more people to chase. The swim was average, went back and forth from feeling good to feeling average. Pretty uneventful.

Onto the bike, the plan was always to be conservative, especially with the heat. Aimed to have a solid ride, but not too hard. Went through 5 bottles of sport drink/water in the 2.5 hours. That's about twice the regular intake. In the past, I've hammered the bike (mostly because its enjoyable) and suffered on the run. My plan here was to be conservative on the bike and save something for the run. The bike was good fun. Roughly hit 48 minutes for every 30k lap.

The good thing about the run course in Shepp was that it was 3 loops of ~7km and in each loop, there were 4 aid stations, 3 of which you passed in both directions. So, 7 opportunities per 7k to dump water on your head. Playing it conservative worked out ok, as I managed to have solid run and a personal best time for the distance. Finished 7th place in the 30-34 category, so there was good competition on the day. It was enough to secure my spot for Ironman Australia.

I felt for the older competitors, some of them finishing in the heat of the day. Most went straight to the medical tent.