MooTri Race Recap
Okay so it has been a while since I did my last triathlon, at last count it was around 1460 days, to be precise.
I think for many people life got away from them during COVID as routines changed, lock down restricted us from activities we did, and in general we just reprioritised some things over others. For me one of the things that changed was that during lockdown triathlon was a hard sport to do, big races got cancelled and the desire to endlessly train and prepare for a race that might not go ahead meant that I probably didn’t stay as active as I could.
So around about 9 months ago I thought it would be a good thing to register for a race and start to get back into it. I picked the Mooloolaba Triathlon because I like the location, the distance was a good distance to get back into it and it was far enough in advance that I could prepare. The problem was I booked the accomodation and forgot about it.
Fast forward to the first of January (ironic being the first day of the year) and I was randomly looking at how I would take all my annual leave by my anniversary date when I stumbled across some dates in March that I had booked in. Looking at my calendar I then realised I had booked in to do a race, but I hadn’t even entered yet. So I entered. There was just one problem, at the start of January I had arranged to go to Europe during school holidays for 3 weeks AND I still hadn’t gotten rid of the plantar fasciitis that had been troubling me for around 6 months, but off to Europe I went.
Running in the snow in Munich
Without going into it too much I didn’t ride my bike for around a month but I did go to the pool in Munich a few times, so at least I stayed somewhat in shape, and I also managed to run, only every third day and only if I was building up distance, which was okay because I enjoyed running around in the snow in Munich.
So holiday done it was time to get back into training, still able to swim, good to bike, running was a problem. Over the next 4 weeks I did what I could to get my foot in order, I’d tried plenty of things but what seemed to have a positive impact was some dry needling on my calves and rolling the arch of my foot on a frozen bottle of water. I didn’t push it and so leading into the race all I had done were 2 x 5km runs, one at home to test whether I could wear my shoes without socks, the second to test my foot the day before the race and to stretch out after driving to the Sunshine Coast. In the end I knew I was turning up under done, but there are plenty of km’s in the bank so the distance wouldn’t really be a problem.
Race day, I’m not really sure what it is but every time I have raced on the Sunshine Coast it’s been ordinary weather. This time the rain held off for the race but the ocean was pretty rough so they had to amend the swim leg. Surprisingly I felt pretty good on the swim, I’d been focussing on using more arms than legs and so getting out of the water there were no signs of cramps and so I was feeling positive.
All smiles at the finish
As always I had a quick transition and was out on the bike. It has been a while since I’ve done much riding on the time trial bike and so I felt constantly uncomfortable, wanting to shift my weight around as I was getting tight in the shoulders from being tucked up. It didn’t help that it was super windy and I had a disc wheel on so I was getting blown around like crazy. Needless to say I was pretty happy with how the first half of the bike leg went as I maintained a decent pace and was also keeping it in the back of my mind that I still had to run 10km, which was more than my longest run had been for 8 months, however this all changed when I hit the 20km turnaround point out on the Sunshine Coast Motorway and felt the full force of a headwind, which did my head in but also did the legs in a bit. I decided to push on but save just a bit of effort to ensure I covered myself for the run. Needless to say I got back into town in almost the time I expected which is positive, no cramps, no sore feet, no burning quads.
So the last leg, the run. I really wasn’t sure how this would go but I quickly put on my shoes and ran out of transition, I felt surprisingly good and looking at my watch was running a solid 5 minute/km pace which I was happy with. Was was even more surprising was at around the 2km mark my legs started coming back to me even more and I started to dip down into 4:40/km pace which was great, however around the 3km mark I started to notice some rubbing on my feet which stupidly for me was caused by going lockless for the run. I kind of hung in there till the 5km mark keeping up the 5min/km pace and just bearing the pain but once I hit halfway I decided to do a bit of run walking, no much walking but normally just 20 seconds to ease the rubbing then into it again for 2-3 minutes. I did this till about a kilometre to go where I just said ‘stuff it’ and just ran, knowing full well the finish was in sight. I crossed the finish line in around 2 hours 43 minutes, which I’m actually pretty happy with given the training I had/hadn’t been able to do. What made me happiest though was the fact that I was back in the game, I always say I am a better person when I am doing triathlons and it feels great being back out there doing it.
Ride on
Michael