News
Taralyn's Australian Race Report
Posted January 6, 2007 08:44 AM
The following race report was written by Taralyn Day
After a long season of training and racing I boarded a plane for Canberra, Australia to compete at the Long Distance Triathlon World Championships on November 19. My goal race for 2006 was Ironman Canada so I treated this race as a bonus, one I would do for the experience but not a PB. I left Whistler with a foot of snow on the ground and expected to arrive in a hot, humid Canberra. Little did we know the area was in for its coldest spring in decades. There was snow in the hills, whitecaps on the lake and nobody brought warm gear to train in. This was only the beginning of our adventure.
I rode the course twice before race day and felt as though I was taking my life in my hands each time. The drivers were surprisingly inconsiderate, dead kangaroos littered the shoulder and being on the other side of the road didn't make it any better. Two of our teammates were hit by cars in the days leading up to the race and one of them was left in serious condition in the hospital.
I also attempted to swim in Lake Burley-Griffin during the week but each time I headed out to the man-made "swamp" it was freezing cold with whitecaps and I chickened out. (No kidding, my sister lived in Canberra for a year and she was told it was a health risk to swim there.) The kicker was when one of our teammates saw a rat swimming near the race start.
Another interesting situation was the sports drink. We were told Enervit would be provided on course but nobody could find a place to buy the stuff in Canada or Australia. I spotted an Enervit booth at the race expo two days out and asked if I could have a sample. Would they give me one? No, I had to buy it and they also informed me that there weren't any retailers in Canberra. What kind of crazy experiment was this? Everybody gets to try the drink for the first time on race day!
The day before the race I took my bike in for a last minute tune up. Many thanks to Paul the bike mechanic who noticed and replaced a cracked bolt on my seat post. It probably happened during the plane ride and could have caused me some serious problems during the race.
On race day I woke at 4:30, made my way to the start and waited for the gun to go off. The 4k swim had two loops and was a wave start. The pros went first, then the women and finally the men. The first loop went well but when the men caught us on the second loop there was no mercy. I was hit in the face, suffered a bloody lip and swam the rest of the way as far to the outside as I could.
We were told the bike course was mostly flat with one hill per loop. In fact, the course was all hills with one "walk-your-bike-up" hill per loop. We battled a nasty headwind during the second half and once the pros left the bike course, so did the volunteers! Busy intersections were left unmanned as the age-groupers were finishing the fourth loop. The other cyclists were as surprised as I was. There were several other safety infractions including an abandoned car that I spotted during a training ride days earlier. Rather than having it towed, they put cones around it so we had to jump out into a traffic lane on the freeway. It was hard to believe that this was a World Championship race.
Once I started the run I felt home free. The 30 degree heat and questionable sports drink seemed like a bad combination so I played it safe and walked most of it. The course followed a path around the lake with views of the Parliament buildings and it was pretty exciting with so many spectators waving flags for all the different countries. I crossed the line in just over 10 hours with a smile on my face, happy the season was over.
