Albany Race Report
It’s always good to get away for a long weekend and Albany was the perfect place with the hot weather up in Perth. You are guaranteed not to get hot weather down in that part of the world but the wind is another story. We set off on the long drive Saturday morning after a quick paddle and arrived at Pelicans resort in Middleton Beach just after 2pm. We stayed with a great crew from Stadium Tri Club in Tiffany & Brendan, Owen (Spider) and Amy and spent the rest of the afternoon putting our bikes together and going for an easy ride. Annie Brinkworth called that evening and had us all worried that the race may be turned into a Duathlon due to the rough seas.
Sunday morning we all arrived with anticipation to see what the race director had decided and thankfully the swim was still on. There were a few of the usual suspects missing with Lajos, Kenji, Troy and Paul not making the journey down but James Lewin and Brynt McSwain brought their A game and would make for a tough race.
The swim was rough and after getting a fairly good start James quickly flew past and proceeded to swim off into the distance. I struggled around the 1500m course on my lonesome trying to dodge the occassional age group athlete before i was kicked square in the face and almost lost my goggles. A quick adjustment and some backstroke had me back on track and i exited the water about 45seconds down on James. I could just see him in the distance but it seemed to take ages to reel him in on the bike and i finally did so at about the 8km mark.
There was a bit of a climb just after the first turnaround so i used this to attack and establish a slight gap on James. Unfortunately the legs weren’t feeling as good as expected and he quickly wound me back in on the next downhill. I continued to ride hard knowing the Brynt would be chasing us down and couldn’t afford too much cat and mouse at this stage but my next mistake came at the halfway mark of the bike. I missed the turnaround point and continued down the road for 100m before Katrina’s dad (Doug) thankfully pointed me in the right direction. In the meantime James was back in front and i had another 200m gap to close in order to catch him. This time i cought him and waited for the next decent climb before making my final attack. It worked and i managed to hold him off for the next 15km’s back to transition were i entered with a 20sec lead. Brynt had another excellent bike and managed to close a 2min gap, hitting the final run just 10sec behind James.
I hit the run a bit worried that James might be too close and would close the gap after improving his run so much lately. I wasn’t feeling great in the first few kilometres either and my concern was justified when i turned at the 2.5km mark and found James just 50m behind. I tried to pick up the pace but it wasn’t until the 5km mark that i started to feel comfortable and really hit my stride. Thankfully it was enough to hold James off and i crossed the line with a slender 22sec lead to win the race and wrap up the TWA series. Brynt cruised home in 3rd place and i think everyone that finished this race did a great job in such tough conditions. Lisa was absolutely stoked with 1st place in her age group and both Owen and Brendan who were staying with us posted great times for their first ever Olympic Distance race.
Thanks to Albany Tri Club for putting on such a great event on what would be the second best course in WA after Karri Valley. I have just two sprint races left for the season but my focus now turns to serious Anaconda training with just 8 weeks to go until Anaconda New Zealand. I will hopefully see everyone down at Champion Lakes for the draft legal triathlon where i will have my work cut out to beat some of the juniors in their pet event.
Seano
Filed under: Sean's Diary