Firstly, I have done a few last Iron distance races and this could well be the last and I must say I enjoyed the experience a lot more than I did Melbourne in 2012. The race in Roth itself is significantly harder than any other course I have raced an iron distance race on. But, it was infinitely more beautiful.

The Build Up

Well, my build up wasn’t quite as big as I did for Melbourne last year but my base work mainly on the bike was a lot more. This included riding the 232Km Alpine Classic in January with a number of other BRAT’s and riding 1100km in a week around Tassie in March whilst raising money for Tour de Kids. I think I rode over 180k in one ride at least 7 times in the lead up including the above plus an epic Wisemans ride in 45 deg and a lovely solo ride from home to Hyams beach to watch Katie race at Husky the day after. Once we got into the main block of April-July the squad and I really started hitting it hard on Saturdays. Loads of long interval reps. Me being me though I made it hard on myself by deciding to sell my TT rig as I just never could get comfy on a very aggressive bike. It sold in 3 days which left me without my new P3 until 6 weeks out from race day. I even had to race Port Stephens Olympic on my roadie but managed to get 3rd I think in My AG and top 10 over all (8th maybe) with the second fastest run in the race including pro’s and with a 3km worth of stitch. That would prove to be my only lead in race which I was OK with. We elected to go to NZ about a month out to visit family rather than race Cairns 70.3. Racing a 70.3 a month out doesn’t seem to work for me but an easy weekend a month out does, perfect.

My swimming is pretty shite to be honest. Starting squad’s at 28 years old for a few years and then stopping for a few years did not help. Complete lack of flexibility didn’t help also… But, I started with Vlad Swim back in September last year and my swim workouts went from 40min to 80 min pretty quickly. I pretty much kept up 2 x 4-4.5km swims per week from September right through to Roth. Now, I didn’t get a lot faster but the energy used while swimming reduced tenfold. Vlad swim coaches, Vlad, Charm and Evan are brilliant. They are never those angry swim coaches, just a positive and fun environment to be in. They had bugger all to work with in my case but got the best from me. Two days before Roth we did a 1500m swim on the course and I was swimming at 1:30 per hundred pace the whole way and felt like I wasn’t even trying, slow I know but that is fast as f**k for me.

My running from Jan to April was pretty pathetic though, averaged 20km per week. I think in hindsight I really did too little in that base phase. It is a long time since I ran my half and marathon personal bests (69min and 2:34) and sometimes I forget how slow I am now and expect to get away with doing bugger all. I never got up to any 80k weeks for this build up and did about 4 runs in the 34k range. My pace was down on these runs and I did zero speed or tempo work. I find the fatigue from these sessions kills me for a few days and let’s be frank, running at 4:15-4:30 pace on race day does not require speed work. I know some people like it but I only do it if I am racing short. In fact the only speed work I did was the Port Stephens Olympic run in about 34 something so speed was no issue. Towards the back end of the build up my knee and quads gave me some issues and I had to use Blair Martin at the Body Mechanic to put me back together. I ended up walking home at 32km through a long run back in NZ due to total quad blow outs.

One good effect from NZ is swimming in some pool there gave me wicked stomach bug 2 days later when we were back here. I lost 8kg and somehow kept 4kg off until race day. I missed 6 days training with a week to go but in hindsight was prob the best thing that could have happened to me.

Trip over and days before the race

The trip over was fine. Katie and I left a few days later than everyone else but going up to the northern hemisphere seems to be OK to me. Got prob 5 hours sleep on the way up to Frankfurt which is great for me as I am an awful sleeper. Quick train to Nuremberg then a walk to the hotel in the blazing sun which ended up being 2km. I was clearly too tired at that point to work out a cab was a better option as Katie had mentioned about 500 times.

The next few days were easy. I got into a good sleeping pattern immediately which helped a lot. On the Thursday Sambo and I got the train to Roth to rego. We had a 1 hour ride mainly looking for the rego place and some of it training. We then had a 25min run mainly in the forest before navigating the massive expo. To be honest I bought nothing. I have been doing this tri stuff long enough now I reckon I own 2 of most things.
On the Friday we had a swim on the course as mentioned and drove the bike course. Man, Hilly was not BS’ing re how many hills were on the bike! Sick views though. Saturday was spent taking the train to Roth and then riding the 10k ish to T1 then running 2k to the closest train station to get home. Roth uses these sweet pallet like bike racks which are bloody great. Both wheels in and only about 5 bikes on each.

Race Day

Up at about 3:30 to have some food, think I smashed a few croissants with nuttlea and a few High 5 bars. The downstairs at 4:20 to find Sambo stressing that Eoin isn’t there yet for a 4:30 cab. Gave Eoin a call from reception to let him know that Sambo was about to leave him behind and then we were in the cab to race start. Got dropped off pretty much at T1 which was sweet and with stacks of time to race start. I was getting a little paranoid about my new rear tub being on straight as had to remove it a few days before as POD glued it on the wrong way! Irish… Checked that, pumped up tires used the loo for the 20th time that day and Sambo was still working on his bike…. Well, he does own a Trek…
Roth is wave starts which is awesome. First 300 in Wave 1 which featured Sambo and Eoin. Talked smack until they went in the water then found Hilly as we were both in the same wave which was wave 2 and was 10 min after wave 1. I was number 301 so missed wave 1 by one spot! Not to worry I didn’t care at all.
Was midway through a chat with Hilly when the officials said we could get in the drink and bang, Hilly was gone! He must have had some secrets he didn’t want to share! Few minutes later we were swimming in the canal. Great swim course, out and back with a little bit past the start then back to the finish, an oblong really. Didn’t cop a single fist to the face or balls which was welcome and unusual. Swam with people for about halfway then we all split up a bit. I was going really well until about 1500m to go and my left calf started to twinge. To make sure I didn’t cramp I basically had to stop kicking and swim flat on top of the water. Reckon I lost 2-3 min because of it. But, swam 63 dead which was 2 min faster than ever and in fresh water so happy. To put it in context in Melbourne 2012 Sambo put 10 mins into me, this time about 2.5 mins.

I somehow managed to push lap on my Garmin a few times so knew that I would be not monitoring overall time on that watch going forward! Pretty slow T1 but wasn’t in any rush. First 20k of the bike I saw bugger all people at all, brilliant. Then a few people rolled past but no real packs which was pleasing. Hilly caught me at about 45km and I decided that I would keep him in sight as that old dog knows how to pace 180km. Each lap has two main hills, one is about 4.5km long in Grendig I think it was and at about 40km into the ride, the second is the famous Solaberg which is 20 deep and you have people slapping your ass and yelling the standard Euro call of “up, up, up” at about 5000 decibels. Pretty surreal. I followed Hilly up there as there is no way you can pass. Uneventful ride back to T1. At T1 heaps of teams were coming out and getting in the way. Had to surge past a few which was a piss off as a lot of them seemed to be happy to TTT. The course is pretty technical with heaps of turns into and out of blind bends so you don’t want some muppet in your way. At the bottom of the Greding hill for the second time I went a bit harder with Hilly a few hundred meters behind and seemed to be by myself again. That was good as smoked the decent on that second lap which was sick. The wind had also got up significantly in the second lap which was slowing everyone down. At about 130km I needed to relieve myself so I pulled over and did the deed. Jumped back on my bike and Hilly rolled past. At that point I realised he must be backing off so rode past Hilly again and never saw him again. I understand Hilly got pinched for drafting but all I can say is that for 100km we were never more that 500m apart and I never saw him even pushing the boundaries. I know Hilly cops a lot of crap but he was riding clean and I think was picked on. I saw a few people get pinged and none of them were German. You can tell as you have your flag on your number.

I rode up to a few bunches in the last 20k which was annoying, got my message across that drafting is for cheats as I went by them. Had to tell Macca to get out of the way as he rode along chatting two a breast as part of his Challenge commitments. Asked him if he was out for a coffee ride which he confirmed.

Came out of T2 feeling pretty good, had reset my Garmin to get the marathon split and used the time of day to work out that I was on for roughly 9:35ish with an average marathon or 9:15-20 with a great one. The run is 80% off road which I don’t really like and I also should have studied the course a bit more. But, went through the first km in 3:57 with the handbrake on. Saw Sean’o the Porno who used to train with us in Sydney which was sweet. He said I looked great but at 1km into the marathon there was a lot of room for a meltdown. After about 3km I committed to giving the marathon a go. In Melbourne I rattled off 4:35-37km for 42 km in a row but never rolled the dice. In a spur of the moment decision I decided to try and run 3 flat to 3:05. This worked well for about 15km. Then the rot set in. It was getting warm and I was slowing. 1:34 ish at halfway confirmed I was starting to slow. By about 25-27km I knew it was survival. My feelings were in complete contrast to Eoin who I saw coming the other way twice and that pasty Irish kid was flying and smiling. I soon realised that he was far more than 10min in front (he started 10min earlier) and about 35min in front and doing bit easy.

I saw Katie with my red bull at about 25k ish which was great but for the first time in my life the red bull tasted like shite. As I got more tired I made more bad decisions. I was busting for a loo stop from about 10km into the marathon but kept second guessing if I would start again after a stop so ran with the discomfort the whole way. Next time, I will stop and drain the fluids. By about 32km I was in survival mode but luckily only ran a few km over 5min. Shuffled my way to about 40km where I saw the Sparks Elite posse. They were excited. Think I said something like, “I want this over” but with more expletives. About then I checked the time of the day and realised I could still beat my 9:35 PB so decided to attempt to speed up. I hadn’t even thought about total time for 3 hours by that point and had no idea. Managed to pick it up a bit and re pass 2 guys. I am pretty sure only 2 ended up passing me in the run and I passed about 300. The last km or so is around the town of Roth then into the finishing chute and intro the stadium.

Finish time was 9:31:30 with splits of 1:03:03, 5:07:20 and 3:16:29 with transitions of 3:08 and 1:32. This placed me 122 overall out of about 1400 and 21st in my age group although there are pro’s included in the AG stats. Needless to say people go fast on that course even with a bike that has 1435 of climbing. To put that in perspective that is 300m more of climbing than the 3 gorges ride here in Sydney which is considered a hilly ride.

Even at the finish you know you are in a very different place to home. For a start the first drink available is beer and the showers are open and unisex!
Good job if you have read this far. I won’t be doing one again for a while so wanted to get it all down. Thanks to Vlad, Charm and Evan for their swim coaching. Thanks to POD for his overall coaching of my plan and for getting hot by a car a few weeks back so he could become chief support crew rather than race. Thanks to Katie for letting me do such a self-indulgent thing without ever complaining. Thanks to all the Sparks Elite crew for letting me talk shite while we train and being all around good people.