| Anna's Capricorn Half Ironman Race Report |
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So there are two ways to describe the Capricorn Resort Yeppoon Half Ironman. 1. Lovely swim in the Coral Sea through calm waters, completely flat bike ride, and a lovely run that takes you around the resort grounds and finishing in the resort swimming pool. Sounds good huh? 2. Or it could be described as a long hard slog of a swim against the current, a bone shaking cycle on really rough roads, with a tough winding run on loose sand... Well, here is my race report...
1.7km walk in wetsuit to the start line After the race briefing in transition, we had to walk 1.7km in our wetsuits in the sand down to the race start line. When I got there, I got straight into the water for a warm up, and stood on a fish.... sorry!! The water was lovely, and I was feeling good. Had an energy gel and then watched my mate Aaron start in the pros’ wave, and then got in line for my age group wave start.
1.9km Swim I am not so good at the beach run starts and diving in through the waves, so by the time I got to the deep water I was behind most people so then had to fight to get through all the slow swimmers. Sorry to all the people I bashed and legs I pulled, but it’s dog-eat-dog. I only got hit by other people a few times so I didn’t come off too bad. The current was against us, and swimming directly towards the sun it was difficult to see the buoys, so it was a tough swim that seemed to last forever. Coming out of the water I started to undo my wetsuit as I was running out of the waves, one arm got well and truly stuck... but got it out eventually. Felt blisters on my neck from the wetsuit. Ran up the beach, and then had a big sand dune to climb, ran up some stairs and over the bridge then along a sandy path into transition. I had a quick transition, and was ready to rock and roll on the bike.
90km Cycle The bike course is 5 laps and the road surface is renowned for being really bad. It is granulated bitumen, and it literally shakes your bones, all you can hear the whole time is bikes rattling. I settled into a good pace straight away, and went to take a drink. Then I realised I had attached my aero drink on to my tri-bars backwards so the straw was on the other side of the bottle pointing away from me. I could still reach it, by leaning forwards, and bending the straw towards me, but when I let go of the straw, the water left in the straw then flicked all over my face. Hmm... this is going to be fun when I refill it with sticky electrolyte.... Halfway through my first lap, TWO of my energy gels jumped out of my fuel bag from being rattled so much on the road surface. I had to quickly rethink my nutrition plan – more electrolyte to spray on my face.
There was one section of road that had lovely smooth hot mix tarmac, and every time I went over it, my speed jumped from around 33kph up to 38kph with no extra effort, and it felt like a dream.... but very short lived.. . bump bump rattle rattle back on the granulated bitumen again. There was so much stuff on the roads that had shaken off people’s bikes, sports gels, gel bottles, drink bottles, C02 cartridges, pumps etc, it was everywhere. My calves had felt really tight all week, and I wasn’t sure why, and I could feel them getting tighter and tighter throughout the cycle. Maybe it was from riding my new time trial bike I had only ridden for the last 2 weeks, and my body wasn’t quite used to it yet. I was hoping it wouldn’t affect me too much when I got to the run. On the 4th lap, I was totally surprised to see someone in a vision tri suit!! I yelled GO VISION!! I looked to see who it was as I went past, it was Malcolm!! I didn’t even know he was racing. I waved to him and said hey. At one point I was going to overtake someone, I was going pretty fast and my foot somehow unclipped from the pedal and flew straight into the spokes on my front wheel.... I was shocked, but got control the bike, foot back on the pedal and continued... I have NO IDEA what just happened there... but was just glad I didn’t fall off. Coming off the bike into transition, I only had enough time to get my feet out of ONE of my shoes before coming to the dismount line, so I had to jump off my bike and ran into transition with one shoe on, and one shoe off.... just hoped no one was watching... then I heard Pete yell GO ANNA!!! Ah.... busted....
21km Run
I ran out of transition, and although my calves felt super tight, energy wise I felt ok. After a few minutes my legs started to feel pretty heavy – I knew it was going to be a long run. The run was 3 x 7km laps across different terrain - one section of road, one section of winding loose sand paths through the bush, and then a section of concrete paths, bridges and grass leading through main area of the resort. The sections of deep dry sand were pretty difficult to run through!! On the first lap I really needed the toilet, and ran a couple of km and realised I had no idea where the toilet was because I hadn’t looked at the course map. So, running through the bush I decided I had to stop to pee, so I ducked into some pretty transparent bushes. I had a tri suit on... and I wasn’t wearing a sports bra... so facing towards the running path, I had to get my boobs out. But if you need to pee, you need to pee!! Good job most people run looking down at the ground though hey, so I think I got away with it haha. My ITB started to get tight after 5km which got me a little worried, but I actually don't remember it hurting again after that. I am not sure if it stopped hurting or if I just chose to ignore it. The timing chip on my ankle was already cutting through my skin from being on too tight. The aid stations and the volunteers were amazing, there were lots of kids shouting out support, and handing out water, flat coke and electrolyte. I usually took two cups of water, one went over my head and the other I took a sip out of and then poured down my back. At one stage I got so hot, I took a cup full of ice, and thought it was a good idea to put the ice inside my cap. It was great... until I got brain freeze.... literally.... Half way through the last run lap and my quads were really hurting. Each step felt like doing lunges while weight lifting, so it was tough not to drop the pace. Just focussing on what Coach Cath said... if in doubt, give another 5%. I crossed the line with a time of 5:42, which was slower than I expected, I think it was not going hard enough on the bike (worried about my calves and nutrition) and the bad swim start that cost me the most time.
Post race Just after the finish line is the swimming pool, filled with everyone cooling down. There were cups of fruit with ice cream for us which was just what the body wanted. Caught up with Simmo at the finish line, he finished in 5:43, he had a good race and was already into the beer. I had blisters on one foot like a mountain range... one continuous bubble all the way along the side of my foot... yeh it looked like the Rockies. At least there are some people more disorganised than me, I can always rely on Aaron for that - he missed the flight up to Yeppoon, hadn’t arranged accommodation so had to crash in my room, put Canola oil on his chain because he didn't have any chain lube, he hadn’t done a single swim session for 8 weeks before the race.... but still managed to get a great time of 5:03. I caught up with Malcolm later; it was his first half ironman!! He hadn’t had much luck with an injury 4 weeks out from the race but with a time of 6:57 he had an awesome race, so WELL DONE MALCOLM!!!! And I will see you at the start line for the Gold Coast Half Ironman... in 7 weeks time!! I was chatting to someone else who said his tri bars had actually unscrewed due to being shaken so much on the rough road, so he had to cycle literally holding on to the bars to keep them on. Another guy’s power tap wouldn’t work because the sensor had vibrated out of range.
Would I race there again? Yes definitely, and even though the Capricorn Resort is a pricey stay, it is a lovely place, and it is fantastic just walking out of your door straight to transition. Hopefully they re-tarmac the road soon though..... pleeeeeease....
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