The training for these longer events is such a commitment and takes up so much of your time that I feel it needs to be included in a race report to give people an idea of what the entirety of the race involves. I wrote the training up before the race and then added the narrative about the race after I did it. Apologies for the length of this report but a 70.3 is a very long race!

Training

Swimming

I am one of the poorest swimmers in the Bilbys and, while I have come a long way in the four or five years I’ve been with the Bilbys, realistically, I am not going to get big gains. So I aimed to just swim 1-2 hours a week. I usually did Wednesday night Bilbys squad and then a lunchtime or weekend swim, plus some lake swims closer to the race. I know lots of people say they are bad swimmers but I’m a shocker – just before my novice program in 2007, I went down to the old Deakin pool with my friend Susannah (who had also enrolled in the novice program) to do some swim training. In my mind, I was swimming a 50m freestyle lap, when the lifeguard approached me to ask me if I was ok and then ask what I was doing! Oops! Susannah was killing herself laughing because she said it wasn’t exactly clear what I was doing but she hadn’t been game to ask. I gather there was a frenzy of very fast, frantic activity but not particularly much forward movement. Oh well. Learning to swim as an adult has been a hard, hard road for me. But I digress! I thought I’d be able to plod around the 70.3 swim course in a bit under an hour and that just would have to do. Although the swim course cut-off is an hour so there was no room for error…

Cycling

Seona had a book written by Gale Bernhardt (2004 USA Triathlon Olympic Coach) and we used one of her ride training plans. The weekend long rides were initially around the 60-70km mark so we could do the Bilbys Saturday morning rides for the first couple of months of the training. I headed off with the fast medium group with the thought to just hang in until I got dropped. I managed to learn to stay with the guys (and Anna!) and they were so supportive and kind to me. I can’t tell you how many times Danny would come up alongside me with a hand on my back to push me up hills if I was struggling, or how many times the guys waited for me if I dropped off, even though I told them not to as I didn’t want to upset their training. Many a time one of the guys would also fall back to let me get on their wheel and get me back to the bunch. And of course Gary was as encouraging as he always is and patiently rode me back to the guys on Shingle hill way one Saturday when the long group had stayed with us and really pushed the pace.

However, as our ride lengths got longer, Seona and I had to leave the Bilbys rides temporarily to get some steadier pace endurance work done. Our longest rides were 4.5 hours so we did a ride to Collector and back for one, did the 105km Fitz’s Challenge for another and did the full 70.3 course a few times for the rest plus a ride to Goulburn as our last long ride.

We also did a lot of indoor wind trainer work, mostly using the Spinervals range of triathlon/cycling training DVDs by Coach Troy Jacobson. In addition to our long weekend rides, we would do an hour long technique or aerobic zone Spinervals each week plus a 45 minute hard intervals or threshold Spinervals each week.

I also bought some bike rollers and learned to balance on those for some extra aerobic zone cycling. To amuse myself on the rollers I undertook what I called the True Blood Challenge. True Blood is a very trashy TV show about vampires and I only allowed myself to watch it if I was on the bike rollers, so I cycled through the entire 12 x 1 hr episodes for Season 4 on my rollers doing an episode most weeks. Rollers are just a light aerobic zone workout but an awesome technique workout. Any technique issues are amplified (uneven pedalling, upper body movement, poor steering/balance) and you’ll likely fall off so fear motivates you to get your technique right ;-)

True Blood: such a trashy TV show that you can only justify the time to watch it if you are on your bike rollers.

Like my rollers!

Running

We just stayed with the Furman First training plan for a half marathon. It happened to fit in with its one easy week each four weeks falling in the same week as our cycling plan so that worked well. That involved Tuesday night intervals, Thursday tempo run (8-12 km) and long weekend run (13-24 kms).

I recorded every workout on my Garmin and got the following totals from 19 July when my training started to my last training sessions on the Thursday before the race.

Swim

24 sessions for a total of 47.03 km

Cycle

56 sessions for a total 2,214.15km and 94 hours (that’s only the structured training bits, I didn’t count riding to cycling, commuting or riding with the novices when I was coaching).

Run

56 sessions for a total of 548.32 km and 44hrs 29, again, only the structured efforts and no warm ups or cool downs.

This was honestly the hardest sporting type thing I have ever done. It really took over my life in terms of the time it took and the energy (physical and mental).

That’s fine as that is what I signed up for, but I also annoyed my family and non-triathlete friends during the training through just always being so busy and generally unavailable. A lot of sacrifices are required for this type of training and while you make most of the sacrifices, unfortunately, sometimes it is the people close to you who end up making those sacrifices.

On a much lighter note, something I wasn’t expecting was how much food I would need to eat during the training. Towards the end when we were peaking our training, we both got unbelievably hungry and our weight started dropping. I’m small and not a particularly big eater generally but became quite ravenous. I shocked some close friends at various lunches and dinners by eating my full meal (unusual in itself) and then asking if I could eat the left overs on their plates. Heh! Once at work I ate my usual lunch but it did nothing so I had to go and buy a second lunch! And I was getting more and more scrawny – especially my arms which now resembled the sort of twigs you might see on a T-Rex!

After all the hard training, taper time came and I was hoping for news of lake closures so I wouldn’t have to swim. But no such luck and it looked like I would have to suck it up and swim L

Race Day

I’d had a few nights of not much sleep leading up to the event just through nerves. It was the swim that was stressing me out as any time it looked like the lake would be closed my whole attitude to the race changed to one of excitement rather than nerves.

Me (left) and Seona before the race.

Anyway, I was up at 4am to have breakfast and take everything down to the race. Transition opened at 5am and Seona and I had bike spaces next to each other, which was really cool! We finished off transition and got into our wetsuits. Then had to jump in the water and swim a few hundred metres to the start line. All good so far and I swam calmly.

Bang! The starter’s horn went off. Even though I’d placed myself at the back of the pack, the flurry of swimming activity near me and the pressure I had placed on myself suddenly hit me and my response was to promptly fall apart! I started panicking and my heart rate and breathing elevated to a level that I couldn’t freestyle swim at all (or any stroke that involved my head going under water). 

Sadly, I have done this many a time in the swim leg of races. Mostly it will pass if I stay with it, so I breast-stroked to try to ride it out. I signalled a kayak so I could hang on and try to get my breathing under control. It didn’t work so I did breaststroke and backstroke and had to hang on to a different kayak near the first buoy. The kayaker said I was hyperventilating and tried very hard to calm me down but nothing was working. By this time, my wave was long gone into the distance. The kind kayaker had to leave me to get back to the start of the next wave so I tried to keep moving. When I turned at the first buoy into the second length of the rectangle, the men from the wave 20 minutes after were coming at me. I still couldn’t get my breathing under control and was doing anything just to keep moving forwards. My heart was pounding in my chest and my breaths were very shallow. I just couldn’t freestyle at all and was swallowing water and getting swum over and knocked around by all the men’s waves swimming past me. I was having a horrible time and was acutely aware that my best-case swimming time had only a 5-6 minutes leeway before the one hour cut-off time. I had probably already wasted that much time, if not more.

By the third length of the rectangle, I was hanging onto another kayak with a woman from my wave. She was also panicking and she was thinking of pulling out. The kayaker told us we were half way around the course and only had 20 minutes left before the cut-off so we weren’t going to make it.  I really, really wanted to pull out. One word from me to the Kayaker and this torture would be over. Everything bad would be over and I could take it easy. I was truly tempted…

But I am not a quitter.

So between panicked breaths, I said to the other woman in trouble that we should just keep going until the cut off and make the officials pull us off the course if they had to. She tried again for a while with me but then stopped and asked to be taken off the course. It was raining heavily now and the water was choppy. I was still unable to freestyle but was keen to stick it out and be dragged off the course if it came to that. I prepared my mind for being taken out of the race and spending the day cheering for others rather than racing. I came to peace with that idea – but I wasn’t going to volunteer for it!

I really thought the race was over for me but was going to push ahead anyway and make the officials force me off the course because I wasn’t going down without a fight. I turned at the last buoy and the finishing line actually didn’t look that far away. I was backstroking by this stage as that seemed the fastest way to move, although my navigation wasn’t exactly great. There were still team swimmers around me and I could see only one official at the swim exit, so I thought I could ditch my bright pink swim cap and just run up the chute oh-so casually like I was a team swimmer and they wouldn’t know to take me off the course (I knew I was well over the hour cut-off now). As soon as I hit land, I dumped the swim cap with the other caps in the chute and ran through like I belonged there. I was also preparing to beg, plead and turn on tears so I would be allowed to get on the bike! But there was no need as I went through unchallenged and got on my bike. 

It was pouring rain and everything in transition was soaking wet – socks, shoes, bike, helmet - everything. I’d looked at the time as I ran through and it said 1:26 so my time in the water would have been 1:16 ish. 1hr16 of hyperventilating and having a massively high heart rate was not a good set up for the rest of the race but I pushed on even though I was physically and mentally exhausted. I suffered greatly on the first few kms of the ride but once I turned into Coppins Crossing I felt like I had recovered a little and an overwhelming wave of pure joy flowed over me that I was still in the race rather than sitting on the sidelines. That lap wasn’t great but my second one was almost passable and I followed my nutrition plan. I overtook quite a few people on the bike, although they seemed more like the stragglers or people doing it tough so I knew I was still badly behind.

After my third bike lap I went back into transition and then I headed off on the run. I was able to run at my planned pace, although it did feel like hard work. I saw Susannah and Kate out cheering for me quite early in the run and I yelled out as I passed them that I might be a DQ because of the swim and I didn’t know if I was still in the race. Susannah said “just keep running” and I did.

I was moving through the run course and overtaking lots of people. I saw Seona heading back towards the start for her second run lap and was thrilled after quickly doing the maths and realising she was flying and way ahead of her goal time. Way ahead! Woohoo! 

I kept running on but at around the 6km mark I started to slow down and over the next few kms I gradually slowed to about 30 seconds slower per km than I had been doing and stayed at that pace. 

When I saw Kate and Susannah on the next lap, they had obviously looked me up online and they told me it looked like I was still in the race. Good news! However, then the rain decided to bucket down! I thought I felt hail! Arrghh! Then had to run through huge puddles at Acton Ferry that were higher than ankle deep and unavoidable. I ran around the museum and then up hospital hill where everyone was walking but I kept running. Only 3km to go now and I said to a couple of guys walking (and looking a bit forlorn) that we only had 3km to go and should pick it up. One guy said “ok” and then proceeded to run with me. We chatted a bit as we ran and I learned that he was Richard from Wollongong doing this on his way to a full Ironman at Port next year. We ran through the Bilbys Aid Station and on towards the finish. Near Commonwealth Bridge I started to pick up the pace and Richard said he couldn’t stay with me at that pace but would catch up with me at the end so I headed off to put in some effort over the final km. 

Finally, I was about to finish and I ended with a little sprint in the chute to get the two other people just in front of me. The time was 6:28. Even with my planned (rather poor) 55 minute swim, I honestly feel I had been on target to well and truly crack 6 hours based on my training. However, the way it panned out, I’m as proud of my 6:28 as I would have been with a sub 6 hour race had things gone exactly to plan. I really had to dig deep to complete that swim. Really deep. I wanted to pull out so much and I was struggling so hard for the entire 1hr16 that it took every ounce of my being to stick it out. I had thought I wasn’t going to be allowed to finish, so I’m just ecstatic that I was allowed to complete the race.

In races (and in life) things don’t always go according to plan and we have difficulties to surmount and challenges to face. I feel I faced a huge personal challenge and just gritted my teeth and battled it out inch by inch, minute by minute. And that is as valuable a result to take away from this race as a sub 6 hour result would have been.

What’s next?

Well, I am using this forum to announce my retirement from competitive swimming events (or non-competitive swimming in my case!). I’ve struggled with it for 5 years now and my calm swimming has improved, but I never know when the panic attacks are coming. I also don’t enjoy it and will never be even remotely near average at it. I’m going to focus on my running, which I love so very much, and hopefully keep the cycling at the level I worked it up to. 

I was going to try to qualify for Worlds in the Sprint distance next year but I am a proud Australian and do not want to travel to NZ just to make an arse of myself and my wonderful country by doing an event with swimming in it! Just…no…

Thanks

Thanks to Seona for being such a great training partner and for suggesting we train together for this event. Seona absolutely smashed her race and ended up with a lightning fast 6:03! After all the effort we put in together, I feel exceptionally proud of her result. So proud! I could go on about how good it was training with her, what a good friend she’s been plus the incredible improvements she made in training and her awesome, awesome race, but Seona’s story is hers to tell so I’ll leave it at that. 

Thanks Danny for all your good advice and the many pushes up hills when I was first trying to stick with the medium fast group; Gary for all your encouragement and knowledge; Liz Eedle, our Super Domestique, for driving out to Goulburn and then driving us home, following us around course all day to cheer for us and patiently listening to all our newbie 70.3 chatter when she’s done 5 or 6 herself plus a few full Ironman races and this is all nothing new to her! 

Thanks to my excellent bike Mechanic and friend Darryl, who put a lot of effort into making my bike lighter and better for the race (we shaved off over 600grams!); Coach Troy for his awesome range of Spinerval DVDs and all the Bilbys who volunteered for the 70.3 aid station and cheered us on. Plus Carol, Kate, Susannah, Beth, and Liz who followed us around the course (in tough conditions!) to cheer for us. Also out on course was some very uplifting cheering from Karina, Chrissy and Kim. A real team effort and the support from all of you means so much to me. Thank you.