Melbourne

Here i am at 3 am awake again for a few hours already after a 2h overnight sleep ;)

yesterday was a far from delightful day for me and probably the sum of several things that didn't work very well.
Race morning was cold like anticipated and there was some rain while traveling to T1. But the forecast really promised a decent day for racing, given how things where during the week it turned out to be an awesome day.

The swim Started at night, i really think this was bad organization, i mean how can we spot a buoy 1km away in the dark? its also true that its the same to everyone but obviously there's a lead kayak for the front packs, really poor organization there in my opinion, so getting to the first buoy was a sacrifice, i was in a group of 3 or 4 and we got lost somewhere and if it wasn't a boat with a flashlight that came to us pointing the way we would still be swimming ;)
i don't know how much time i lost there but when we got back to the right direction i was in a back of the group. i really didn't feel strong in the water like i have been feeling during the winter, i had a sluggish stroke but it was enough to stay in that group, with some light it was easier of course to spot the very few buoys that where in the course, i managed to stay in the group till the very end. and ended up leaving the water with the usual suspects, given that i wasn't feeling perfect that was good.

I lost some time in T1 but managed to bridge a gap to the big pack that formed after the swim easily. good bikers like Shortis, Anderson, Aernouts, among several others where there so i only needed to hang with them. i felt decent legs and the pace was within my "limits". i even managed to push the group for several kms, witch wasn't a good idea but everything looked alright, at the turn around we where roughly 8 9 min behind the huge lead pack and that looked good also. Coming back in slight downhill everything was going fine and i really started to think i was doing well on the day. nutrition was coming along perfectly even with several aidstations missed. But at around 130km everything went backwards, really, and all happened very fast, i was first struggling to stay in the group and then dropped with no power on the legs, yes i have experienced this in another races like Frankfurt last year but this was a whole different game. i still tried to keep distance to the group and did so for a long time but i was trashed and coming back was really painful. the bonus of the day was that i led Mr Bennet to T2 ;) and we actually had a chat while changing at transition.
i was really feeling no energy and started running just to finish the darn thing, there was not much fight about. It was all about patience to let the kms pass. couple toilet stop without any rush whatsoever not much to say other after passing half marathon i started naturally running faster and faster without much effort and did quite few kms under 4 min/km, i really don't understand why this happened... i finished 22nd under 9h whohoo ;)

Ok so definitely not a good day, leading to this race i was sure that i have seen fitter days, the build up to the race wasn't good and january/half february where bad months after being sick at the end of the year but i sure was fit enough to have a go tackle a VERY strong field. I had a very tough week particularly with the time difference and barely slept decently other than the first day i arrived, it got worse and worse during the week to the point where i only slept 2h in the nights before the race, and im sure that really didn't helped here. tough i will not make an escuse out of it...

But i sure am disappointed from coming half way through the world to make not such a good impression...