Gold Coast Triathlon - Luke Harrop Memorial - QTS - TriathlonSprint

Felt fairly sluggish during my warm-up and it didn't really change much once the gun went off. Struggled to get any real speed going but hung with the main pack fairly comfortably. Got pretty congested around the first two buoys but then I had my own space for the rest of the swim. Sighted well for the entire swim and got out of the water feeling really comfortable. Despite feeling sluggish in the water I was pretty happy with the time, in fact I was fairly surprised when I looked at the watch and saw low 13's.

Need to try and go out harder for the first 200 to try and get onto a good group of feet and avoid more of the main pack congestion.

Wasted a few seconds finding my bike amongst the 2200 others in transition but it was fairly quick and uneventful.

Legs took a little while to get into the groove, especially going up the short rise for the first time shortly after transition. After about a kilometre though I got down on the aerobars and got into a really good rhythm and cadence. Intentially tried to keep the pace comfortable but the course was smooth and fast and I seemed to hold my average pace around the 35km/hr mark which was encouraging. I've really been working hard on my bike for the last few weeks and I was happy with this improved performance. It was a bit disappointing that the bike split also includes both T1 and T2 time as well as it is hard to get an appreciation of your true bike split.

Keep up the bike work that I've been doing in training over winter and have the confidence to push the ride harder during the race.

Took a little while to get the shoes on properly.

I had hopes of going close to 20mins for the 5km but again I felt a bit sluggish getting out of transition. Tried to keep the turnover high and just hold the pace. Never really had it on the first lap though and I lost a bit of time. My longer, endurance work has been paying off though as I felt better on the second lap than the first. Battled with a few guys in my age-group over the second lap and managed to get the upper hand on them though. Not overly happy with the run time but happy with the overall race time and the fact that I finsihed the run strong.

Pretty much the last race of my season and overall it was a good hit out. I had a goal of going below 1:15 and managed that comfortably on a fast course. Good improvement from my last sprint race as well which was a 1:19. Need to build on this momentum over the off-season.


Standard USM Events race - well run.