2013 Wellington Oceania Championships

 

Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, the first draft of this report is clocking up some frequent flyer points. Hopefully, it is an enjoyable read for the next customers reading the Qantas magazine who want to know “What you should do in Newcastle” and obviously, how I went during this race.

 

Often known as the place that is windy, wet, cold and hilly, Wellington lived up to its reputation on race day. When the sun rose on Friday morning, after getting in quite late Thursday night, it was a nice surprise to wake up to a beautiful autumn day. Wollongong earlier in the week had not seen the word “taper” and I enjoyed 3 full days of hard but meaningful training towards the weekend race. Friday was a bit of a hit and miss with how I felt and having a banana smoothie before our pre-race run probably was not the best idea. I am sure the girls agree!

 

A perfect start time of 10:30am, we woke up to what Wellington is renowned for - wet, windy and overcast skies. An early morning ride to get the legs rolling, gave me a good idea of the conditions.  A quick run, gave me time to debate whether I wanted to do a swim warm up or just dry land exercises. After getting out of the cold water, 30 minutes of dry land exercise became the ideal situation. First onto the pontoon due to Oceania rankings was a change and something that I could get used to. I choose mid/left and the first Olympic distance of the year was about to begin. Well, the start was brutal. I got bashed around pretty bad and made the move to the far left to get some free space. It was probably the best decision and by the first buoy, I had time and space. For the rest of the swim, I had feet of a NZ girl that led me around the course to come out of the water 3^rd. Unfortunately, my transition was under par as I could not clip my helmet on with my cold hands.

 

We started the ride into a tail wind which gave us plenty of time to get our feet in. For the first 3km of the ride, until the u turn, there was 3 of us rolling turns. When we turned around, the chase pack of girls were just behind us and by the hill they had caught onto the back of us. The course has a hill in every lap which adds a little pinch to the legs every lap. The course was pretty windy in some sections, where my front wheel got blown around. As soon as we caught Kate Mcilroy, the pace eased up and no one was going to pull a turn if they didn’t have to. Our group of ten, had all the main runners in it and it was going to come down to a run race. I got near the front on the end of the 6^th lap and was one of the first in and out of T2.

I went out with five other girls, into what was going to be a solid 10km run. After we turned around at 1.25km, three girls went off the front and I had 3 other girls to run with. I knew it was important to keep my cadence up especially into the head wind. I felt comfortable and I wanted to keep pushing with the front girls. After that it was a cat and mouse for 4^th/5^th and 6^th place. Jamie used some good analogies to describe my run after the race. I was the one ending stronger and I needed to use this to my advantage. On the 3^rd lap, I bridged up to Sophie Corbidge into the tail wind. This is not the ideal situation as I let her into my bubble. If I did it into a head wind, I could have “stamped” my position and taken over her at a more dominate pace. The last lap, Simone Ackermann surged and I wasn’t going to let her get away. I caught her at the u turn and we were fighting for 4^th and 5^th. Jamie yelled at me with 1km not to lead her out as getting to 500m first was not the objective, it was to get to the finish line first. I sat back and was mentally going through what would be the best tim e to go. With 200m to go, I surged and we hit grass. Every week we do “shuttle runs” or short sprints on grass. In my head, I was like “Natalie, you sprint on grass every week, you can do this!”. I  got her by a small margin of a foot.  Ending up with 4^th place, I am satisfied with how the race went, learning important race tactic skills and how to put them into races to come.

 

 

 

Thanks Jamie for the weekend in general and getting things organised for the weekend to run smoothly! A final congratulations to my training partners for having a solid weekend in Wellington! Next stop Mooloolaba this weekend!