IM Cairns 2012 race report.

Hallelujah !! My first race report for a while.......

IM Cairns, what a race, I wouldn’t rate it an overly hard course, but, there are a few bits and pieces that add up to make it a difficult day. First up the swim – this was interesting, a lot of pre race athlete talk regarding the swim centred on the fear factor due to the local marine life which consisted of stingers, crocs and sharks. The sight of boats and jetski’s buzzing busily across the swim course helped ‘add’ to the atmosphere. Apparently this is done to scare the shit out of any ‘wildlife’ that was lurking in the depths - check the image above, this croc was spotted not far from the swim course a week later !! The main concern I had was lack of vision in the water which had a milky coffee like consistency. Vision was low, even lower than Shep’s infamous 70.3 swim course, which made collisions unavoidable and worse still, drafting off feet impossible as you couldn’t even see bubbles in the water.

The road surface also came into effect. It was very changeable, one minute you are riding on smooth as hot mix, the next minute you are dodging pot holes. The heat also came into play. I personally loved it and had no issues, a lot of competitors out there looked to be really struggling with cramp & hydration, hopefully a lot of lessons were learnt. Overall I give the course a massive tick – THIS IS A MUST DO RACE !

My race week started as an expensive one, I rode part of the course on Wednesday and punctured 3 times. These were on race wheels (GSP’s Zipp disc/808 combo – thx again mate !!) and trashing 3 x Conti Competition tubulars was bitter, insult to injury was I had to get a cab back into Cairns from 40km’s away – Ouch. I also got pinged by a speed camera after dropping T2 bags off to Smithfield with Dazzler Knight on the Saturday – 75ish in a 60km zone, I was getting a bit animated in my discussion with Razzle and didn’t see the speed camera – Double ouch. Apart from this it was a fairly entertaining week. I helped out Scotty & Cam at the XOSIZE & Rocket Science Sport marquees at the expo. It was pretty busy there but hopefully I managed to play the ‘bitch’ real well. My wettie sizing and fitting techniques needs a lot of refinement but hopefully I managed to grab a few sales for the boys. I was probably on my feet a bit too much in the days leading up to the race but I quite liked helping the fellas out, Scotty has given me such huge support over time & this was the least I can do to help him out. Special thanks to XOSize & Rocket Science Sports.

After a solid 5 days of drizzly weather, a cloudless sky and next to no wind greeted us all on Sunday the 3rd, absolutely awesome triathlon conditions. I had slept really well and woke up at 4:20am then onto brekky which consisted of 3 x 220g cans of Choccy creamed rice & 3 x English muffins piled high with strawberry jam. I usually feel a bit heavy after this but felt like I could eat more, so I did ! I threw down a few bananas on the walk down to T1 while yakking to Marie & Fiona. ‘Team Lewis’ had a stand in ‘Team Manager’ in Fiona as regular Manager & guru Stevo was given this race off as he was still recovering from a bout of alcohol poisoning from his 2011 Hawaiian IM campaign. Bike kit up went seamlessly, I met back up with the girls & wettie’d up ready for the swim.

The swim course looked well laid out with large buoys at regular intervals. Getting into the water was a challenge as there was only one small gangway to walk across onto a pontoon, then down some steps into the water. The 70.3 race which started 20 mins earlier was bearing down on the last of the IM competitors to get into the water but somehow it managed to sort itself out. I positioned myself ¾ of the way back, preferring to start slow and well....... finish slow..... The start was bizarre, a heap of athletes made a ‘hooter’ like sound and then the front guys started ??? So sheep like I followed. I had a cruisey swim with minimal contact all the way through and just concentrated on keeping comfortable. The murky water made it hard to draft, I managed to grab a look at my time at the ½ way point, it showed 32mins which I was happy with. My pace felt good until the last 800m which felt quite hard. Apparently a bit of a swell had picked up, I didn’t notice this at all, just putting my slower pace down to a lack of swim fitness as I had only done 2 months of squad swimming. Swim time = 1:09:32

T1 is a 400m run and takes a bit of time, I picked up an easy 12-15 spots here as some people dawdled through. I had an OK T1 then set off for the ride in ‘heaven’. The sun was out and could be felt as we headed out of town. I got into rhythm quickly and settled into a pace that was comfortable with my HR at 145-150bpm & speed around 37-39km/h. The first hour went past, downing my usual Choccy Powerbar, choccy gel and full bidon of electrolyte (Infinit). I reached the Port Douglas (PD) turnaround (75km) right on 2 hrs. The road surface in PD was awesome after the previous 8-9km on the Capt’n Cook Hwy which was best described as rugged and patchy. As I turned back onto the Cook Hwy I thought the rear of the bike felt a bit doughy, a quick look down confirmed that the rear was down on pressure. My HR was climbing & speed decreasing as I pushed hard to cover 15km’s back to where I saw a service van on top of a hill called ‘Rex Hill’. I wanted to use him as I thought this would be a safe option as I was only carrying 1 x CO² canister. I didn’t quite make it & had to pull over 2km short as the disc was starting to bottom out on the roads. I quickly recharged the tubular and pushed on to the service vehicle. When I arrived there some old fella was having enormous trouble with his aero bars, he was quite pedantic about a few things and was clearly getting in the way of the mechanic who was working feverishly to get him back out on the course. Whilst waiting I peeled off my rooted tub & started to try to put the new one on but my hands were really sweaty & I struggled. I waited while the mechanic finished off with the silly old coot who still didn’t look to be happy, then he started on my wheel. He got it all fixed up, refilled it with air then put it back on. There was another issue with the tub not being pushed on fully at the valve stem which caused a small bump in the tub that rubbed against the ‘draft box’ behind the seat tube. We had to lift this & tape it up so it didn’t rub against the tyre & slow me down, all up I lost 10mins 38secs, maybe I should’ve just changed the thing myself at the first opportunity – Oh well, live & learn. The rest of the bike went really well, I felt strong all the way through, my nutrition was spot on, downing 2 x gels, 2 x salt tablets and 1 x bidon of High 5 or Coke which was available on course per hour. In fact I finished that strongly I did the last 30km’s which was mostly flat in about 40 minutes. I was cracking along on a great road surface at 45km/h with my HR around 145 bpm. I was wrapt to be able to do this as I was starting to come up to a handful of packs (all legal I thought) and then ride right through them. Bike time = 5:01:55

It wasn’t until I had stopped in T2 to put my runners on that I realised it was quite warm. I started to sweat pretty hard in the steamy tent which made me push to get out as quickly as I could. After 2:15 of playing dress ups I headed out onto the flat run through the cane fields. My first thoughts were that my legs felt pretty awesome and that I could be in with a show for my A/G, all I needed to do was spot up my competitors & chase them down. I really wish race organisers insist on lettered a/g calf markings as trying to sneak a peek at numbers that are in the same sequence as mine on the front of competitors is a real pain. I actually flip my number around at some races at turnaround points if I know it is a close race just to throw my competitors off. I saw Matty Koorey head out of the small 3km loop in Yorkeys Knob and did a split on him which worked out to be an 11 minute deficit. I thought there was one other fella in front of him so at least now I had an idea. I was flying and felt comfortable, I split the first 10km’s in 41:40 and kept the pace up to the 21km where I split in 1hr 24mins. I caught Matty at one of the first aid stations as we hit the Cairns Esplanade, he was looking pretty RS and barring disaster I had this thing wrapped up. I kept my pace up until I hit the first turnaround point located a few hundred metres past the finish line. I couldn’t see anyone of my ‘vintage’ so had to wait until I reached the far turnaround point at the Esplanade to confirm what position I was in. Again the scene was clear, my race then turned to keeping a split on my closest competitor to make sure they weren’t gaining. It was a funny feeling, I sort of switched off, content in the knowledge that I had worked my butt off to get back into the race & was now leading. My pace dropped away and I started to get a bit tardy running through the aid stations, missing drinks etc. Amazingly I kept putting time into the 2nd place 40-44 ag’er. I felt solid and had good form but my mins/km kept blowing out to late 4min km pace. The rest of the run was solid if not unspectacular, a PB was definitely out of the question due to the earlier puncture and I’d lost focus a bit as I was cruising but still putting time into my fellow a/g’ers. The crowd support was pretty amazing, the weather definitely brought out the best in people, it was by far the loudest most vocal crowd that I had come across in all my IM’s. In the end Ricky Jeffs called me across the line saying that I had won my A/G (fist pump time !) and had earnt a Hawaii spot. My marathon time was a 3:14:55 for a total time of 9hrs 32mins 35secs to win my age group by 8 minutes and place 26th overall. I felt good, walked straight through the recovery area to meet Marie & Fee then headed off back to our unit for a clean up. My job was done.............................................................................................................

Some valuable things I learnt from this, my 12th IM are :

• My training time was HEAVILY compromised due to my increased work load. I travelled a lot so had to mix & shorten a lot of my sessions. I kept my intensity higher than I usually do as the hours per week I was punching out was down by as much as 5Hrs in my peak weeks.

• My longest ride was 160km’s x 1, 140km’s x 3 and a heap of 120km’s. I religiously rode on Tuesday and Thursday morning to Mordialloc which is an 86km round trip. I tried to keep my Wattage for these rides above 250 Watts, my PB of 280 Watts with an ave. HR of 146bpm was recorded on a still morning when I was quite fatigued 6 weeks out.

• The majority of my long rides were done in the hills north of the city – Kinglake Mt. Macedon, Humevale, Darraweit. I do enough flat stuff (Beach Rd) during the week & try not to ride there on the weekends due to the poor quality of riders about. I like the high intensity of the hills and feel it conditions my legs and lower back a lot better for TT’ing.

• I did a 1 month stint from week 13 to week 10 where I spent a lot of time on the track. I did this as I was racing the BCC Team Pursuit in the Masters Elite team. We claimed the bronze and I felt the track supplemented my training rather than detracting from it.

• My longest run was 32km’s x 1, followed by 28km’s x 2, then a heap of 20 – 24km runs. The latter being run at or better than 4min/km pace. Every second run was an easier recovery run at a pace of 4:45 – 5:00mins/km. I did no hill repeats this time around due to the timing of these runs in my weekly cycle interfering with work.

• Swimming was done at VU with the usual ETPA squad. I started after IM Melbourne which gave me a 2 month lead in - This was too short. I usually do a 12 week lead in, my shoulder usually starts giving me grief from week 8 in the pool through to week 12. I don’t enjoy this so shortened it this time around. I think I swam comfortably in the race but the trade off of a lack of speed v’s a month of extra pain to go 5 mins quicker – give me the extra month and the pain.........

• My summary of all the above is that my time was spent doing quality over quantity, it very nearly could have got me a PB except for the dreaded puncture.

• My pre race nutrition from 3 days out is near on perfect. I reckon I nailed it this time out. A lot of athletes should put more focus into this.

• Race day nutrition was good. The only bother was High5 – I hate the stuff, it is purely the taste, I went straight to Coke when available on the bike course & had no ill effects. The first hour on the bike was on Infinit which is what I loaded up on for the 3 days before.

• Staying calm when something outside of your control happens to your race is paramount. When I punctured I used the time to grab a drink and eat while the mechanic fixed everything. My HR dropped right down and I even had a small stretch. It all worked as I flew afterwards.



Thanks all for your time !! Train safe, train hard, Matty

PS - I'll post images when I get them.