Ironman New Zealand - Sweet as Bro

10th overall, 1st Age Grouper home

SWEET AS !!

2012 - Triathlon annus valde

Reflections of 2012 - a great triathlon year.

Not much more to say other than 4 races – 3 x wins, 1 x 2^nd.

Falls Creek Long Course in February – 2^nd place in 40/44 age group.

Cairns IM – 1^st place in 40/44 age group.

Shepparton 70.3 – 1^st place in Mixed teams category (Thanks Kate & Sam !).

Canberra 70.3 – 1^st place 40/44 age group.

Seriously, these results are the culmination of a great seasons worth of training. I trained hard, up early – 4:15AM, nearly every day of the year to either ride, swim & run, although the run is not all year round. Pretty much my training for all events was well timed and helped me deliver some great results.   

The races themselves were all so different. Falls Ck. was tough. It was cold, the swim hard and the altitude at 1650m above sea level, was enough to have an effect on your performance. I loved every minute of it though. I was never in a position to challenge for the lead as I my swim was so poor, but it was great to claw my way up into 2^nd position for the age group.

Cairns IM was the polar (pun intended) opposite. Hot, sea level and no excuse for not going as fast as you can. The scenery on this race is 2^nd to none– stick this on your bucket list of races to do as the venue & event management is absolutely awesome. Check my race report on it.

Yeah baby, Cairns IM A/G win !!

I teamed up again with gun swimmer Kate Lister & the ageless Sam Stewart for another crack at the teams event at the Shepp 70.3 under the TEAM XOSIZE/ROCKET SCIENCE SPORTS banner. I rode and despite a fracture to a small bone in my hand when some clown decided to run in front of me the day before, the team worked well to be again called Mixed team champs.

Rockin' the TREK Speed Conept for Team XOSIZE / Rocket Science Sports

Canberra 70.3 is one of my favourite races. I try to lock it in every year as it is a great chance to catch up with long time great friends Tony & Leesa. The event was in a bit of disarray this year I thought, some corners had been cut in competitor safety and a few other areas which took the edge off a great day. I swam 34ish minutes then rode like an absolute demon on the altered 5 x 18km circuit. I had the ride course short by 1.6km but still managed to ride a 2hr08min ride for a 42km/h average speed ! I felt so strong on the bike it was incredible, then got off for the 21.1km run. I passed the fella who was in the A/G lead at the 1km mark & not long after I saw Magnus Michelson running at full steam chasing me down. He was running at 3:32min/km pace where I was at 3:45min/km pace. I had to monitor the gap which was made easier on a 3 x 7km lap. I managed to hold Magnus (who had now ran into 2nd place) off, we eventually recorded the same split on the final lap of 4mins/km & took out my A/G by a few minutes. I rattled off a PB of 4hrs 8mins which i’m really happy about as the Canberra ½ Ironman was my first ever long distance race I competed in back in 2002. I remember nervously sitting there post race waiting for the Ironman Oz slots to get posted up before taking my spot for the old IMOz race at Forster/Tuncurry. That was back in the ‘good old days’ when you had to work your butt off for an IM spot & not just have a fast computer connection like current. I’m starting to sound old and jaded so I will end my rant and post now !!

I hope everybody who takes the timeout to read all this are fit & healthy and have some great goals set out for the future.

Also special, special thanks to my supporters – Team Lewis, Rapido Cycles in Keilor Rd. Essendon, XOSize – they are at all the big events – awesome wetties, shoe selection and what they don’t know about Tri’s ain’t worth knowing, Rudy Project, thanks for hiding my rough head under your awesome looking helmets & glasses and John Quinn Elite – my sounding board & inspiration.

Cheers – train hard & train safe ! Matty.

The 2012 Road season comes to an end.

From my last report ‘Winter of contentment’ I had 2 more road races to complete. The first being the Northern Combine road racing champs, then the jewel - the Melbourne to Warrnambool. All my training & racing for the winter was done with the Warnie in mind. All the road races I competed in were about honing my body & fitness to give it a solid crack towards this race. The Northern Combine champs was a race I wanted to do well in. I went against my M2W training plan and snuck in a bit of a ‘taper’ for the race which consisted of a very light, easy 90km’s on the Saturday, the day before the race, rather than the 7hrs I had pencilled in. I raced Masters 1/2/3 out on the Strath Creek course which makes up a large majority of the Preston Mountain Classic race (minus the big hill at the end). The race went OK, I finished 5^th after being in an early break of 6 that got away up the first major climb then ‘mysteriously’ wanted to soft pedal about half way through the race. The remainders of the bunch caught us so it was back to a big pack, 2.5km’s out there’s a small climb before a downhill section then a flat finish, so – you guessed it, I attacked on the last climb to avoid the big legged brigade in a bunch sprint and despite gapping the field quickly I timed it wrong and popped about 50m from the top of the hill and struggled to recover in the last 1.5km downhill/flat bit & was passed by some more organised riders – Bugger, 50m from being a hero or a zero.......Shit happens !!

Onto The Warnie, I had trained the house down for this race, I was feeling great after punching out some BIG weeks of training. I trained all days except Friday which was my day off. Mon to Thurs were a mix of high intensity rides & recovery 90 to 100km rides dependant upon my training cycle, Sat & Sun was reserved for my long rides & racing.

My thoughts for the race was to first stay upright – be vigilant and avoid crashes & secondly work into a bunch of like graded riders, work with them and take & enjoy the day as it comes. The first part came true as at the 13km mark a massive crash happened about 15m in front of me. It had brought down a lot of the NRS (National Race Series) riders so it was probably the 50^th to 75^th positioned riders in the pack. Before the crash I was waiting for what a lot of people had told me – ‘prepare to be on the rivet from the start (Werribee Racecourse)’. This didn’t happen, from my position in the peleton which was generally around 100^th to 150^th, it was very stop / start. One minute you were on the brakes with speed down to 20km/h then the next second you are out of the saddle sprinting !  As mentioned at the 13km mark a big crash happened which brought about 25 riders down, luckily I had sufficient time to slow down and managed to get through the carnage after a few quick swerves & a bunny hop. The front of the race had moved on (read: attacked) and I found myself in the 2^nd or ‘chase’ pack which consisted of 20 riders, over half of which were NRS riders. There were riders from Genesys, Drapac, Budget Forklifts, Search2Retain whilst the rest of us were simply ‘graded’ riders. The NRS guys hammered it trying to catch the front pack (approximately 60 riders) & from where I was sitting, generally around 15^th wheel, everything was pretty comfortable. The fellas up the front were all rolling real hard, the graded guys sat back as we all new getting involved up the front would have been massive HR stuff & an the inevitable ‘pop’ would have ensued.

This is the only image I have of the group I was in, as you can see some big name NRS teams

The only time things got real hard was when we switched from a Westerly (headwind) to a Southerly (crosswind) direction on the roads that zigzag around the You Yangs, near Geelong. The crosswinds brought out higher speeds in the front dozen guys, while the rest of us had to be strong & make sure we positioned well in the ‘echelon’, riding in the gutter, or with no protection from the side wind, would have tipped you into the red. I did well with this but a few of the fellow graded riders weren’t as good or as strong at getting a good position & you could see they were struggling. At about the 50km mark we hit the first KoM hill which I was dreading as I thought the NRS guys would smash it up, but amazingly it was quite easy. We got to the top and not long after we swung South again, crosswind time ! Again I positioned myself well, but this time things didn’t quite work. My rear wheel an Easton EC90SL which has been absolutely bullet proof for 3 seasons  gave up the ghost. I’ll leave it at that as there are things that happen in a race that should stay in the race (footy analogy – what happens on the field stays on the field). So 57km into my first Melbourne to Warrnambool, I was sitting at the turn onto the Midland Highway with a banged up rear wheel with broken spokes. I sat there and watched the race go by. My pack was catching the lead pack, at the time we were only about 200m off them & they managed to catch them 8km’s later.

Luckily for me a local cow cockie saw me on the side of the road and offered me a lift into Inverleigh to my ‘team car’ where Grechy was waiting for me with my first feedbag. We jumped in following the race all the way to Warnambool before a few beers. My 2012 race season ended up with my BIG race in tatters, an event that I had trained specifically for the last 16 weeks for, which at the time I thought amounted to nothing. But after a great yack with Grechy on the way to Warnambool it all amounted to ‘Shit happens’. And sometimes it does ! Next year ................