I survived another event

Well I got another tri under my belt today.  Nothing huge, just a little club event, but on the other hand its a useful step between my longest tri so far (a classic sprint of 750m/20k/5k) and the Olympic distance I'm shooting for in a few weeks.

First a little on my club.

My club (when I'm in Newcastle) is Tomaree Tri Club, a great little club based around Soldiers Point just north of Nelson Bay in NSW.  There are a couple of tri clubs in and around Newcastle and I'm sure there are great people in all of then but I chose (and recommend) Tomaree for one reason.  The swim course for its club tris.  Whereas all the other clubs in the region make do with pools for their swims, Tomaree has a truly gorgeous open water swim.  Its lovely.  

Anyway, the club runs an event each month in spring and summer.  Each event has a short and long course.  So far I've only done the short course at Tomaree, a 250m swim, an 11k ride, and a 3k run.  I did ok but wanted more.  I did that back in Sep 2011 and since then I've lost a bunch of weight (probably about 15kg), got fitter and done a full distance sprint so I was ready.

The long course is a slightly shorter than normal swim (about 500m) but then slightly longer than normal ride (22k) and run (6k).

So did that today and went pretty well.

As I discovered at my Gatorade tri, I'm a decent swimmer in a wetsuit.  As a result while there is a bunch of way better athlete's there than me I was second out of the water.  As usual I sucked in T1 and got passed by a bunch of people.  But on the ride I stabilized the damage, I got passed by 1 guy and I passed 1 guy, so all ok.  Actually not quite that great, I suspect a few others closed up on me without actually getting to pass.  And that all came home to roost on the run, again I was slow and again it cost me a bunch of spots and I tumbled backwards.

Still, this time my form was strong and all in all I am happy.  The swim was excellent, I still dont train enough but I'm getting though.    My ride was solid, I was down of the bars for 90% of the ride, I powered out of the corners and hills and kept up my cadence.  I need to get fitter and stronger but all in all ok.  My run sucked.  I need more speed.

Ok, so all this analysis is based on feel so far.  The club hasnt done the timings yet.  I'll post those when they come through.