National Youth Series Race # 2 - Canberra Double Tri Race Report

Canberra Race Report
 
Race – Australian Junior Youth Triathlon Series
Race # 1 – 1st Overall Youth A + B
Race # 2 – 12th Overall Youth A + B
Result – Winner Youth B
 
It was the 2nd round of the AJTS series in Black Mountain, Canberra and it was awesome. It was a challenging two days of racing with a total of 3 races all up. On Saturday I had my 2 individual races at 8:00am and 10:30am so it was an extremely small time of recovery in between the two races. The distances of each race were a 200m swim, 6.4km ride and a 1.2km run, this meant it was a short and fast style of racing which was extremely tough.
 
As well as the mixed team relay on the Sunday. There was some extreme heat on the Saturday with temperatures getting up to 38 degrees, this meant changes had to be made, these changes were; I had limited the amount of time spent on my run warm-up so I didn’t become dehydrated before race start, along with drinking a lot of water and electrolytes the day before.
 
We had arrived in Canberra on the Friday and did a course familiarisation with Toby along with other SCTA squad members who were racing, this helped become more familiar with the bike course as well as highlighting and practising certain corners or hazards on the course. The bike course was a tough one, quite a hilly and technical course along with some loose gravel and bumps throughout it, I had made the decision to drop my tyre pressure slightly with the bumps in the course as well as the heat that was expected.
 
Race 1-
I had developed a lot of nerves before the first race but that was to be expected, this meant that I was ready to go. With it being draft legal racing I knew the importance of being out with the front pack. Toby and I had discussed a few tactics pre-race but they all revolved around getting out of the water with the front group, so I knew what I had to do.
 
The Vorgee mk11 were used in the water as it was earlier in the morning and they only have a small amount of tint in the goggles, they were perfect. I hadn’t had my greatest swim getting caught up around the cans slightly, this was due to having so many people on the small start line since I was racing with the older category (Youth A) this meant the ages on the start line varied between 12-15 years old.
 
I was able to do enough on my swim as I had worked the long run to transition hard and got onto the bike with the front pack. It was now a matter of hanging onto the pack throughout the ride and setting my race up for the run, I had successfully done this, with heading in to T2 at the back of the front pack which consisted of about 12 of us, now it was a foot race.
 
After not having the greatest transition I was about 20 seconds down on the leader, and knew I was going to have to run well to catch them in the short 1200m, the Mizuno Wave Sonics were perfect in this situation. I was just thinking about picking each person off at a time, and eventually heading to the lead. 600m was down at the turn around with another 600m to go and I had made my way up into about 5th with the leaders in sight, I had gone past 4th and was closing in on the top 3 who were running together, I had made my move with about 100m metres to go causing it to end up in a sprint finish. I was absolutely stoked to win the race, especially against boys up to 2 years older than me.
 
Race 2-
I always knew race 2 was going to be tough and it sure as hell didn’t disappoint. Backing up after the first race with a small amount of recovery time and with the temperature rising, it was hard! Once again, I didn’t have a very good swim and this led to unfortunately missing the front pack and I then found myself riding solo chasing the leaders, this wasn’t an ideal position to be in.
I rode the whole 1st lap of the 2-lap ride by myself until eventually being picked up by a pack to the end of the 2nd lap. I was off the bike and had found myself much further away from the leaders then I did in my first race, I gave it my all in the run but just didn’t have enough time to impact the leaders finishing the 2nd race 12th overall but still winning my category (Youth B).
 
Although I didn’t have the greatest 2nd race there was still many positives to take away from it as well as many lessons learnt from the race.
 
A massive thanks to everyone who helped me reach this point, I couldn’t have done it without you all.
 
Next Race QTS # 6 on home soil at Caloundra this weekend