Before the Race

The alarm went off at 4:30am and I was already awake. I didn't feel nervous going to bed, but I barely slept all night. Once up, the first thing I did was make a cup of coffee. It was going to be a very long day and I did not want to suffer a caffeine withdrawal headache. Plus I wanted the diuretic effect of the coffee to take affect well before the race began, so the earlier I had the coffee the better. Elaine had made a Frittata (containing eggs and vegetables) the day before, so it just required a quick reheat in the microwave and breakfast was sorted.  After the Frittata I had an Optimizer drink and that is all I consumed before the race.

We left home about 5:30am and Nepean Hwy was already busy with athletes heading to race. Road closures near the start line were already in place, so we had to drive through some of the back streets in Frankston. There were no good parking spots left, so Elaine dropped me off as close as she could and then went back to park the car by herself. I had about half a kilometre to walk to the race start, but with race check-in the day before I didn't have too much to carry.

Just as I made it to my bike in transition, the commentator announced that it was 6am and that transition would be closing in 30 minutes, so I had plenty of time. I pumped up the tyres, attached my bento box full of nutrition, configured and attached the bike computer, attached the bike shoes to the pedals, put the bike in an easy gear and left my helmet and sunnies next to the bike. Once I was satisfied everything was ready I set about making sure I could find everything in the race. This meant taking note of the rack number and I also walked through the transition tents to remind myself where my transition bags were hanging.

Now I had to drop off my 'Special Needs' bags. I found the 'Special Needs' truck on the other side of the transition tents which meant walking around the entire complex. During this walk I noticed that the toilet queues were very long. Suddenly I no longer felt I had plenty of time. I'd already been to the toilet twice already, but had planned a final stop closer to the race start.

The weather was quite cool, but by now the nervous pre-race energy was in full effect so I didn't feel the cold as I stripped down to my race gear and starting getting into my wetsuit while I waited for Elaine and a good mate Dave to arrive at our meeting spot. Despite the long toilet queues I had witnessed, I decided I would still line up and hope I made it in time. The first queue barely moved for nearly 15 minutes, but then I noticed another queue which was not only shorter but definitely moving much quicker. Sure enough after switching queues I had the toilet stop out of the way in 5 minutes and the original queue had barely moved. Now I was feeling more relaxed because everything that needed to be done was done.

The Pro Men started at 7:00am and the Pro Women at 7:02am. It was still fairly dark and the crowd around the beach was huge, so we weren't able to see any of them start. The crowd was so thick, everything was gridlocked and I couldn't even make my way down the beach. But once the Pros had set off, the Age Groupers starting entering the water and gaps started to materialise in the crowd allowing the rest of the competitors to make their way into the water.

The water temperature wasn't too bad or maybe I was just warm due to nervous energy. I started to slowly swim out and then realised I was actually swimming towards the swim start line, which was convenient. The Age Group wave start was at 7:15am, 15 minutes before official sunrise, so it was still a little dark. I could not see the buoys we were supposed to be swimming towards, but they had stand-up paddle boarders that would stay ahead of the lead swimmers. So theoretically if everybody else followed the leader we should generally keep in the right direction.

It was not clear where the exact start line was, but the swimmers at the front continued to creep forward. In the end I'd say the front swimmers ended up nearly 100m past the start line when the starting horn went off.  I was about 30 metres behind them and I'm told that some unfortunate competitors were caught unawares still standing on the beach.