Noosa Triathlon

To give you an idea of of how many competitors were doing the race, my age group was split across 3 wave starts (some age groups had 4). The Elites kicked off at 6:15am, my wave was 7:22am and Elaine's was 8:02am.  So the Elite Winner had finished the race before Elaine started. However it could have been worse with some of the team waves starting as late as 9:30am.

Transition closed at 6:00am, so we arrived at the race site just after 5am (it opened at 4:45am). Unlike the slow queues at Registration on the Friday, the Transition Bike Check-in on Saturday and Transition Entry on Sunday morning were very quick. Kudos must also go to the Bag Storage arrangements and number (and quality) of toilets provided which greatly reduced unwanted queuing before the race.

In fact the only real wait of the morning was when we ordered our pre-race coffees (long macchiato). We figured it would be a while before we had a chance to have a coffee after the race, so decided to remove any chance of suffering a caffeine withdraw headache. Obviously plenty of other competitors had the same idea.

At 6am it was already quite warm and after our coffee there was no problem storing our gear in the bag check-in and continuing for the next 90 mins (over 2 hours in Elaine's case) in just our tri-suits and bare feet. By the time we got to the race start location, the elite men had just left, but we got to watch them come in out of the swim. Apparently just before the elite women started, a snake reared its head out of the water a metre or so in front of the group illiciting a few shrieks. Probably lucky Elaine and I didn't see this, nothing like adding to the normal pre-race nerves.

Swim

It was a deep water start and I positioned myself in the front row. Once the gun went off, I got a good start and immediately found some feet to draft off. It turned out the feet I was following were not particularly fast. In fact none of the swimmers near me at the start seemed to be that good and I could see the lead pack ahead slowly pulling away.

In general the swim was very easy as I cruised along drafting off other people's feet. Visibility was often very difficult, but there were plenty of marshalls sitting on boards who did a great job of keeping everyone on track. About half way through the swim I experienced a nasty pain on my neck. At first I thought is was chafing, but it was ten times more painful than any chafing I'd felt before. After the race I discovered it was a nasty jelly fish sting. The pain lasted for about 24 hours, but 2 days later I still have distinctive marks on my neck where I was stung.

Elaine's instructions for the swim was to take it easy and avoid expending extra energy. Despite getting a nasty whack to the mouth resulting in a very bloody lip, Elaine managed to hold her form and had one of her better swims in 39m19s. My swim split was 29m35s. In general I've been told swim times were about 2 minutes slower than usual due to a combination of unfavourable currents and a slightly long swim.

Bike

Onto the bike I discovered my Garmin computer was not working properly. This meant I had no Power Wattage, Heart Rate or Cadence. Very frustrating not to have any pacing tools for the race. I spent the first 5km of the bike fiddling with the computer to try and get it to work without success. I would have normally switched my Power Meter to my road bike for the Bright Camp, but decided it was more important to have it on my tri-bike for Noosa. Now I have no power figures for either, and my first 5km of the bike was much slower than usual as I wasted time playing with my computer.

Elaine fared even worse. Her bike was stuck in one gear. After 5km she hopped off the bike to see if she could fix the problem, but the gears would simply not budge. After investigating the bike after the race I discovered my mistake when re-assembling her bike. Everything on her bike had been setup and tested before I put her aero bars back on. When attaching the aero bars, I accidentally trapped the gear cable under the clamp which completely nullified the effectiveness of the gear lever. This problem was have been instantly detected if she did a warmup ride, but seeing me experience a puncture on Friday probably deterred her from this activity.

The Noosa bike course is very fast, assuming your bike isn't stuck in one gear and you don't waste time fiddling with a computer. It contains a 3km climb, but at around 4% gradient it is very easy. After the turnaround there is a steep 1km descent - I hit 80kph and even Elaine managed to crack 60kph down this hill. The rest of the course is pretty flat and the road surface is mostly pretty good.

Elaine and my official bike splits were 1h40m30s and 1h06m04s, but these included times for both transitions (and it was a big transition area). My actual bike split was 1h02m11s, averaging 37.8kph (I can definitely do better).

Run

Onto the run I felt pretty good. But it was already hot and I knew it would not take long for the heat to take effect. My kilometre splits before pretty much tell the story:

  4:01

  4:03

  4:07

  4:18

  4:26

  4:26

  4:30

  4:29

  4:34

  4:39

  0:41

The first few kilometres felt very easy and I was concentrating on not going too fast. Then in the fourth kilometre the heat caught up with me and the rest of the run was a bit of a struggle. You'll notice that the run was measured a bit long as well, a little nasty I thought on such a hot day.

The run course itself was amazing. It is reported that 20,000 spectators watch the race, but it felt like a lot more. I never ran too far without kids wanting a high five as I ran past. Residents also had garden hoses and sprinklers out and I was very appreciative of getting the occasional cool down.

Elaine's run followed a very similar pattern. However she still managed a 65 minute run, an excellent effort after a trying bike leg with only one gear.

My overall time was 2h19m58s. Not a PB and nowhere near what I think I'm capable of. Next Olympic Distance Triathlon is at St Kilda in January. Hopefully the results will be better there.