The Duathlon Worlds went well. My body (in particular my knees) could not handle the Bright Training Camp a week later. And two weeks after that my legs in general failed me during the run leg at Mandurah 70.3.
Having kind of survived the Marysville Trail Running Camp, I thought things might be turning around, so I persisted with training in December. Having already entered the Two Bays Trail Run, this became the focus and skipped the local Sprint Triathlons (which also saves a bit of money).
Two Bays Trail goes from Dromana to Cape Schanck, 28kms in total. With Elaine and I having never done a training run even close to 28km, we instead decided to explore the course in sections. Slowly building up to 2 hours. I never felt great on the runs and they were certainly not even close to fast, but the fact that I managed 2 hours running (very rare for me) gave me hope.
Below is a photo near taken near the finish line in Cape Schanck.
For my birthday, Elaine bought me a Salomon Running Vest. It enables me to carry a camelback water bladder, two soft water flasks, gels, phone, keys, space blanket, snake bandages, etc. Despite all this it is still very light and quite comfortable. Even though a lot of the vest is light mesh material, I still found I got quite hot, although we were running in the early afternoon in Summer.
Plenty of wildlife on the Two Bays Trail. Heaps of kangaroos and wallabies, some wombats and the beautiful blue tongue lizard in the photo below. Elaine was very disappointed we didn't see any snakes (personally I was quite happy about that).
Even though the focus was on the Two Bays Trail Run, I didn't ignore Triathlon. Most weeks I was still getting in 3 swims and getting in a long ride on the weekend.
Bayside KOM
As usual the weekend before Christmas saw the running of the Bayside KOM (King of the Mountains). Last year I was equal winner with Andrew. Even though was riding form was no near the level of the year before I still wanted to win outright this year. This was helped by the 40 degree heat, resulting in a very low competitor turnout that did not include Andrew.
In Andrew's absence my main competitors were Adam, young Martin and Clint. With the extreme temperatures, Clint decide to cut one of the climbs, which was unfortunately the one I am best at. So now there were only 3 climbs, and only one of these (the Wall) was suited to me.
Adam, Martin and I managed to clear the field on the first climb, but I could not drop the other two and finished third on the sprint to the finish. Whether or not it was effort used on the first climb, the heat or they just didn't care, Adam and Martin did not really try on the last two climbs and I won the King of the Mountain title easily.
The photo below shows Naomi (Queen of the Mountain) with young Martin, the course profile and some of the riders gathered after the last climb.
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