2009 BRW Gold Coast Corporate Triathlon
On Sunday (26-APR-2009) I participated in the 2009 BRW Corporate Triathlon. Being one who never got into the Triathlon thing, due to my antilove of swimming, I thought this would be a manageable event. Driven mainly by some good friends and deciding to also do it as part of work team.
Leading up to the event, being a non distance swimmer and someone who was flat-out swimming a lap of a 25m pool, there was some serious ramping up of swimming training. Led by my training partners Tim and Pete, they managed to get me able to do the distance! Legends...The swim leg was the 90% focus of the event, the other 5% was being able to get out of the water and the final 5% being able to make the 10km ride after the swim.
Training sessions of looping around UQ were also awesome! Again mainly for social catchups, but to be able to bring the Swim (8 laps of UQ pool), Ride (2 loops of UQ campus) and the run (1 lap of the UQ campus) together.
On the day of the event, a nice early 4am wakeup, picking Tim up at 4.30am and belting down to the Gold Coast spit to the event. Our start time of 8am meant that we'd be sitting around twiddling our thumbs until then.
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So our team, "Team Oracle", consisted of Peter Kakasi, myself and Paul Barnes. This event was a relay where each team member completed a swim/ride/run circuit, then handing over to the next team member, who would complete the same again. Peter, our gun, was the first to start, and was a gun in the swim (2nd out of the water for our group), ride (on his $100 bike) and run! Then he handed it over to me, for the fearful swim. Not having any clue how I would go on this, would be interesting. I managed to do the first 50m with some sort of technique, then resorted to a bit of breaststroke and ad-hoc freestyle to get me to the end. I was very happy that it was high tide, and we could run the first and last 30m of the swim leg. Surviving the swim, getting on the bike (29inch mountain bike with offroad tyres). A nice flat bike circuit - managed to overtake alot of mtn bike rides and being overtaken by slick road bikes (Note to self: borrow a bike with less road resistance and pumped tyres). Finally ending with the run, starting to get nice a warm temperature, the nice 4km run was a scenic (an bit repetitive) circuit to then hand the timer over to Paul Barnes, who then also did an awesome job on the 3rd swim, and the bike leg (on his mtn bike) and then completing the run (4 weeks after knee surgery)!
So at the end, Team Oracle completed the event as did the 2 Teams from Trimble Networks, who we spent significant time with, both before the event and during the day! Good efforts all round.
Finally, note to self, if driving to the event: either leave early or really late, or park down near Surfers and ride to the event. It took is 1.25 hours just to get our of the spit roadway! It was quicker completing the complete tri than driving out of the street! Not a nice way to end, but still a great day anyway.
Still not overly excited by triathlons. Give me bush tracks, my mountain bike and a kayak anyday!
