LUKE WHITMORE "Professional Triathlete"
2010 Gold Coast Half Ironman - 10th
Winter is hanging on for dear life here in Melbourne town. The crap weather, football, turtle neck skivvies etc, etc just wont go away. I had been counting down the days to escape this southern state and head north for some rays. That was not to be. Our trip to Gold Coast Half Ironman disappointed weather wise and we had to put up with over 100mm of rain in two days.
None the less we still had a race to do. I spent the days leading into the race getting over a nasty cold courtesy of our six month old son and his child care centre. I was confident of improving on my performances from last year after a good winters training and a good little win at the Hazelwood Winter Triathlon two weeks earlier.
The swim start was good and I quickly settled into a nice rhythm hanging on to the main pack until roughly the 500m mark. At this point myself and the guy whos feet I was swimming on where dropped from the group in front and left to swim on our own. I exited the water two to three minutes down on the chase pack. As per usual that meant a solo ride for me.
I felt great at the start of the bike and knew all I could do was sit on my threshold power and hope it was good enough not to lose too much time to the leaders. For the first time ever I managed to negative split the second 45km lap of the 90km bike ride and improved my average power above what I thought I could hold. I was pleased with the effort but still entered T2 with just on 14min to make up the leaders. Whilst this would be impossible, I was confident of running a good split and making some ground on some of the athletes who may have cooked themselves too hard on the bike. I slowly settled into a solid rhythm but was not feeling the best, still coughing up oysters from the lingering cold. I managed an OK run split but certainly not what I expected of myself. I finished in 10th position and whilst I was happy with my performance I wasnt completely satisfied. I have some work to do to improve upon this and am now considering adding the Port Macquarie Half Ironman to my schedule in just over three weeks time.
A big congratulations to my wife Tarryn who won the 30-34 age group by over ten minutes just six months after giving birth to our son Oscar!!
Cheers,
Luke
