Freycinet Challenge - Part 2

Wednesday, 23 October 2013

I slept pretty badly, and woke up feeling like I'd caught even more of Jon's cold than the day before when I was just feeling a bit stuffed up and I had streaming eyes. Not a great start.  To distract myself over breakfast I perused the results from day 1 which had been posted at 6am. Although we already knew where we stood with LOL (we were still in with a chance)  and FTT (not worth worrying about), we were surprised to discover that there was actually another team in our category, lets call them DRuMS, who were 1/2 an hour ahead of us, largely due to their paddler who was 7th overall (out of 175) and MTB rider who was 2nd overall - wow. Not much we could do about that.  

Anyway I had to shape up and get to the beach by the 7:15 briefing.  Jon dropped me off at 7 and I was just getting ready to go for a warm-up paddle when the briefing started.  I couldn't hear anything but suddenly everyone started lining up their boats on the beach - oh no a beach start!  This was not good news for me as the last racing beach start I did was a few weeks earlier and I got cramp in my calves and fell out as fast as I'd jumped in!  

Luckily the usual chaos ensued and we actually ended up starting sitting in the boats, in 40cm of water. It was crazy, but totally predicable - you just have to be ready for anything with these big multisport starts! This is what it looked like (photos courtesy of Ben at Next Level Kayaking).

My own start was pretty good - about midway down the beach I got a reasonably clean start and settled into a good rhythm right near the paddlers I wanted to be near (washriding is a big factor in these big starts).  The first lap went well but from that point I started to drop off the back of the group of paddlers I was with and then from then on I progressively moved backwards through the pack - I was trying my best but just wasn't moving fast enough! Normally I at least hold my position in the 2nd part of a race so this was a new (and disheartenting) experience!   I couldn't do anything about it but keep trying my best to get it over and done with. Ultimately I was at least a minute slower than I would have liked to be, unfortunately that meant I was 4:25 minutes slower than LOL but I did beat the FTT paddler who must have been feeling sore from the day before.

After I tagged Jonno (who had the next two legs) I walked disconsolately back to the car and wondered what happened. I've never had a 'bad day in the boat' as such - normally if I've trained hard, it's translated directly to race performance - so to feel so average (after so much training) was really disappointing.    Oh well - the highlight of the paddle was that it left me free to relax and enjoy the rest of the day!  

So Jon went out 4 minutes after Matt from LOL on the road bike. Matt had beaten him by 6 minutes on this leg the day before and we really couldn't rely on him getting cramps again to allow us to catch up in the mountain bike leg!  I hung around and watched Matt zoom in to finish his leg and change to his mountain bike then I started my watch and anxiously waited for Jon..6ish minutes later he arrived - he'd only dropped just less than 2 minutes!  A quick changeover and Jon was off on his mountain bike. I called Paul (who was still in bed) and told him it was time to get his lazy arse up and ready as I was coming to pick him up.  Paul had suffered some sort of muscle tear and had been limping around like an pathetically injured penguin since yesterday's run which was worrying.  He wasn't even sure if he was going to run so Jon had actually packed his running gear already just in case.   

After a short warm-up (by Paul) and some strong words (by me),  I wouldn't say that Paul was exactly looking fit, but he had decided to run anyway and was now loitering nervously around the changeover area.  

In came Matt (dam no cramp!) to change over with his flouro-pink hatted fast running wife Fiona.. tick tock tick tock tick tock.. 1 minute... 2 minutes... 3 minutes.... there he was!!  A bit of a fumbly changeover of the timing chip, and Paul was away!  This time the runners had to run all the way around to the Wineglass Bay car park, then up and over the saddle to about a third of the way along the beach, back over the saddle again, then back to the finish line at the lodge.   As I mentioned Paul was only a minute ahead of Fiona on Day 1 (and 8 minutes behind his 2011 time), he now needed to chase down 3 minutes and he'd been hobbling around pathetically just moments before he started. Not an impossible task but not likely! 

So while Paul struggled up to the saddle Jon and I collected up our gear and went back to the house to shower and change. We sent mum, Dad and Dani ahead to our secret spectator spot a few minutes from the finish then a little while later we joined them nearby with the kids. The earlier finishers were coming through so it was fun to cheer them on - particularly the individuals who were minutes away from finishing their 8 hour ordeal. 

And there he was - Paul! (and not in the back of a support vehicle either!). He'd managed to overtake Fiona on the way back up to the saddle and came past us a minute ahead - so against all odds we'd snared third place (ages behind DRuMs but also only 6 minutes behind FTT for the day) - Yay!  Apart from being happy about Paul's great finish, I was super glad that my dodgy paddle wasn't responsible for us slipping off the podium - phew. I'm also glad that Jon was able to carry our whole team both days with his consistently speedy cycles!

So after scraping Paul off the beach and back to the house (and a week and a half later he claims he still can't do more than a limpy shuffle), we packed up and went back to the lodge for the presentation ceremony to claim what was ours - namely third place in the completely unpresitgious and obscure Mixed Veteran Category!  

After the results came out a few days later I was also able to see that we were also 40th overall out of 175 teams and individuals which is pretty good, and I'd acheived my overall aim in any race, which is to beat at least 50% of the mostly male (90% at least) paddling field  - I'd managed to be 75th overall so that was ok.

 Part 3 to come.