Sorry for the Delay, Blame My Bladder

SUP PLAYERS?

I’m back from Canberra… Actually I’ve been back for a while, but a certain ‘infection who won’t be named’ came and ruined my productivity the last few weeks. It was a UTI…There, I named it, are you happy now?... Any-who, moving along, I figured an update on how the last chunk of racing went, five more races, is probably in order. So, let's bloody go! If you want just the race results and don’t care about the ramble, flip to the end for the TLDR Race Summary.

Five More Races

Before the busy SDU weekend came around, I got one more qualifying opportunity, the Coles Summer Super Series. I felt pretty good and crossed the line at 17.26 with a +1.6 wind. While it wasn’t as fast I felt I could achieve, especially with the nice tailwind, but I wasn’t going to argue with another B time.

Okay, now Summer Down Under! It came, it happened and was gone, what else can I say…

Oh, you want details?… look at you pressing for more information today! Three days of racing and three more qualifying opportunities/practice races.

Day One: A slight head wind, which put the damper on things as far as speed went. Unbeknownst to me it was the beginning of a trend for the next few races. (Spoiler Alert: not a great trend.) Got off the line well, just like I had been in training, but for some reason I just couldn’t get the top end speed I was after to go proper zoom. This resulted in a 17.75 time with a -0.6 headwind.
Day Two: I had the wind blowing in the other direction this time, and too hard at that. Quicker race this time, but with a massive +2.6 tailwind the 17.31 should have been closer to 17 flat or even under. Stay tuned to find out my “why he’s not finishing races fast” report below.
Day Three: I went into this race going, okay we’ve had an annoying headwind and an excessive tailwind, so this one should be just right, shouldn’t it? Like a Goldilocks thing? Alas, the wind played another cruel joke on my race, clocking +2.1 just over the legal tailwind allowance of +2.0. Still the race was the fastest of the three days so I was happy to be making progress, but again, with that large tailwind I would have liked to have been quite a bit quicker than the 17.27. For reference, my PB last year was 17.07 with a +1.6 tail wind.

So what’s the deal with the slow(ish) finish?

After analysing my races and comparing them to previous faster events, it became pretty clear that I wasn’t opening up my push early enough and stayed down trying to force out speed for too long. If I had to guess why, it would probably just be getting used to racing people a similar speed again. My previous races earlier in the year were with people in higher classes (more function) who are a lot quicker than me, so after the first 20m I’m pretty much racing by myself. Having someone besides me to race against made me want to race them instead of executing my own race plan. I have to remember to focus on me and not the person next to me… I’m not Usain Bolt.

I’m kinda glad to have made this mistake and caught it now, it’s something I know I can work on and improve for when I line up to race next time.

Last Race of the Season

See? I wasn’t kidding when I said it was comically hard.

Okay, I got a few days to rest and then got one last race and it was a doozy!! The Canberra Track Classic, and, in ‘classic’ Australian athletics season style we couldn’t finish this block of races without rain. And boy did it rain alright!

Thankfully it was a warm day so the rain, while comically hard, was bearable. Fast times were never on the table for this race, but like all races it was another opportunity to practice my race plan and gain more experience in “not so great” conditions. I crossed the line in 18.48 with a -0.6 headwind. The headwind was the least of my problems for once...

Moving on!

Chocolate Binge Day

Easter happened, am I right? Hopefully you had a choc-tastic time. I was lucky enough to spend the weekend down the coast with my family, bright blue skies and warm sunshine meant we spent plenty of time down at the beach and setting up elaborate easter egg hunts for two of my nieces in the backyard, naturally trying to avoid the sun’s chocolate destroying properties. (I have three nieces, but one is still more lump than human). It’s fun being able to pass ‘the hunt’ down to the next generation in the family, I still have fond memories of following string lines in and around trees and up over and under obstacles, eagerly looking for the shiny wrapper of the egg. It was pretty entertaining to watch one niece diligently follow the string and the other have more of a “screw it, Imma do what I want” hunting mentality. Overall I give the long weekend a solid 10/10, which if you add it up is how many eggs I ate… okay maybe it was more like 30. I overindulged geez, get off my back!

So, like, what’s next then?

I got you, boo! Unfortunately, I’ve had to pull out of the National Athletics Championships next weekend because of this pesky UTI. I’m battling like a champ, I promise. It decided it wanted to stick around and developed a resistance to the antibiotic I was taking, so after a long talk with the infection (or a quick trip to the doctors, who knows which), I’m on some new antibiotics which seem to be doing the trick at clearing it up. Basically, there isn’t a lot on for the next month or so, there might be some races in Canberra again in May but they are TBD at this stage. The plan now is to hunker down into a solid block of training (and hopefully work off those Easter eggs). Like I mentioned above, I have some parts of my race technique I need to work on to get to where I want to be, so I’m using this block to improve and become more consistent. August is coming around quickly and I want to do everything I can to be ready for it!

KEEP ON PLAYIN’, PLAYERS!