Once the decision was made it was time to put the entry in. At this point I had a choice; I could race in the open category and have the chance to race for prize money. Or I could race as an age grouper and race for the Australian Championship in my age group. At first I entered as open, but after some thinking time I started to doubt my ability to get amongst the money. So after a while I changed my entry to an age grouper. Another factor was that I was really keen to just go and have a relaxed race and maybe have some fun. At the time I didn't want the pressure of trying to race for money. I wanted the freedom that if the race wasn't going great I could just relax and have some fun and not feel bad. After Worlds I just wanted a race with nothing riding on it. Racing for the Australian Championship never really factored into my decision, it wasn't really a goal. In fact at that time I had barely registered that the race was the Australian Championship.
After the entry was put in, I only had about four weeks or so to get ready. I was still pretty fit from my Worlds prep and so four weeks was just the right amount of time to put on a bit of a polish and get ready.
The time for leaving came around and so I was on an earlyish flight down to Adelaide on the Saturday before the race. I wouldn't usually plan to arrive in town the day before a race, but annual leave from work considerations made me risk it. It certainly wasn't perfect, but this time around it worked okay.
The current version of the Murrayman is held in the small town of Barmera, which is around three hours or so drive from Adelaide. Car is the only way to get there, so once I was in Adelaide I jumped straight into my hire car and took a fairly relaxing drive through rural South Australia. The riverlands of South Australia was an area that I had never spent much time and so I really enjoyed the drive, just taking my time and relaxing.
I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I was surprised how arid the area around Barmera was. Not desert or anything, but certainly not lush and green. Just pretty standard bush with a mix of salt lake and vineyard thrown in.
There were a few of us heading down to the race from Darwin, and leading in most of our discussions had been around cold weather tactics, should we ride in a jersey etc. However, as we got to the final week before the race, it looked more and more likely that it was going to be unseasonably hot. In fact the closer we got the more it looked like the forecast was going to be for 40 degrees. As I was to Barmera this forecast was looking more and more likely.
Three hours of driving later and I was in Barmera. Barmera turned out to be a tiny little town not far from the Murray River. Since I was too early to check into my accommodation I decided I might as well put my bike together and have a ride on the bike course.
So the course:
The distances for the Murrayman are a 2km swim, 80km bike and a 20km run.
The swim takes place on a roughly square course in Lake Bonney (great name). The course is about 1km around and so, you guessed it, you do two laps. The water is pretty cold and so the swim was wetsuit legal and usually is.
Out of the swim it is a very short run up the beach into transition, out the end and then straight on to the bike. All the transitions are pretty short.
The bike leg is four laps of a 20km loop. The ride goes about halfway around the lake and then comes back. It is pretty flat, with a slight rise about 7kms or so into the lap which seems to get steeper the more laps you do. The road surface is fairly standard for a rural road, so not great, but not all that bad. There were certainly a number of punctures on the day though. There is one aid station on the bike loop, near the start, you pass it four times. Given there are 4 laps, there are effectively 4 aid stations on the course. It is a fast bike course. It is also pretty open, so if it is say, 40 degrees, it gets hot.
The run leg is another four lap affair. With the laps being approximately 5kms long. I say approximately because laps 1 and 2 are a little bit longer. It all works out though. Just make sure you listen during the briefing so you know where to turn on laps 3 and 4. More than one person ran long on the day. There are three aid stations on the lap, they work out to be about 1.5km apart or so. The run is an interesting course with you passing through a mix of suburban Barmera, down some semi rural back roads and along the Lake Bonney foreshore. Like the ride it is pretty flat. Also like the ride it is quite open.
My recce ride of the bike course revealed some of these details to me. It also showed me that it was likely to be windy on race day, with a head wind on the way out and a tail wind on the way back to transition. All this was mentally filed away and then I headed off to check into my accommodation.
I hadn't been able to get accommodation in Barmera and so I had opted to stay in Berri, which was a 15 minute drive away. I had managed to book a cabin in the Berri Caravan park, which was a pretty little spot located on the Murray River. I checked in, unpacked, prepared all my race kit and then went and had a nap.
My activities for the afternoon included tracking down some food, registering and then going to the briefing. Being a small and pretty low key race, bike drop off etc wasn't until race morning. The race start time was suitably late to make doing so straight forward. Very relaxing.
I was just looking at the briefing for next year and if you are doing the race in 2014, it appears this has now changed, with bike drop off the day before. Oh well, no big deal.
All registered, I packed my gear for the morning. Ate my body weight in pasta and then headed to bed for an early night.
I woke up nice and early the next morning after a pretty decent night's sleep, giving myself plenty of time to get ready and then drive down to Barmera and check in. Bike racking etc went smoothly and so did transition set up. My set up was pretty standard, with the shoes on the bike etc. Something to be aware of though is that the transition area at Barmera is on grass. If you plan on running to the mount line in your socks, then you will be running on grass. I heard a couple of stories of people who picked up grass seeds in their socks as they ran to the mount line. Something to be aware of.
The organisers had said that they were considering various hot weather contingency plans, including, if necessary, shortening the race. Most of the competitors begged them not to shorten it and in the end they opted to instead have a couple tonnes of ice available and to start the race slightly earlier. Once these details were confirmed it was time to get ready.
Given the forecast, a large part of getting ready was covering myself in sunscreen. Once that was done I prepared my wetsuit and then settled in the shade to wait until go time.
Go time came around fairly quickly and so it was time to shimmy into the wetsuit and head to the start line. Since the field is pretty small at Barmera the start is one single wave. The open field starts slightly ahead of the rest of the field, effectively getting a head start.
Despite the heat, the lake was still pretty chilly which was a bit of a shock. I had a good little warm up and then started the nervous wait for the gun.
Once the gun went I got out pretty cleanly and quickly caught the back of the open field. The wind that had been forecast had indeed turned up and so the lake was surprisingly choppy. We worked into the chop up to the first turn, then across it in the middle of the lap and then with it after the second turn. After the second turn I found a pair of toes that was travelling at about my speed, so I sat on them for the rest of the lap. Swimming is one of my stronger legs and from what I have seen stronger swimmers are less affected by difficult conditions. Given this, my plan was to put a bit more effort in on the second lap, particularly into and across the chop, to see if I could open up a bit of space over some of the weaker swimmers. To this end I passed the pair of toes I was on at the start of lap 2 and worked for the rest of the lap. I got pretty clear, but couldn't shake Stephan Vander Bruggen, who got a ride on my toes back to the beach. I didn't know for sure where I was in the field, but I knew I was fairly high up. I was to find out later that I was third out of the water.
From the water it was a very quick trip through transition and then on to the bike.
Stephan got out of transition slightly in front of me; however, I passed him very early on the first lap of the bike. For me the first lap of the bike leg was all about feeling it out. I knew the wind would be a factor, but I didn't know how much. I didn't want to burn a lot of energy fighting the wind, so I took the first outward leg pretty conservatively. I knew Stephan was pretty strong as well, so was expecting him to come past at some point. On that first lap I also saw my first puncture victim. I was now second overall.
The return leg of that first lap showed me just what part the wind was going to play. It was strong enough to be a pain on the way out without making it a total slog. However, on the way home you flew along. All up it was still looking like being a fast bike leg.
After that first lap I settled into the rhythm or riding. And passing people. Being a lapped course, the whole field ends up on the same 20km of road at one point or another. By the second lap riding became a process of constantly passing people. This was made nice and easy by the fact that the race organisers (Adelaide Tri Club) get the roads closed, which works great.
The 2nd lap of the bike felt pretty good, but by the third I was starting to feel it. Sometime before then I had lost Stephan, but on the return of the third lap Kevin Fergusson came flying past. I was now third.
By the third lap I was also becoming aware of the heat. It wasn't affecting me, but it was making me a little uncomfortable. Over the course of the ride leg I went through nearly 4 litres of fluid and I still felt like I could have had more.
I toned it down a little bit on the fourth and last lap, just to make sure I would get to the end of the ride with some fuel in the tank. I was feeling like I had overdone it a bit, so was interested to see what the run was going to be like.
Coming into transition, I heard the race commentator confirm that I was currently in third. I also heard that Xavier Coppock (the winner from the year before) wasn't far behind. I knew he was a quick runner and so expected to see him pretty shortly.
Out on to the run and I was surprised at how good I felt. My aim for the run was to just run relaxed and enjoy myself, which, I was surprised to find, I was.
The best way I can describe the run leg of the Murrayman is cute. You start the run heading past some parks, then past the bowls club and then past some houses. After the houses you run down a short dirt road and then you are on the foreshore of Lake Bonney. You follow the foreshore all the way back to the start of the next lap. It is like a quick tour of Barmera. It was great to see the number of locals out in the front yards, spectating and cheering. A few even offered sprays from their hoses which I was quick to accept.
By the run leg it was properly hot (official figure was 38 degrees), but I never really felt it. Every chance I got I was making sure I was throwing water over myself and taking ice. In fact the hottest I felt all day was on the bike. I have had trouble in hot conditions before (collapsing on the line in Singapore) so I was pleased to see the precautions I was taking seemed to work.
Not far into the third lap I was finally passed by Xavier Coppock. We chatted for a while, but I wasn't going to try and stick with him, rather staying with my running comfortable mantra. He did pull away, but to my surprise he didn't leave me behind. Rather I was always within 50m or so of him.
Coming into the final lap of the run, I noticed that Xavier had a pretty long stop at one of the aid stations and I wondered if he was perhaps feeling the conditions. That allowed me to close the gap on him a fair bit, but not catch him entirely. The same thing happened at the last aid station in the race. This time we left the aid station more or less together, with only a couple of kms to go to the finish. I had slowed down a bit in the 2nd half of the run, but was still feeling pretty okay. Good enough that with 1km to go I mustered up a bit of sprint. I managed to get past Xavier and hold my pace for the line. I was running scared the whole way to the line, waiting for Xavier to come past, not daring to look behind. In the end Xavier really was feeling it that day, so I managed to hold him off, coming across the line third overall.
Getting across the line was a great feeling, particularly on such a tough day. I was very happy with just finishing let alone being in the top three overall. It was also a massive relief to have put together a good race after the disappointment of the World Champs. I have seen a few athletes who have had a bad race and never seem to recover from it, simply having bad race after bad race. Going into Murrayman I was really concerned that it might happen to me. Murrayman was instead a huge confidence boost for me. The fact that I had also won an Australian Age Group Championship didn't sink in until much later (the drive back to Adelaide the next day to be exact).
For me Murrayman was full of firsts, it was one of the first races I had done where almost everything went to plan. It showed me just what a race could be like with the proper preparation and attitude. This was the first race where I tried to 'run relaxed' something I tell myself constantly now. This was the first race where I forced myself to take a deep breath and smile on the start line, something I do every race now to remind myself that in the end, this is just a race. It was a race where I learnt a lot.
I also really enjoyed the Murrayman, everything I had read about the race beforehand turned out to be true. It is run by a great bunch of volunteers, who have a really wonderful attitude and do an amazing job putting the race together. If you didn't know that it was organised by volunteers from a tri club you would never know it. The organisational side of it was a match for many of the 'big' races I have done.
Unfortunately Murrayman clashes with the Mandurah 70.3 this year, so I won't be returning in 2013. It is a pity because it is a great race. If I didn't have that clash I would be there in a minute. Hopefully the 2013 version is just as good as the 2012 edition. Given the people involved, I am pretty sure it will be.
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