Challenge Gold Coast was a new half ironman event for 2014. From
the outset it was being sold as a tough day out. The toughest half ironman bike
course in Australia was the talk. On paper, for someone like me who likes the
bike, it sounded perfect. A good way to get into the 2014/2015 season. Entry
made, I headed over on my Birthday in August to race.
The race is based in Currumbin which is at the southern end
of the long strip of humanity called the Gold Coast. The race is centred on
Currumbin Creek, with the swim taking place there and transition being located
right next to it. The various legs look a bit like this.
As you can see the swim takes place in Currumbin Creek. The
bike leg heads out into the hills behind the Gold Coast and the run is two
laps of the area around Currumbin Creek and the coast. One thing I will say
about this course is it very pretty.
There isn’t a lot to say about the swim leg. As you can see
from the map, it is sort of a banana shape, and it feels it while you are
swimming, with quite a bit of sighting required. It doesn’t feel like you swim
many straight lines. However, due to the massive buoys they use, sighting the
course wasn’t really a problem. Since you are in a creek, the water depth
varies a bit, but it was never particularly shallow. There also must be some
flow (it is a creek and is visibility flowing downstream), but I was
never really aware of it. I am not sure if the creek is always like that, or
just what we had on race day, but there you go. Since the race is quite close
to the mouth of Currumbin Creek the water is brackish. On our race morning the
water surface temp was supposedly 16 degrees (it wasn’t, my guess would be more
like 19), but either way, it was certainly a wetsuit swim.
One thing I will add about the swim leg is that if at the
start you enter the water on the boat ramp, don’t step off the right side of
the boat ramp (upstream). As it turns out that area is full of rather pointy rocks,
which I found out about the hard way. Left of the boat ramp is sand and you
should be fine.
The bike leg of this course is where all the excitement is.
One lap of 90km, which in itself is already unusual. Two aid stations, just so
you know. The whole course is rolling hills. There is very little actual flat
ground. For the most part, not big hills though, true rolling hills. Not just
hilly, but winding as well. The full course is probably not one for a disc
wheel.
As you can see from the map, the ride is made up of riding
up and down Currumbin Valley, then jumping over to Tallebudgera Valley and then riding
up and down that, then back into the Gold Coast. The road winds all the whole way in those valleys. Whilst the valleys are interesting, it is the bit
in between where the real fun is. Tallebudgera Connection Road is where the
hill they call the beast is. 18% for 150m. Now leading into this the organisers
were making a big deal about this hill. There was going to be a king of the
mountain section for it, a red carpet for walking etc. Yeah right I thought,
how bad can this hill really be? Well darn, bad. It really is 18%. If you are
having trouble picturing that, think of a cliff, with a road up it.
Also the road surface isn’t stellar. Some of it is quite
lovely (the bits in town), but once you get into the valley it becomes fairly
coarse Bitumen. Not a big deal, everybody else is on the same road, but something
to be aware of.
Now as I will get to a bit more later, we didn’t ride the
whole course. Only the Currumbin Valley bit, which is why I can’t tell you what
the total elevation gain for the ride is, or what going up (and down) the Beast
is really like. However, we did drive the whole thing, so what I have said
about the course above is based on that.
I can talk about Currumbin Valley though and that bit was
quite a lot of fun. I really was surprised just how fast that part of the
course was. You don’t realise as you ride into Currumbin Valley, but you are
gradually heading uphill the whole way. You are constantly going up and down
rolling hills, but the general gist of the road is very so slightly upwards. So
the trip back down the valley is very quick and lots of fun. Whilst the course winds
around, it can hold a fair bit of speed as I found out watching the locals. I
was amazed at the speeds we were doing on our way back down through the valley.
The run leg is scenic and interesting and just a little bit
frustrating. If from the map it looks like you are running up here, down there,
over and all about, it is because you kind of are. It all makes sense when you
do it, but you really do run under this bridge, over to that road, across that
carpark, onto another path, under than bridge etc etc. There is a bit of mixed
surface running too, with a small section even being offroad. There were supposed
to be 5 aid stations per lap, but in reality, on race day, several of them
where double sided, so there where at least 6 per lap. The course is mostly
flat, with one decent hill about 3.8km into the lap and again on the way back
at about the 8.7km mark (on both laps). Total elevation gain over the run is
91m. The frustrating bit of the course comes because some areas of the path are
just a bit narrow, some areas really too narrow for two people abreast. It
became an issue when the course got more congested. It manifested in a
couple of aggro outbreaks that I saw on course, particularly on the second lap.
I also feel that the narrow course forces you a bit close to the traffic on the
aforementioned hill.
Other than that, it is a very pretty run course, following
either Currumbin Creek or the beach. If you are having a bad day on the run
like I had then you at least have some impressive surf to watch. Oh yeah, on my
race day only one aid station had coke. I knew that beforehand,
so was able to build it into my day, but if you regularly use coke on the run,
then it is worth being aware of.
So that is the course. As I mentioned above though, the only
problem with the course I have described is that in 2014, we didn’t do it. Well
not all of it anyway. Due to bad weather in the days prior to the race, the
bike leg was changed to 40km, which is basically a single lap of Currumbin
Valley.
So how was my day? As you have probably gathered by now, it
wasn’t great.
I arrived at the Gold Coast on the Thursday afternoon before the race. As I got there it had just started to rain. The forecast for
the next few days was more rain and it wasn’t wrong. Over the next couple of
days it varied between raining a bit and raining a lot but definitely raining. It made getting out for
some training a bit hard, it made the transition area (which was a big oval)
start looking a little soggy in places, and it made the roads wet.
The wet roads led the organisers to make the call the night
before the race of shortening the bike course. In my opinion it was totally the
right call. Having seen ‘The Beast’ I still don’t know how we would have safely
got down that hill on wet roads, with wet carbon wheels. Making us ride the
full course would have been knowingly putting people in harm’s way. I
understand that the organisers can’t do that. As it was there were a number of
crashes on the shortened course anyway.
Changing the course instantly changed the dynamic of the
race. It went from being about the ride to being about the run. The race would be
about holding onto the fast guys on the bike and then running well. Unfortunately heading
into the race my running just hadn’t been going well. It had been going okay,
but just not well. A few injuries and niggles meant that my running prep had
been a little interrupted and running was still painful. I hadn’t been stopped
from running, but the quality of my training had suffered I think. I wasn’t thinking
any of this before the race, but it is something that I have thought about a
fair bit in the post-race wash up.
All that was ahead of me though as I moved to the start
line.
After setting up transition in the driving rain (questioning our sanity), the clouds finally parted and the rain stopped as we made our way to the start line. We weren’t
to know it at the time but the day was on track to be quite lovely with blue
skies and fluffy clouds. Still the roads were wet and so was the oval that
transition was in.
The start of the swim took place in about waist deep water
facing downstream in Currumbin Creek. My wave was a big one, having all the men
from 18-39. The change in the bike course had led them to compress the starting
waves a bit so as a result we were going off only a minute behind the pro
women. We all gathered on the line, edged our way forward as usual, jostled for position
and then finally the horn sounded and we were away.
Straight away the start was a rough one. I probably got more
jostled on this start line that I have in a race before. It was also very
intense. Usually in a swim start it is a bit frantic for 200m or so and then
the pace dies away. But on this swim that fade away just didn’t seem to happen.
Certainly a few swimmers fell away, but there was still large group going
strong when we hit the first can.
Finally after the first turn I came around a swimmer and
found that I was in relatively clear water. However, I was only at the front of
the second group, with another pack of unknown size further up the course. I
continued in this fashion for most of the swim. About three quarters of the way
through the swim we started hitting the pro women and it all became a bit
congested again. This meant the finish was only a little less frantic than the
start. Eventually though I came around the last can and was up the ramp and out
of the water. Swim time around 22 minutes. Looking at the times of the field,
all the swim times were super-fast. I am not entirely sure why. There may have
been a bit of flow on the course, but you swim both up and down stream, so any
flow should have been neutralised. If I had to guess I would say the course was
a little short, but I don’t really know. Perhaps everyone just swam really
really fast.
Due to timing irregularities in the results I still don’t
know where I was sitting in the field at the end of the swim, but my guess is
that I was in the top 5 of my age group.
Through a longish transition and it was onto the bike. The
bike had been feeling really good in training and once I was on the bike that
is exactly how it felt in the race. I had a bit of bike traffic to get through at the start of
the course, but by about the 3km mark I had clear road in front of me. Whilst
it wasn’t raining, the roads were wet, so my intention was to make sure I was
taking it easy where I had to. I didn’t want to end up in a ditch.
The bike was ticking along nicely, when at about the 6 or
7km mark a couple of bikes came past. They were moving well, but not too much
quicker than me, particularly up hill. The main thing they were doing was
pushing the limits a bit more on the downhills. Since they weren’t moving much
faster than me I was able jump in behind them (at 7m of course – which was the
legal draft distance for this race) and use them to help me push my pace. And
push it they did. Whilst my intention had been to treat the wet roads with
care, I soon found myself attacking the course at speeds definitely outside my
comfort zone. It worked though and I found that we reached the turnaround point
in good time. Once we turned on the bike though, that is when the fun really
started. On the way back we were simply flying, regularly sitting between 45
and 50km/h. I was amazed at just how much speed we could hold into the corners
on these wet roads. There were a couple of corners that needed a bit of
respect, but on the whole the road took what we threw at it. I was hitting some
corners wondering if this was the one where I was going to come off, but to my
great relief it didn’t happen. In this fashion I got to the end of the bike feeling
pretty good. The bike had taken me about an hour, I was very happy with how it
had gone and felt like I was probably positioned fairly well.
Like after the swim I am not really sure where I was sitting
at the end of the bike. But I think it was probably about 4th in the
age group.
Back through transition, which was starting to take on a decidedly
muddy appearance, and it was out onto the run.
Straight away the run felt like it was lacking something. I
wasn’t feeling that bad, it just didn’t any spark. I wasn’t fighting to hold
back the pace like you usually do after the ride. Instead after the first
kilometre I was surprised to see how slow it had been and knew I had to pick it
up. For the next few kms I managed to move a bit quicker. Not as fast as I knew
I needed to be running, but at least a bit more respectable. At about the 5km
mark though I started to fall into a bit of a hole. The pace dropped a bit and
then a bit more. By around the 8km mark my body took the executive action of
slowing down. And slowing down. For the next 10km I was shuffling and losing
places at an amazing rate. At the end of the first lap I put racing for a
position out of my mind and just resolved to complete the race. I shuffled my
way out to the far turn around one more time and then headed home. To my
surprise I started feeling better in the last few kms. Not great, but the pace
improved a bit.
I got to the finish very glad to be finished. The run took
me about 1 hour 36, which is the slowest run leg I have had for a long time. My
total time was just over 3 hours, which doesn’t really mean a lot; it was good
enough to get me equal 12th in the age group.
What went wrong? As I have said above, I am still not
entirely sure. My running in training had not been going well, but it had gone
better than I experienced on race day. I don’t think I was mentally disengaged
from the race, I hadn’t gone in feeling like it was going to go badly, as I
have said, up until the end of the bike I was feeling really good. Did I over
do the bike? I don’t think so, I felt good the whole way, I didn’t feel like I
was tapping the red line too much. It is a bit of a hard one to pace, how do
you sprint 40km on the bike and then run 21? But my feeling is that bike pacing
wasn’t the issue. My family started displaying cold symptoms while I was away and
I got sick in the week immediately afterwards, was I carrying something on race
day? Not sure, I felt fine at the time. Did I just have a bad day? As they say,
they do happen. I usually run on coke which they didn’t have, when I got some I
felt good immediately afterwards (the last 3kms). Could it make that much
difference? I am not sure.
Lots of maybes there and lots of lessons or at least partial
lessons. Whether all of the above is responsible, or none of it, they are all
things that I could have done differently or better. So they are all areas to
improve in.
So, my day wasn’t a great one. In hindsight I enjoyed
myself, but left feeling flat. The result was not the one I had been training
myself into the ground for.
Overall though I think the event was a good one. As I have
mentioned there were a few niggles, particularly on the run course, but nothing
that is major or isn’t fixable. I think if you include the entire ride it is a
very scenic course and certainly a tough one. I would definitely consider doing
it again if I had an empty slot in my calendar.
This was my first Challenge event and I have to say I liked
it. Overall the event was just a bit more low key than Ironman. A bit less in
your face. Still well run though. The aid stations on the run could have been a
little bit better in execution, at one I just missed out on everything. But
mostly it was well run, particularly in such difficult circumstances. As I have
said above, I think you have to take your hat off to the organisers for
shortening the bike course. I feel they did what was necessary, but not all race
organisers would have made that tough call. Not bad value for money either. If
you rate your races by what you get in your competitor pack then I have to say
Challenge delivers with all manner of branded goodies for you. Plus about the
biggest finishers medal I have ever seen.
So not my best day, but one to chalk down to learning. Even
though my day wasn’t great, I still wouldn’t have got there at all if it wasn’t
for Coach Daryl Stanley, so a big thanks to him. Big thanks also to the guys at
Break Your Limits for being a club full of great people, Paul at SwimSmooth for
helping me track down a wetsuit at short notice and the guys at Churchill
cycles for making sure my wheels go round. Finally the biggest thanks goes to
my wife and family for putting up with the training and the travel and me just
being generally absent more than I should be. Without their patience there
would be no races, even bad ones.
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