On the previous Thursday it was hot, on Friday it was warm, on Saturday it was cooler and cloudy and on Saturday night I heard the rain come down. When I awoke on Sunday morning it looked pretty bleak - rain and strong wind.
Triathlons are run rain, hail or shine so early on Sunday morning I gathered my gear put the bike rack on the back of the car attached the bike and with crew in tow (David and Marlene on a visit from Quorn) we headed out to West Lakes.
As we ventured west the weather improved. In fact, the roads were dry half way across the western suburbs of town. But then we hit the beach area. Here there were intermittent showers and the wind was strong and from the south.
The water in West Lakes was pretty choppy - it felt like you were occasionally swim downhill. It was a bit odd and disconcerting. The ride into the wind was pretty bad, down to 22kmph in places but with the breeze I was reaching speeds of 42kmph or more. On the run we headed south first directly into the wind. At first I didn’t think the wind was hampering the run, then I turned to run the northward leg of the first lap. I surged forward, the wind was indeed impeding progress.
All this is long hand to say that in this triathlon I went a bit slower as you can see from results chart below. Click on it for enlargification.
Below are some photos take from the website of the photographer that has been covering the triathlons.
For some reason we had numbers on both shoulders for this triathlon
First lap of the run, a three kilometre loop
The second lap is just one kilometre long
Graham and Terry cross the line arm in arm in the Tinman
The next triathlon will be held on Australia Day. It's the big one in this series. It comprises a 1,000 metre swim, a 32.5km bike ride and an 8km run. Guess who will doing lots of exercise in the coming weeks?
