Report by Lorraine
Seems I am the last to add my report… tut, tut!
My weekend started on Friday morning with a drive down to Busso to watch my first Half Ironman… A leave pass for the whole weekend was too good to pass up!
Even though Rob has given us his report on the Half Ironman, I have to mention what an incredible day I had watching everyone give their all. The weather was perfect and it was a truly inspirational sight to see all the months of training come together for them with such outstanding results!
With only an hour and a half drive to Collie on Sunday morning and a leisurely start time of 11.30ish, it was a very easy start to the day. I arrived at about 10… early enough to get a good park and catch up with the Fleet Elite girls who had also arrived. Upon registering I found that the
women’s race had been changed to only 3 laps (63k)… bugger I thought! I would have preferred the original 4 that had been advertised. The next blow was the marked absence of a coffee van!!!! What the??? The local cafe could only offer me INSTANT coffee… I was NOT that desperate 🙁
The SPR crew had all arrived by about 10.30 including our intrepid triathletes Rob and Paul who had done their little warm up the day before 😉 The only other SPR girl was Nicole, who was doing her first race in open women’s (our events manger was notably absent from the start list… hmmm, hmmm).
The women’s field of 17 finally kicked off about 12pm. Most of the first lap was fairly slow and uneventful with my common sense keeping me near the back of the bunch (at least for the time being). Towards the end of the first lap Sarah Kent (in-between international commitments) and Sarah-Jeanne Fraser kicked hard. I wasn’t going to make the mistake of not chasing on this occasion and took off after them with Bec Halliday closely behind me. Things got a little sticky when the 4 of us became boxed in by the men’s B (?) grade. In the ensuing escape Sarah K got away on her own. I eventually caught up to S-J but by that time neither of us were fresh enough to maintain the gap from the bunch.
The rest of the race was excruciating… No one wanted to do work at the front and the pace slowed to a mind-numbing crawl! Eventually S-J launched another attack and I followed with the 2 South West Cycle club girls managing to catch us. Unfortunately we were again unsuccessful at maintaining the break. With the pace once again at a crawl my common sense buggered off and I found myself up the front! By the time we had the finish in sight there was a big bunch of relatively fresh riders all ready for a sprint finish for 2nd place… great! In the end I timed my break a little too early and ended up in 8th
place. Nicole had a great result for her first open race and placed 6th.
Results
1. Sarah Kent
2. Jo Moore
3. Sarah-Jeanne Fraser
4. Linda Evans
5. Bec Halliday
6. Nicole Sloan
Post race discussions ensued as we refuelled with cans of Coke (the “devil’s bathwater” as one rider referred to it) and a plentiful supply of SPR brownies!
Another successful race… (we all stayed upright!), especially for Ben (3rd in men’s B) and Nicole. Congratulations!
Next up… Dardanup (AKA “Harden-Up”) on Sunday 17th May!