Xosize Race Report

With my main races (Noosa and Geelong) over it was time to have a little fun, I wanted to do another Tri before the season was over. My first choice was Portarlington but the cost of another weekend away wasn’t in my budget, so I picked the Xosize at Sandringham.

I picked up my race kit yesterday and walked into transition but they had not finished labeling the racks but you could work out that Row 6 is where I should be.

Race day very different to my last 2 races. Previous you had rack your back the day before not this time it was case of lining up,  get my arm numbered then heading into transition. It was a little crazy people everywhere, as I racked my bike I noticed that the rack height was lower than my seat. This meant that I would have to tip my bike to one side to get it out of transition. OK not much I can do about that just deal with it. I setup my transition area and headed out and catch up with Jo Jo and we headed down to the  beach to see what the water was like. Sometime Sandy can be nice and sometimes bad today was flat as.

Ahhh Sandy Flat and fast

Jo Jo and I before race start

We watched the mini race swim start and exits but before too long it was time to change into our wettie’s and get ready to race. I got in the water and did my warm up swim and the water felt nice and warm almost a non-wettie swim. I lined up with everyone else the horn sounded and off we went. The first 80meters or so was the washing machine style start people on people. I tried to find clear water but could not I had to swim over the top of people to find clear water. I pushed on at the first can I finally found clear water and pushed hard to the second can. I could see the swim finish and I push hard to the shore, then followed by the nice little 800m run into transition, to be honest Sandringham should be renamed Swim, Run, Bike, Run. The run for the mini and sprint guys is always longer than the swim it’s self.

Coming out from the swim

Once in transition I got off my wetsuit, on with the helmet and sunglasses grabbed my bike and ran out of transition, one I hit beach road I could not see the mount line and yelled out to a marshal where is the mount line another marshal started to wave his hand on where the line was. I ran over the line hopped on my bike and headed off. I found the course fast and not much wind around. On my second lap I passed another Tri Alliance member,  Sarah,  as I passed I said to her, come here often and she replied keep going. As I headed back to transition approx 500m away from the dismount line I got my feet out of the shoes and rode with them on top. I did the ye-old step off the bike and ran back into transition, re-racked my bike, and put on socks and my runners. Normally I don’t use socks but as they were brand new shoes I felt this was the best way. My legs felt really heavy and sore. My right quad was feeling it and the run was going to hurt. At approx the 2km I had to stop stretch out the quad before continuing. Shortly after Kate, a friend from Couple on the Run run’s group, passed and said hi. At the turn around I grabbed some water to cool me off as well as getting some fluids on board. On the run back to the finish line  my quad felt a long better. I crossed line loads and caught up with Ellie, who came along to support me and the TA Crew who were racing, Kate and others we call compared races stories.

My Time was 1hr 27m and 08s. At first I thought not my best time, but when compared it to my previous race at Sandy I had sliced off over 4mins.

Another successfully race to a great racing session.

Heading out on the run

Race done