CCTS Dirty Tri Race 4 – Race Report

On my Race Bucket List has been a X-Tri. X-Tri is basically a Cross Country Triathlon instead of swimming in the bay you swim in a lake or river, instead of using a TT or Road Bike you use a Mountain Bike and then the run is a true trail run.

Over the last few weeks I’ve dragged out my MTB (Mountain Bike) at Saturday morning training. This has been given a few strange looks, but when you say you’re doing a Dirty Tri you get even more strange looks.

On Friday we had a social Easter Ride and over breakfast the subject of the Dirty Tri came up and Coach Sarah loved the idea and I think she might even do the final race of the their series.

This morning we headed up to Lysterfield Lake, home of the Commonwealth Games in 2006 for MTB. We parked and headed down to the lake and found the CCTS organizer, Jess, registered read the maps, etc. The first bit of fun was the swim buoys, these where blown up and yes we found Nemo!

Nemo!

We grabbed all the stuff from the car and setup transition, while the water felt warm the wind was not. It was a clear cold night and the air temp was around 10c with the sun coming up. There was 2 races the Sprint (500m/12k/4k) and the Mini (250m/6km/2km ) the field was a total of 15 people. With the coolish weather I made the call to wear my long sleeve compression top under my Trisuit. Not sure if this was the right call or not, but it felt right. Most of the people in the sprint went with the wetsuit option (me included). I jumped into the lake yes it was warm but was brown as you could not see the anything passed you hand.

Wetsuit time

We lined up on the beach waited for start and off we went. Into the brown water and out to catch the first Nemo (Buoy) I felt good and headed up to the second Nemo and headed back in. I noticed that the water was very different lack of salt and didn’t feel like a pool.  Once I hit the beach a quick 50m or so run into transition, on with the helmet off with the wettie. Putting on gloves with wet hands is never fun but I got them on grabbed my bike and off I went. Out into the trails. I felt ok on the bike but makes me realize I need more time on the MTB, I followed the trail markings and thought the mud around the trails.



Trying to get the gloves on



Heading out on the bike



Once I got back to transition I re-racked my bike on with my socks and shoes and out on the run, 2 laps, out on the beach to the dam wall, across the dam down the trail behind the dam and up to the MTB trail to the top of the car park and back down to the boat ramp.

Heading out on the run

 If I had my time over again I think I would not have used the compression top, but arm warmers. My time over all was 1hr 41m 37s

Must say I don’t feel as sore as I normally do after a tradition Tri.