This was my third attempt at the Lake Wanaka Half (the half-distance of Challenge Wanaka) and the conditions could not have been any better, but I was worried about a foot injury I'd sustained a couple of weeks before race day.
This was my third attempt at this race and the conditions could not have been any better, but I was worried about a foot injury I'd sustained a couple of weeks before race day. I wrote a fairly miserable entry about that prior to the race; I genuinely felt that I would either have to pull out on the run (or even the bike), or make the injury so much worse I'd need several weeks at least to let it recover.
My mood improved a lot when we arrived in Wanaka a few days before the race. There's something really uplifting about being in such a beautiful location even without the buzz of the event buildup. The weather was nice and the lake was warm (by Wanaka standards) and I was getting excited to get out on the course.
 The sunrise in Wanaka on the Friday before the race(Click to enlarge) |
I've done the registration and bike check enough times to know what's involved, and to know how best to do it: turn up early. I was in the bike shop at about 9:10am on Friday morning and was leaving with stickers attached by 9:15. Then it was off to the race marquee to register, which also only took a few minutes. I also made sure I signed the flag that was to be auctioned for Cystic Fibrosis NZ during the awards brunch.
During the afternoon I went for an easy 45 minute ride around parts of the course: out to the Albert Town bridge, then back into town along Riverbank Rd, and a short out & back towards Glendhu Bay - only a couple of km to make up the time. All seemed good so I went back to the motel, then went out again to have a swim around the course and check out the sighting lines.
Later that evening we went to the pasta party. This is always worth going to, to see the race organisers and some of the pro athletes speak. The food was good but not anything to rave about, I actually found it hard to get through my plate as it seemed a bit fattier than my normal diet. While walking back to our motel (all of 10 minutes away) I noticed my foot was hurting again, which put me into a pretty sour mood as I started to worry about the race again.
Saturday was pretty low-key; my only scheduled exercise was another easy ride but I decided the foot didn't need the risk. Instead I took the bike down to the closed-off road in front of the park and got my wife to hold a full drink bottle so I could practice picking it up without slowing down, using my left hand. I'd had trouble with that last year and really wanted to get it sorted. We hadn't been able to do this earlier so we squeezed it in the day before the race. Not ideal but at least we did it. After that I had another swim in the lake, this time just getting in without the wetsuit and swimming about close to the shore. In that lake I like to get in a few times without the wetsuit just to test my cold-water adaptation. This year was good as the lake was 17°C, much better than previous years (15° in 2013 and 14° last year).
 I took this the morning after the race; yes the water was this calm on race day!(Click to enlarge) |
I slept surprisingly well that night but the race-morning nerves were well and truly present. I struggled to eat a couple of bits of toast and just followed my race-morning checklist. Making a checklist beforehand makes the morning so much easier as the nerves make it very easy to forget things.
Before race day I'd timed a walk from our motel to the swim start, I think it was about 12 minutes so I'd rounded it up to 15, allowed some time for a pit stop and getting the wetsuit on, and with the race starting at 8:15 had timed everything to be in the water at 8:00. This turned out to work very well - for once there were no queues at the portaloos and I got into the water maybe a couple of minutes after 8. I had an easy warmup then moved out to the start line and just took in the scenery while I waited.
I positioned myself a little back from the start line, realising that waiting too far back means I'd just have to swim further - if I want to let others go ahead I can just tread water for a bit longer! But instead I just started swimming and pretty much kept out of trouble.
I still need to work on my sighting in that lake: just like last year I'd sighted on a landscape feature but as I moved along the course I think it all changes relative to the marker so I ended up a bit off course. I'm not sure how far off I was - my distance perception isn't that accurate - but it was probably somewhere between 50 to 100 metres. Rather than freaking out I just sighted the buoy and made a straight line for it.
I was wanting to get under 40 mins for the swim (last year I'd done 40:55) and thought at that stage I'd blew it, but I've just done a calculation. The first leg of the swim course is about 800m so assuming I was 100m off course at the halfway point, and I swum in a straight line (which I believe I did), being off-course cost me about 25m which is around 30 seconds at my pace. Something I can do without, but not the end of the world.
As usual the last leg was swimming directly into the sun so I couldn't see anything. Shopping list for next year: polarised goggles. I think I said that after last years race...
When I came out of the water I heard the announcer saying something about 32 minutes but I assumed he meant 42 as there was no way I'd have done that course in 32 mins. He may have been talking about another athlete as my actual swim time was 37:36 which I'm quite pleased with (under 2:00/100m which is good for me, especially after going off course).
A few weeks ago I'd discovered a good trick to help get my wetsuit off: the legs on my suit are cut quite high, about halfway up my shins, so I just pull the ends down to my ankles. This helps to loosen them, which then makes it a lot easier to get the suit off. I also had a hand towel in my T1 bag, which I used to dry off my head, arms and legs just so I wouldn't get too cold at the start of the ride. Overall my T1 was a touch slow but uneventful.
Last year on the bike I'd had some troubles with aggressive team riders on that first section, but this time around there were no problems. I rode a bit more confidently this year, making sure I held my speed off the hills as much as I could and just trying to put in a good even effort. For some reason the roads felt very smooth this year... maybe that says something about the state of the roads I train on as I'm used to the roads around Wanaka feeling very rough, especially between Hawea and Luggate.
At about 70 to 75km I fell apart. It happened on the big climb just before the airport, I just had no energy. The problem was caused by me not following my nutrition plan - probably the one thing I hadn't practiced in training. I stuffed some food in and gritted my teeth, but I wasn't too concerned given my expectations of the run. But I was certainly looking forward to getting onto Cardrona Rd as that's nearly all downhill.
T2 was also uneventful, not too quick as I wasn't running very fast, especially in bike shoes, but I got out onto the run course in pretty good order. A bunch of guys were passing me on the way out along Ardmore St so I thought I must have been running very slowly (I was taking it quite easy anyway) but I looked at my watch and found I was going at 5:20/km which was my target pace anyway. I figured if I could hold that pace I'd have a pretty good run, but that all depended on the foot.
The trouble is, the nutritional issue on the bike came back to bite me again a few km into the run and I just had to slog my way through. I wasn't really interested in solid food so I just gradually worked my way through the gels I had in my race belt and made sure I got plenty of fluids in at each aid station. In hindsight I probably should have taken some extra nutrition at the aid stations.
I had the usual ups and downs, it was strange feeling comfortable and confident with a few km to go, then a few minutes later thinking I wasn't far off collapsing and might not make it! But I kept my cool, fought my way through all the issues and managed to finish in 6:03:59, a few minutes slower than last year but my foot had behaved itself. A 2:20 run split wasn't so great, I should easily be able to go under 2hrs on that course.
I spent a little while in the recovery tent just because they had free Subway and as much Nuun as you can drink. My hydration on the course had been perfect as I hadn't lost any weight at the post-race weigh-in. After that I headed straight for the lake and had a nice refreshing dip, then wandered back to the motel.
The next day I went for a sunrise walk along the lake; my left achilles was quite sore (it had hurt a little during the run but nothing too bad) and I wanted to try and get the blood moving. It took quite a while to warm it up but felt pretty good eventually. After that we had the awards brunch which is always worth going to. I hopped on the bike for a nice easy active recovery ride followed with another nice little swim in the lake (I even saw a couple of fish). I'm a big believer in active recovery but this is the first time I've gone so far as to have a ride the day after the race. It felt very good and the ride really helped to loosen my quads.
The day after that we came home through all the wonderful scenery of the Lindis Pass and MacKenzie country. I almost applied percussive maintenance to our rental vehicle as its sound system was not playing well with my wife's iPhone nor my iPod, even though it had worked flawlessly on the way down. I also had a little paddle in Lakes Pukaki and Tekapo, which were both warmer than I expected, probably not too far off Lake Wanaka temperature-wise.
 Merino sheep on Lindis Pass(Click to enlarge) |
Now that I've finished cleaning all the stuff that needs it, and reassembled the bike, I'm going to sit down at some stage and write out some basic principles to follow in training after yet another difficult buildup. Numbers one through three are going to be technique, technique and technique. There will be something about not pushing your luck, and something about practicing everything, especially nutrition.
I'm also trying to decide on next year - it's the 10th anniversary of Challenge Wanaka and I'm very tempted to pull the trigger and go long. But we'll see how my off-season goes, to see if I can put the injuries behind me and get my running up to scratch (I think I was trying that last year too).
