City of Perth aka "THE MELTDOWN"

“City of Perth: Cyclones & Bloody Heat”

   Sunday was an epic day to put simply, it meant so much and so little at the same time. This would be my first Olympic Distance race since August when I had a stupendous swim, solid bike and a great run, today’s race was slightly different in several ways. My conflicts began pretty early on when I could tell the Tylenol sleeping pill was still holding its effects on me and I felt as if I were in some dream world while warming up with my mates. All the heavy hitters were in attendance, Macka, Jimmy, Sean O’Neil, Ryan Baugh, Jason Nuttman, Brynt, and a relay team of Matt Illingworth and Cody, so I knew that the race would be up to the caliber as it was at the Western Australia sprint championships. Now the funny thing is that I had no clue that this was the Western Australian Olympic distance championships until I received a text message from Ryan Baugh after the race.



   The good news for me was that I actually won my first age group award while in Australia shockingly to me, especially after I got hammered at the sprint championships. As it lay out at the finish I was 3rd in my AG, missed 2nd by a mere 1 second and was off of 1st place by 1minute exactly. This is a huge confidence boost for me, because I can firmly say that if my T1 and T2 difficulties would have been avoided, I would be neck and neck with 1st in my AG. Now I include my recap of the overall race experience as well as the many conflicts I faced in transition from the officials.

    Starting off at 8am were the elites, wait, its 8:06am and they are still talking to all of us about the race course changes and etc. The longer we get behind, the hotter it is going to get as it is going to be a scorcher at 38-39 degrees (100-101 for you Americans). The course has about 10% of shade otherwise it is completely exposed to the sun and its brutal effects on the body. Finally in the water around 8:15am, about the time I am supposed to start, and then I make my way to the start buoys. People begin to sneak in front of me just before the gun goes off and its chaos. Kicking, pushing, bodies on bodies and as usual, I resort to just falling behind instead of fighting my way through. Falling behind a couple guys for the 1st half of the race, I am thinking to myself, “you aren’t even swimming hard, this may qualify as going through the motions at BEST”. I could tell that I needed some body glide in a bad way as the salt combined with the rubbing of my tri top ended badly. Finishing up the swim at the very end I have one person from the wave behind me blow past me, the last thing I wanted to see.



    Out of the water, running to T1, I have my gear ready to rock, and hopefully rock out my best bike portion yet. This week I put in over 400k on the bike, as I have recently moved to the other side of town and ride to work everyday. My legs were not super fresh, especially Friday and Saturday but I just had to get over it. While I nearly doubled my highest bike mileage ever, this also gave me more confidence with the time on the bike. Back to the race; I have the fastest T1 ever it seems and I am essentially out of transition when I hear people yelling at me. Official -“You need your bib number, your race belt”, Me – “no I don’t, that’s for the run, why is my body marked with numbers all over me then?”. Official – “its required, go back and get it or you are DQ’ed!”, Me- “this is Bulls**t, WTF, this is crazy” (imagine a very livid picture of me after a horrendous swim) . So I run back, with no bike to look for, but simply a navy blue towel, “oh that’s the wrong row, wait where was my bike mounted, uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”, I finally find my transition area pop my # on and head out to my resting bike.

     If any race officials are reading this, I wanted to issue an apology for the explicative language that I used. Alright onto my bike; about 1k into the ride, I hear “come on Lamperski”, it’s Jason Nuttman, whom earlier said he would pass me on the bike and I said NO WAY. He proved me wrong quickly as did Ryan Baugh who passed just seconds after Jason. I regroup and decide to commit to their rapid pace, we are going 46+ on some portions and I am able to hang with them for 2 of the 5 laps, then kaboom, I somehow lost them in the crowd, out of sight. Nuttman was on a mission to spank everyone while Ryan held on as long as he could. Despite everything, I believe this was my best bike section in a triathlon, I finished strong and was ready to catch some people on the run.

Nuttman in Action, attempting and succeeding in Buring me.

      Heading into T2, I am running around the other bikes and the same official screams at me, “you need to stop and buckle your helmet again, it’s a safety issue!”. I am inside the damn transition area, jogging with my bike in hand at a not so rapid pace, after my best running dismount EVER. Of course I stop and have to buckle my strap again, before she lets me move. After a quick shoe change thankfully I am running out of T2 and needless to say I am still irritated slightly. Unfortunately the explicit language intensified at this point while I am running out of transition basically bagging the whole Australia Triathlon rules system to any and all who could hear me.



    Onto the run, by now its about 36 and the sun is nearly unbearable, Cody yells out to me “everyone is dying on the run”, so quickly I decide to back my pace off and keep it at 3:30’s because after ½ way everyone will die and I should be able to maintain. Passing at the turn arounds, I see Ryan and Jason a nice bit in front of me, could I catch one of them? I kept the pace consistent all the way through and even used Cody once his relay caught up to me in order to catch Nuttman and give him a “good job” pat on the butt. Ryan outdistanced me a bit and I was unable to catch him, but there is always NEXT time Ryan! At every stop I tossed a cup of water on my head and neck to keep my core temp down and it was fairly effective. Once we entered the last straight away, I had a guy in my sights, which I know I could blow away as he kept looking over his shoulder, but for some reason at that point of pain and immense heat exhaustion, I decided to let him go. That in fact was Mr. 2nd place in my AG! After crossing I get dizzy and luckily get escorted to a nice shaded seat where I can relax with an ice pack.



     All in the entire race was great; it certainly left me with some notes for my memory bank going forward. It was motivating to feel a butt whooping out there with no clue as to my finish placing. The heat was just crazy intense and reminded me of the 2009 Duathlon national championships, its indescribable, as I thought about those people who run 26.2 miles like this is Kona, sounds INSANE. I had to rush off to work after the race and BARELY made it in as I was pumping up the hills with all I had not to fall off of my bike. After several calls and text, it made my exhaustion feel much better once I found out I placed in the Western Australia championships and infact won a 6-pack of beer, that I could not collect and they even pronounced my name correctly at the awards. Going forward I will be training with the PAUL MACKAY INSTITUTE OF SPORT, (he was 2nd in the elite race) which sounds like it will be very pressing with all of the training in preparation for the Busselton Half Ironman in May. After sending my weeks status on training, my new coach quickly pointed out how I tapered amazingly for this race with doubling my cycling mileage, increasing my swim distance and managing an insane treadmill 5k 4 days out, when most people were tapering. Crazy how motivation works huh, what motivates you?

Shout out to Janna Angell for a great race even through the heat, keep it up girl!!!

PS: sorry I have no real pics available of the race due to that fact I wrote this from work the day of the race. If I get ahold to some I will post, hopefully they will show how miserably hot it was.

The Beatdown: Triathlon Down Unda'

Dec 19th: Western Australia Sprint Triathlon Championships

  This past weekend after pressure was applied to sign up for the Sprint Championships in December I finally buckled and signed up the week of the race. Chatting with the locals, seemingly ever person was doing this triathlon even people who normally wouldn't do tri's, which meant bad news for me. With each person that I found out registered that was potentially another place in front of me. Since it was a shorter race, I ASSUMED that I could get away with the shorter distance despite my lack of triathlon fitness with the swim and bike, WRONG.

  Luckily Ray Lampard was kind enough to let me borrow a set of his race wheels to hopefully make up for my lack of cycling lately as well as a "sperm" helmet also known as an aero helmet from Cody. I was decked out and ready to go, I set a new 5k pr the week before, so I knew my run fitness is coming around. We woke up pretty early, ghetto rigged our bikes to the bike rack we borrowed from Nathan doig and then piled 4 of us into the 2 door Hyundai hatchback and made our way to Rockingham. 

  We arrived in what I thought would be ample amounts of time to warm-up but I was wrong yet again. I didn't get to take my bike for that 3-4 mile spin I was hoping for, I actually managed to push my bike into transition and rack it up, before heading out for a quick 3/4-1 mile run. I saw all of the ballers gathering around the "Running Centre" tent and we made some small talk before they were calling waves to the water. Oh well I thought, no wet suit, then I saw Jason Nuttman and he offered his old wetsuit to me, so I quickly pulled it on and made my way to the water. As a side note, for all of you triathletes, do not randomly grab someones wetsuit that you have never used prior, that's a big no no. My goggles were missing, so I grabbed Cody's, went for a quick swim and realized they would not work, so I ran back to my bag with 3 minutes remaining to use Glenn's goggles. 

   

Watching the open elite men and women start out in the open water was amazing, as it was just like the triathlons I had seen on TV. People were sprinting through knee deep water and diving in with their best butterfly technique and quickly jumping up for a few more meters to run. My wave was next, did I mention the one and only time I have ever done an open water swim in the ocean was the day they spotted a shark near us and we all had to get out after 10 minutes? Bang the gun goes off, we are running through the water, its utter chaos, people are everywhere and I honestly am not sure when to start swimming. I take a dive and swim a bit but notice most of the guys are still running, so I jump back up. 

  The swim was pretty uneventful, I remember just deciding to grab on to the feet of another swimmer assuming he would guide me to the front, well that wasn't the case. In retrospect, i should have gone out much harder in an effort to make my way towards the front pack to keep myself motivated. After exiting the water, i saw Glenn snapping some pictures before I jumped on my bike. My transition was not the smoothest but it could have been worse for sure. Immediately I began passing people and noticed a guy just in front of me with a disk wheel, "just stay with him chris" is all I told myself and we went through the 1st lap just 10 meters apart, check. After the turnaround, I was zapped, not sure what happened if it was my motivation or what but it was certainly slower. I was overtaken by 4 other riders on this section and wasn't taking chances on the turns as I had on the 1st loop. As a surprise to me, my running transition off the bike worked really well and I racked the bike up.

After attempting several times to slide my mizuno ronins on, I realized they were too tight so I literally sat on the ground and had to pull each shoe on, this made for a lightning fast T2. Looking back I remember I had a T2 transition of 19 seconds in Savannah and on this day I would safely say I was near the 50+ second range. Time to do what I know I can do now... run. As I flew past some of the women on the course, I tried to push harder and harder. Some people were on the left side and some on the right of this turnaround course and around 5 minutes in I remembered a guy putting his hands in the air and giving me this go to hell look because I was in his path. "Ok Chris, after this turnaround you are going to DEMOLISH this guy into the ground and give him a "good job" pat on the way past". I remember when I took off with about 2 miles remaining and I passed a group of Juniors running in a pack and they were all caught off guard by my speed, but I didn't have time for games, I HAD to catch this guy and show him my dominance! 

   So yes, I caught this guy and kept pushing on but after I passed him my motivation seemed to loose focus. Then I noticed what I had many times before, my shoes were digging into my foot. I was getting warmer and warmer, so I said screw it, the top is coming down. After pulling down my tri top, everyone began looking at me weird and people were yelling stuff to me. I finished the last 1/4m pretty strong to pass a couple people in the stretch and then I heard it. "Good stuff man, but I think you got DQ'ed for pulling down your top" - Cody. WTF, really, wow, I forgot this was actually a big championships of sort but I remember racing with no top at duathlon nationals. Luckily I didn't get DQ'ed but from what everyone else told me, they had NEVER seen anyone take their top down during a triathlon, so now I am the shirtless American bandit. Matt Illingworth caught on to my system as taking your top down in the tri will save minutes on the run ! haha.

Check out the video from the race: I am in around the 30second mark on my bike

   All in all it was fun, but disappointing at the same time, I finished 31st overall and 6th in my division, it was a butt whooping. Jason Rhine, Jason Nuttman, and Ryan Baugh all got the best of me, not to mention the other athletes who were miles ahead of me as elite racers. Surprisingly I had the fastest 5k split of the triathlon in 16:26 with a slew of sub 17's just behind me. My bike portion wasn't horrible but on my garmin I had just shy of 23 mph, my downfall was T1 and T2 which made my combined bike split. The swim sucked but I know going forward I will do MUCH better and be more aggressive come January 30th at the Western Australia Olympic Distance Championships here in Perth. Thank you mates out there for truly giving me the beat down and christening into the world of triathlon in Australia. Come January I will begin riding and swimming more consistently in preparation for the next race and hope for improvement. Taking off 4 months completely from any triathlon training and one month into training I will take confidence from this performance.

  Christmas morning there will be a 100k ride through the hills that I am optimistic that I can make, what a way to start the holiday with a gut wrenching, lung burning, leg bashing ride up into the hills. 

Shout out to Sean, Macca and Jimmy for finishing 1-2-3 overall and a special thanks to Janna Angell for having an outstanding race finishing the run with a new 5k PR. Good on Ya!

Race Results Link