Race 6. 11eme Triathlon International Des Sables D’olonne Sprint (18th June 2006)

This race was over for me before the first swim buoy. I ran into the water ok and started swimming fairly well then found myself totally out of breath and unable to get any air in. I pushed out a bit of breaststroke and at some points backstroke then just swam slow for a while. I had been pretty fortunate not to get swam over as the last thing I needed was to be pushed under. By about half way I was back to fairly normal swimming and breathing so pushed a bit harder, mistake. Back to the desperate gasps and panic. When I took it easy it went away again, and the pattern continued until the last turn buoy about 200m before the beach. I exited the swim in 16th position nearly a full minute behind the leader (Adam Beckworth, another Aussie on team Cesson) and alongside Taryn Mcleod from New Zealand, the first female. In transition my bike was waiting alone as all the other guys in the top ten numbers had been and gone. I had a nothing special transition then ran my bike out. The layout for transition was just two rows of bikes about 100m long with a central corridor to access bikes. This required you to run with your bike down the transition area past all the bikes in the race (200 exactly) then around the back of the transition and along the whole length again on the outside. I had missed the part in race briefing that said once out of the central corridor you can mount your bike (Adam and I had actually missed the entire briefing, as it is all in French, and we just went straight to the swim start) so continued to run with my bike until I heard Penny Beckworth yelling "get on your f@#n bike Kris" Oh that is a super idea I thought! So I had just lost more time.

On the bike I could see a few guys from St Jean de Monts team way off in the distance, a good 600m. I had to get to them now and work with them to get to the lead pack, as it was a drafting race right??. I went all out for the first 5km, only slowing to go on the footpath to avoid a car that had got on the course!! I had made pretty good progress and caught the two St Jean de Monts guys but there was something odd. They were not working together and had let another guy ride up the road on them. Oh well, perhaps they have just been dropped I thought, so as I passed them I said aller aller (lets go) and signalled for them to get on my wheel and come with me. They didn’t. I turned to see if they would take a turn and they were about 50m behind. Damn, I had used a lot of energy to get to them quick and they were too weak to stay on my wheel let alone work with me. I went all out and caught the next guy. He too did not come with me, crazy.

The bike course was an out and back along the costal road. Not very technical or hilly but the road was rolling rises and constantly curved around the cliff tops, meaning it was difficult to see too far in front and it wasn’t until the turnaround that I saw the leaders. There was no lead pack. They were close but not really drafting. Ok so this is not a drafting race. It had taken 10km on the bike for the penny to drop, and I was amazed when entering transition that they had not checked the legality of my bars. It all made sense, but not a good thing for me as I had really hurt myself thinking I could get into a bunch. I suffered on the return section of the bike leg. I was tired and a bit dejected with how the race had panned out thus far.

With about 3km to go a entered a confusing part of the course, as the run and bike legs were both conducted on the same stretch of road. We had ridden out the sea side of the road and were returning to the same transition so I thought we would run on the other side, the non sea side so bikes and runners would be separate. I got to a large intersection where a median strip began and ran all the way to the transition area. There were cones and bunting on both sides and a large crowed all yelling. I yelled out which way and got no real answer so went on the left (sea side). That must be the way as the crowd were still clapping and no one was going "no no". About 30 seconds later a motorbike on the other side of the median strip rode up level with me and yelled lots of stuff, in French. From what I could decipher, I was on the wrong side. The official on the back of the bike they pulled out a black card and blew his whistle at me. Oh, shit this is bad, disqualified I thought, and it was just a mistake, no advantage gained. It was actually a disadvantage as I had slowed to ask which way to go and slowed again when the motorbike was yelling at me. Ok now I was really pissed off! Ahead was a small pedestrian crossing, my chance to get to the correct side of the road. I zipped through it and sprinted as hard as I could to the motorbike. The guy was a little surprised to see me along side him but I just started yelling that there was no official to tell direction and I was on the correct side now so no harm done. He just shrugged his shoulders, perhaps to indicate he didn’t understand me or perhaps as I thought at the time to say tough luck! I said "no, you will have to pull me off my bike". They didn’t and I entered the run without any trouble. I was tired and unmotivated on the run. The leaders had the race to themselves, and I was just happy to run the course without being told off.

I finished the race in12th and ended up 11th as Laurent Suppi was disqualified, after finishing second but with no number belt! Now that’s rough. Laurent told me the black card was not disqualification but rather an indicator I needed to run a penalty lap. I must have been let off as I was too far back to worry about. I had to feel for Laurent as he had a number on his swim cap, each arm, bike and helmet, yet this was not enough. He had lost his number belt after the swim while taking his wetsuit off, a simple mistake that cost him about $1000 in lost prize money.

Result for race 6 = well back