Having done the Geelong Olympic Distance last year, I remembered the course being not as flat as I liked. My OD time for Geelong was about 10min slower than Noosa but this was also attributed to a longer swim course and a wet (therefore careful) ride.
It was also the maiden voyage of my race wheels which took 9 weeks to arrive. I also researched into cassette sizes to put on these wheels and opted for 11-25 as I already had 11-26. Having 2 different size cassettes gave me the ability to swap them around if I needed to. I had the cassette tightened on the race wheels on Saturday so it was ready to rock and roll.
We did about a 35km loop without riding into the salt marshes of Point Henry Rd but we did ride up (and down) the hill. Due to my long run on Sunday, I had restless legs on Sunday night and they still refused to play nice on Monday. The ride along the course was not the best and I was clearly struggling. It was only a supposed to be a nice and cruisey re-con ride and I was building up lactic acid too soon, too often in the legs and was not able to keep up.
We then rode through the run course on the way back into Eastern Beach before changing into our run gear for a quick trot around the park. We only did a 3km run (I trotted/jogged/walked) but every elevation (especially the incline) could be felt - I was not having a great day. I do hope that I will have fresh legs for the race in about 1.5 weeks, if not, this event will be a very long and painful day.
Whilst I was packing my bike into my car prior to the run, I noticed the grease had come out of the hubs on the back (race)wheel - hope that this is just the excess grease removing itself from the hub otherwise, it will be a very annoying process of getting it sorted with the wheel distributor.
Due to the Sailing Festival at Geelong that day, we could not do a swim re-con as the boats were in the path of the course. We would not be able to swim in a straight line and it would be unsafe for us to be swimming amongst them We just ended up swimming about 700m around the Swimming Enclosure. There was so much seaweed and spiky things along the sea bed that all of us refrained from touching the bottom as much as we could which made for a funny end to our training day as we were laughing so much.
We will hear more from the coaches about how the Ironman Melbourne group tackle the Geelong weekend - what our tapering and recovery strategy will be (if any). This is not our A race but we need to manage our bodies so it is in tip-top condition for Ironman.
I opted out of the Tuesday am run due to abdominal pains but continued with the 90min intense windtrainer session on Tuesday pm (burnt over 1000Cals). This morning was a 90min pool swim and will be doing a quick (about 1km-1.5km) OWS prior to coaching some of the Try the Tri and Nissan Corporate Triathlon athletes this evening. Thursday will be a double session (am Run, pm SB Combo), Friday am Swim before spending some long hours on the saddle on Saturday. We are still sorting out logistics for Sunday - plan A is to do our usual long run at Fairfield at 8am or plan B - run at Sandringham early (say 6am) prior to supporting the Sandringham Olympic Distance tri.
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