Jack races multisport race @ Lorne

What a silly idea that was!

On the way down there with Rhys he told me that Mr Spink was also racing, not only Lachlan Norris, so that wasn't the greatest news. We went out to have a look at the course on Saturday which ended up being different to the race, we missed a whole heap of single track. I was thinking that it would be a nice easy climb up to the top and then a fun ride down. It didn't turn out like that, this fire road climb turned out to be probably the hardest climb I've ever done! It was steep and just kept going. It was like doing the Gravity heart break hill 3 or 4 times in a row! It was Crazy. Rhys didn't like it at all. The track was pretty boring I thought, we missed all the single track because we didn't think that section was open, it was on private property. The decent was all fire road, and the last couple of k's of climb were on bitumen which was fast, but not MTB at all.

On Sunday it was race day and we had to have our bikes in the transition area early. Then the waiting began, the 22.7km MTB leg was after the 2km swim, 11km run and 13km kayak legs. The race started at 8 with the temperature already heating up it was going to be a warm day. Our teams were never going to be in the hunt of a podium finish which was obvious pretty early on. The winning team was finished well before I left on the bike. Waiting around the transition area I started seeing the competition and realised that the fastest bike leg was not really an option any more, not only was I up against Lachlan and Murray I also spotted Adrian Jackson, Jamie Paisly and Simon Wright.

Finally it was my time to go and I was feeling pretty ordinary after a few big races in the last few weeks. The climb was very tough, no big ring efforts this time the granny ring even got a go which hasn't happened for a very long time apart from up on the work stand! The single track was nothing to write home about but it was better than nothing and everyone was really good about getting out of the way. Once I got to the sealed road part of the climb it was time to use the big ring again (because it was getting lonely) and open it up, by this time I was starting to feel better. The decent was very fast on pretty smooth fire roads with a few water bars to keep it interesting.

That was until I realised I had a slow leak in my back tire! First flat of the entire year and it happens at almost 50km in the last race! I decided to ride it for a while because I was almost done. With only a couple of k's to go I had to stop and put some air in it and kept going. I only just made it to the finish in time with the rim almost on the ground but didn't really loose too much time, it just made for some interesting moments in the last few corners. So that was the ride over and done with in just under an hour, now I had to do a 3km team run along the beach, I haven't been in that much pain for a long time, but we made it and beat the other Aerostructures team by a couple of minutes, so we have bragging rights around the office for a while.

I'm suffering today though, the run, as always has left me with 2 sore and stiff legs but I'll get over it.

So thanks to Felt for the nice light bike and Hutchison for the fast piranhas that made the climbs much easier and got me to 8 ^th fastest bike leg out of 341 teams. And also everyone from Aerostructures that helped out.