What to write about Anaconda Lorne….
Anaconda Series Adventure Races, or any race set by legendary racer John Jacoby, can be described as simply never letting up. If you’re having a bad day there is no where to rest, slow down, or even catch your breath; you are moving or you are stopped.
Anaconda Lorne is probably the second hardest race of the season behind the relentlessly hilly Gold Coast course. The format is as follows:
1.9km ocean swim, 400m beach run, 13km ocean paddle, 15km trail run, 24km MTB & 1.5km beach run.
I was unusually organised for this year’s race and got in the water early to do my warm up. The water was surprisingly calm and I swam out to the first turn can to work out I was going to sight for the long 1.2k straight section. That sorted I swam back into the shore straight over the top of my old friend from 2006, a stingray the size of a double bed that must live somewhere near the pier.
A mass beach start was the order for the day and I settled in a few rows back behind the fast team swimmers who go out like rockets. You need to be organised at AR starts, as most races start early as they go once the group looks like its ready, or all the boats are in a line. The gun went and we were off, and around the first can I was feeling ok. The swim was pretty uneventful, but I could feel the swell picking up the longer we were in the water. At the swim exit I was a minute or so slower than expected but Jarad (Kohlar) was about 10 m in front of me so I wasn’t too concerned.
Down the beach and out onto the paddle my heart rate was pretty high and I was having trouble balancing in the swell that had picked up a little bit since the race start. As we rounded the point break and left the sheltered conditions of the Loutit Bay Maribyrnong River
I rounded the bottom can and felt almost immediately more comfortable, I got into a good rhythm and was getting good leg drive through the stroke. I made an executive decision and kept close into shore rather than going out very wide as the majority of the paddlers had. As I made good progress downwind my confidence picked up and I looked on track for my target time for the paddle leg despite the slow going early. I approached the break again and took what I thought would be a wide enough berth to miss the waves that break onto the reef. But as I got parallel to the reef, I got caught up in the middle of a big set and had to pick up my rating to get out of the danger zone.
This was not a place I wanted to be. The back of my boat started to lift and I accelerated trying to ride the wave out but I could feel my boat start to turn to the right and I knew I was going in. I popped up and looked around to see where the reef was, and whether I had enough time to get back in before the next wave came through. I didn’t, so I grabbed the foot straps, wrapped my legs around the ski and hoped.
I got back up onto the ski, and paddled my little heart out. We were still paddling downwind and I was confident I was still more or less on track for my target time. Around the top can and back to the beach I tried to pick off paddlers in front of me and I pulled back a few individual places as well as a couple of teams. Up the beach I was a couple of minutes behind a very ambitious target but more than that ahead of my paddle time from 2009.
The Lorne run course starts out along the foreshore and I quickly got into a good cadence. Along the rocky sections I was moving well, and I reeled in probably 20 places (including teams) in the first 4-5 kms. At this stage I was feeling good, but not great and tapping out a reasonable tempo. By the second long up-hill burn I could feel the fatigue setting in but ground out the hill and tried to maintain the strongest pace I could. The race was now becoming more mental but I just couldn’t force myself to push harder. I felt like I was stuck in fourth gear. As I exited the forest the FM guys were there to cheer me on and I kicked on for a spurt. This was great timing as the next section of the run is a super technical 500 m stretch of large loose rock.
For those of you that know Lorne, you will know that it sits at the bottom of a very steep escarpment. So this means the only way out (other than along the coast) is up. Consequently, the MTB leg starts with a 2 km climb at 10% with two 300 m sections of 17%. The climb then eases with the remaining 10 km ranging at about 5%. By now I had the punch knocked firmly out of my legs and lacked power rather than aerobic capacity. I rode onto the top wanting more, but just not having the legs to deliver it.
Mentally, I also wasn’t in an ideal position. In hindsight I’ve realised that the targets I had set were too ambitious (and not carefully enough considered) and consequently as the race had gone on I was falling further and further behind time (even though I was on a PB time). Because I didn’t know where I was in the race, I didn’t have that balancing force to push me on and my mind was translating slow times into low places. What I didn’t realise was that I was actually only a couple of minutes down on my main rivals and that the race times were slow across the board after the tough paddle.
Fortunately, the back half of the bike leg is a series of steep descents on fire trails punctuated by short power climbs that you can knock over with a bit of grit. This year on my new Merida 96 I was able to really power on the down hill and let the suspension absorb the noise in the trail, for the first time in the race to that point I had a smile on my face whizzing down some hairy trail at well above 60 kmh.
The final stanza on the bike is a very steep and narrow section of single trail that has been the site of many, many accidents over the years. With my new found confidence I thought I’d have a crack but soon collected a tree and gave up riding down so shouldered the bike and ran down. You then pop out of the Stony Creek and ride on the coastal rock and soft sand to the final TA and then run the final 1.5 km beach run to the finish.
So what do we take away from the race?
Positives:
My pre-race organisation for racing is really coming together. I’m now comfortable in my pre-race routine and this has translated in to a less stressful lead up and more time on race morning to get a good warm-up done. Similarly, I’ve got my nutrition types and intervals down pat and resolved the stomach cramping issues of last season (thanks to Luke Bell for some great advice there). I was also really happy with a three minute run PB. I’d spent the time to recon the course and knew exactly where to run fast, which hills to grind and where the good lines were through the technical sections.
Areas for improvement:
A quick look over the splits shows that the main damage to my overall hopes was still in the paddle leg. Despite being faster than last year it is still a clear weakness and although paddling well on the flatter days at the Freycinet and King Valley Challenge Races I haven’t improved enough in the rough of the open ocean. My main take-away though is the importance of the little mental tricks that I normally use to push myself in these sorts of races. As I said earlier I hadn’t put the same thoroughness into my target setting and consequently this put me behind a mental eight ball for most of the race. In hindsight, I was actually having an OK race but my bad pre-race decisions had led my brain to convince me otherwise.
Action Plan:
The action plan from here is to:
- Program more time in the open water to polish the ‘specific’ skills
- Properly establish target times
- Use my support crew to keep me informed about my overall position
So, where to from here? After a week off I’ll be looking to Marysville to Melbourne Multisport
Until then train smart.