Tinman Triathlon Tauranga 2019
On Sunday 10th November 2019, I kicked off my season in Tauranga at the Tinman Triathlon. I'm stoked to say that my first race in over 12 months was awesome!
We were all faced with very challenging conditions on the day; horrendous winds and torrential rain followed the great weather we'd had for the past couple weeks.
Albeit a little nervous having not raced nationally for a while, I think my time over the last 12 months has really allowed me to develop my mental skills. I found my head space to be the best it's been during racing, and that resulted in my best ever open water swim performance to date.
My coach Will and I have spent some time figuring out why I may have under-performed in open water in the past, and it looks like we've been on the money and I achieved a performance I'm very proud of.
Unfortunately, this performance was not enough to get me into a top group for the draft-legal bike leg, but I can't deny the obvious gains I've made over just the last 3 months.
The bike leg was incredibly windy and the roads were very wet. I struggled for the first quarter to find anybody I could work with to make a pack as I moved up the field, but eventually I found someone willing and hungry to get stuck in and fight the wind.
This proved to be a hard partnership as he didn't seem willing to share the work or work with me, instead he seemed to want to work alone, and often put in surges to drop me. I held on with everything I could as the lone wolf strategy was never going to be a good option in the conditions we had. Instead I just let him do all the work and held his wheel!
This left my matchbox pretty empty after 20km on the bike and entering onto the tough run course that Tinman faces us all with. I left Transition 2 with the goal of getting around the course in the best shape I could, with the focus on technical proficiency.
All in all, I put in a very good performance and I'm stoked to be back on the circuit once again. I still have a very long road ahead of me, but everything looks promising for a great season ahead.
About the author: James Harvey is a New Zealand triathlete and Sundried ambassador.