Bribie Island Triathlon

Last weekend we headed up to Bribie Island, about an hour and a half drive north of Brisbane, for a weekend at the beach and a little triathlon fun. We have been up to Bribie before but hadn't spent much time on the sheltered side of the island, where the race was being held. It's more built up but has a long, pleasant waterfront park with a view of the Glasshouse Mountains and somewhat reminds me of the area around Whidbey or Camano Islands.

On Friday night, when we checked into the holiday rental apartment I had found on the internet, we were surprised to find that it was directly across the street from the triathlon staging area. What luck! Since the race wasn't until Sunday, we were able to take turns riding bikes/watching Erik Saturday morning and then spent the rest of the day relaxing at the beach.

Sunday morning, I just had to wheel my bike across the street to the transition area and have all my limbs numbered - not quite body painting, but an interesting part of triathlons all the same. It's a dead give away as to who is competing and who is not.

As far as the race is concerned, I felt I did fairly well. It's hard to compare to my previous efforts in the Danskin. Although the course was the same length (750m -swim, 20k – bike, 5k – run), the whole layout and field of competitors was different. The swim was in a channel with a good 1-2 knots of favorable current. Just to give you some idea of how much of an influence this is, my time in the pool and in Lake Washington was around 14:30, but at Bribie it was 8:50! I wish I could say it was all due to training! The bike course was different too, three laps around the town streets, so although it was flat, there were lots of turns, including three, big slow down U - turns in front of our rental unit. Somehow Mark and Erik managed to miss me each time, so I don’t have any pictures.

For the run, I was feeling pretty good at first, but started getting a side ache after about a kilometer. I kept running and eventually it went away, but it was a distraction that kept me from pushing as hard as I would have liked. In the end, I was 6th out of 8 in my age division with a time of 1 hour, 17 minutes, and 49 seconds. Now this may seem fast, but remember the current on the swim probably gave me almost a 5-minute advantage. While 6 out of 8 (in contrast to 66th of 554 in the 2005 Danskin) was not as good as I had hoped, middle of the pack was my goal, I do have to admit that the competitors in this event were in much better condition than the majority of the women in the Danskin. Some were training for Ironman or Olympic length events and used the series (this was the last of 4 races) as practice. I hope to do another event when the triathlon season starts up again in the Australian spring (October). Until then, I’ll be looking for fun runs and rides to keep in shape.