Longest Day Coast to Coast 2021 Report
So here goes my very honest account.....
Goals
🏆 Win my age category ✔️
⏳ Finish close to 14 hours ✔️ish
😃 Well executed race ✖️
My Race Report.
The day started out well and I managed to keep up with Elise & Sara for the 2.2km sprint to the bike! This was always going to be the hardest part of my race! However this run still wasn't fast enough as Sara & I found ourselves in a bunch that was moving fairly slowly and naturally there wasn’t a lot of appetite from anyone to do any work - yes smart and logical but really frustrating!!
We hit the run and picked it up a notch. This worked well for Sara but not so well for me. After 90mins I started getting little pings of cramp which was frustrating as I had followed my excel spreadsheet for hydration and nutrition to the minute! It didn't take long for these little pings to start turning into big pings (Side note- this was foreign as I never suffer from cramp!!) Anyway I backed right off and finished the run still in good time so I was feeling positive.
On arrival into transition I downed a bottle of cramp stop and thankfully 30mins into the kayak I could finally use my arms and push on my foot pedals without cramp shimmering through my body and off I went. Wahoo! To my dismay my stomach then went at the 2 hour mark. WTF!!!! If I tried to eat or drink it came straight back up. To this day I have never had a problem with eating during any race so I was so dam annoyed.
I always knew the Longest Day was a race where those that could keep eating and drinking throughout came out with the best result. My race nutrition has always been a major focus, I'm so jolly disciplined and it has never to this day failed me. In hindsight (such a wonderful thing!) I introduced Caffeine too early in the race, I won’t make that mistake again 😉
Thankfully when I hit the last bike ride slowly (30mins it took!) but surely I forced a marmite sandwich down. Yay! We had the rudest headwind for the entire 70km but I read a sign at the start that said 'Don't focus on the distance, just enjoy the ride' - so that was my Mantra!! To the point where I needed to pee and I thought 'I would enjoy this far more if I stopped to pee' so that's what I did!
It has been an awesome journey. I can honestly say I ended up enjoying kayaking and that was a big reason for my deciding to do it - kicking that fear to the curb! The multisport community played a huge part in this, it was very cool meeting so many good buggars!
I finished with a time of 14 hours 24 mins. This is the first race I have ever done where I wasn’t happy with my time/overall result. BUT I am proud of putting 6 months of solid training and focus into it. Over & Out x