Matty White

Kona and Australian Champs Race Report

Sorry about the delay guys, but things have been crazy since getting back home, straight back to work and a lot of family stuff happening but, I am feeling quite good and refreshed, which is a good sign considering I have a good block of racing coming up in the next 6 weeks culminating with Ironman West Australia in early December.

To cut a long story short Hawaii just wasn’t my day, I had a good start to the swim as opposed to the last time I raced and had a clean start which was great and managed to stay with the front group until the turn point where I lost a bit of concentration and lost contact, leaving me in the 2nd group with Cam Brown, Bracht, Lovato and a host of others. On to the bike and I felt quite strong as we were sooned joined by Ronnie Schildnickt and a few others, but the whole time I was vomiting up a lot of water which was concerning and losing time to the lead group!

At the turn in Hawi I felt great and picked up the tailwind on the way home dropping the guys who were with me. At about the 150km mark I caught a tired Matty Reed and Eneko Llanos who were also having bad days, I decided to push on even though the lack of fluids was at the back of my mind and the vomiting just seemed to get worse toward the end of the bike.

I got off the bike in about 20th spot and decided to start the run, I actually felt terrible off the bike but then soon fell into a good rhythm until about 5miles were I actually thought I vommitted every internal organ I owned in my body up, it was there and then where I decided to call it a day as my body was not playing the game.and I didnt not want to risk further damage and end up on NBC crawling around the energy lab on all fours! Especially with some good Australian races coming up.

Looking back I am happy I stopped when I did as I am sure I would have done serious damage and to be quite honest with people, it did not appeal to me running around the Queen K highway in pain in that environment.

After the race I was still quite sore but was happy I didn’t do the marathon that’s for sure but on the flipside it was so great to see Australia continue their dominance of the Ironman with Crowie taking out the victory in the new world record and Pete Jacobs getting a well deserved 2nd place.

Once I got back to Australia I decided that I needed to do a race in order to unleash a bit of all this energy I had from Hawaii, and I was lucky enough to find the Australian Duathlon Championships right in my backyard in the Barossa Valley, only 45 minutes away, the Barossa course has been good to me the passed 6 months after winning the State Half Marathon Championships in June so I was really looking forward to a fun day.

The course was really different in that the bike went up Menglers hill 2 times, which is a steep 2km climb that I have never done before and I was surprised by the severity of it, especially after a hard 10km run. I was lucky enough to have some speedy runners in the field from WA who can over for the race, Paul Mackay and Thomas Bruin who pushed the first run under 33 minutes, which was a little shock to the system especially after just getting off the plane on the Friday before!

On the bike I felt great straight away and decided to push hard to bridge the 40 second gap to Mackay. I managed to reel in the leader at the top of Menglers and set about building a comfortable 5 minute lead at the end of the 40km bike ride. I got off the bike and pushed hard onto the 5km run, getting the fastest run time to win my first Australian Duathlon title.

Next on the list for me now is Port Mac 70.3 and then Shepparton 70.3 to try and defend my title from last year, also Ironman WA where I finished 2nd and am hoping to go one place better pm the podium.

Thanks for everyones support leading into Kona it really meant a lot, the main thing now is to move forward and be positive with the upcoming races, I am feeling great and had a huge winter build up in Boulder so am hoping to use it in the next few weeks.

Matty