Day 1 – The Old West Coast Road has the last laugh.

Day 1 – The Old West Coast Road has the last laugh.

Run 10km
Swim 3.2km incl 2km TT
Bike 150km

Ahh the tactics of epic camp are entertaining. Everyone says “I don’t care about the points”, that lasts about 5 seconds once we get going.
We opened up with the traditional 2km TT in the pool. Before we even dived in it was apparent Heath “the fish” Thurston (I’m giving everyone nicknames on this camp) was going to kill us all. The battle for 2nd – 5th could be entertaining. There was two lanes of quicker swimmers. Lane 3 saw Heath leading off, Molina 2nd, me 3rd and Tara 4th. In the lane next door “Madmad” was leading out Macca. After Heath opened with a 1:10 first 100m (long course) we were in his dust, I closed in on Molina and passed him pretty quick but the problem was Tara was closing in on me. This is where the tactical battle began. Looking under the lane rope I could see Madman edging away which was a concern. I conceded the Tara “the limpet” was not going to drop so I let her come around me and sat about 2-3m back. Madmad continued to pull away but “the fish” was closing in on us fast and lapped us around the 1km mark - this is where my plan unravelled. Straight on his feet I went, around Tara and we were nicely pulled up to a frustrated madman (poor lane selection by him J ). So it ended up:
1 – The Fist 2- The limpet 3 – me 4 – Madman 5 – Terminator.

Today’s ride was round the Gorges. The forecast was for warm weather with a cold southerly change around lunchtime. We leisurely rolled through town which was nice despite the Saturday night glass on the road. As we left town there was an area with a few turns so I pushed up to the front and Douglas (fat albert) joined me and proceeded to drop the hammer, a little too much Coffee’s of Hawaii coffee for his breakfast I think. I was glad I didn’t have a HRM on today as the numbers would have been a little disturbing. Through to our first aid station and it was fairly controlled. It was then game on with Macca & Piet (mr persistent) taking it to the front and splintering the group.
There was a little confusion about the exactly location of the KOM and once Macca was off the front it was warfare between The Limpet, Marylyn (bike chic), Madman and myself. We crested the first of a two step climb (which we though was the KOM), madman looked to be in trouble so I tried to increase the effort a little but I was gone. We came over the top, realising our effort was in vein and the KOM was somewhere else. This was not good as we had another 10-15km of rollers. As it turned out when we did roll over the KOM it was all a bit tame with Macca off the front, the limpet rolling over 2nd with me on her wheel.

For the first 80km of the ride we had been pelted with strong head/side winds. What this meant was to mean was we should have some serious tail wind home. With a gentle downhill I was thinking we could average 45km/hr easy. As we made the turn on old west coast road where the tail wind kicks in we flew for about 2km. We then saw a wall of cloud coming straight at us and within seconds we had a brutal headwind and the temperature dropped from around 25c to about 13c. I hate it when the weather forecast is right. That was one tough ride home, no tact on for me.
There are still some crazies still out there training. We started at 6am this morning and there is a 12hr window which finishes in 20mins.

The points are in.
It’s a tie at the top of the table with Madmad and The Limpet. The limpet takes the jersey for being in front in both the 2km and KOM.
Looking forward to tomorrow.