School Sports Australia National Triathlon Championships

This week Emily Dunk returned from ‘sunny wet Queensland’ after competing in the School Sports Australia National Triathlon Championships.  Emily is a talented young road and track rider who also enjoys competing in triathlon, open water swimming, netball and karate.  Below is Emily’s triathlon report.

Last week I attended the School Sports Australia National Triathlon Championships in Redcliffe, a suburb of Brisbane on Morten Bay in sunny Queensland. Except it wasn’t sunny, in fact it rained nearly every day!

Like the national Track championship, the only way to go was as part of the Victorian team (Team Vic). We had a full team of 36 athletes, six for each category (female and male) across Junior (J15), Intermediate (J17) and Senior (J19) age groups.

We stayed at the St Josephs Nudgee Boys Boarding College. The school was huge with two pools (one 50M and one 25M), a full athletics track and field, tennis courts, indoor and outdoor basket ball courts – the lot. Awesome,  except that the rooms where a bit small, about the size of my wardrobe, at least thats what it felt like! We kind of shared rooms – the dividing walls did not go all the way to the ceiling so I shared a ceiling fan with one of my team mates (Jess Cox). The dorms where fun though and what an awesome place!

The day before the race it was terrible weather, really heavy rain all day, so I didn’t really get to look at the course very well. As the bike leg was on a city street, it was very hard to ride the course and actually see how hard it was going to be. It was a 4km loop on a mainly flat road with three roundabouts in the course, one that was pretty big and technical. The was only one hill, but it was short and pretty steep so it hit hard with three laps for the Junior race (and four laps for the relay)! We had a quick practice swim but it was nearly a full tide stream which was a bit challenging!

I was extremely nervous before the start of the individual race. It was the biggest field of girls I’d raced in and we where the best Juniors in the country, so the competition was really strong. I know I was one of the youngest girls there. I’m only 12 and there where girls in my race who where already 14 and in Year 9. The swim was the longest competition swim I’ve done and the tide was pretty strong with most of the swim being straight into it. It was HARD!!! The bike leg was great but not having been able to really ride the course at speed (or in the dry) the day before my first lap was a bit slow whilst I worked out the course. My second full lap was a lot quicker, but not knowing the course and trying to work out the non drafting rules in a really packed road (nearly 70 Junior boys and girls at once), trying to do individual time trials for three laps of a 4km course was challenging. And the run, well, I didn’t stop for the whole run and I did a pretty good run time all up, but it still was hard. The sun only really came out for our run!

On the second day I was chosen to ride the bike for the relay event. We had an age group relay team  and mixed age group teams. I was asked to ride the bike leg for one of the mixed teams. Normally they put a Senior girl on the bike for the mixed team because they have a bigger roll out (same as J19) but the team manager, Amanda Cooper (Brunswick Cycling Club) thought I was good enough as she had seen me on a track bike. It was a 16km TT and I tried really hard. I set the second fastest overall time for a Junior for the weekend. My overall speed on the bike was nearly 36kmh!!! Carbon wheels really help! I don’t know what my transition times where but it was a lot better on day two! Bob showed me how to jump onto the bike at Glenvale a few days before. I kind of missed on day one but really got it right on day two and sprinted out of transition when all the other girls where trying to get their shoes sorted out. Really cool!

Overall it was a great few days and a really great experience and I made some really great new friends. A lot of people helped me get there and it was great. I think I know what training I need to do now for next year and it would be fantastic to make the team again next year!

Emily Dunk