Paul attard racing in the usa

Topgear Cycles sponsored athlete Paul Attard is currently racing in the USA and here is one of his race reports.

Vineman is held in the Sonoma County in the North of California. This is a big region for Wine with many vineyards and spectacular scenery. I had a very interesting week where I travelled on my own to the race so everyone I met was completely new to me. Except for Michelle the Kiwi and her mum Gail who I had met three weeks earlier at Texas.

I hitched a ride up with Kyle who was from the TCSD. We left on the Wednesday so we could give ourselves plenty of time to get there with no stress. It was good to share the ride with someone who knew their way around California as I didn’t have to put any thought into where we were going. A short stop over for the night in San Jose where I met Kyle’s Mom and brother. From San Jose it’s about a two hour drive further north to a place called Santa Rosa where I was staying with my home stay.

I have been so lucky with the home stays that I have had and Tracy did not disappoint! Tracy was extremely nice and very helpful. Also joining us in Tracy’s house was a friend of hers called Mona who works for Livestrong and between them they had many interesting stories which made my stay fun. Sorry guys, Tracy has told me that there won’t be any room at her house next year so best to look elsewhere!

As these races can get hot we tend to start them early. As we are the first wave we also need to be first there so I was up at 4 getting ready. I was pretty nervous and getting up was no problem for me.

The field of athletes this year was not as strong as other years due to a clash with Racine 70.3 I think. However Chris Lieto did decide to race at the last minute which raised the bar a little and is always good to have high quality opponents to measure against.

The weather is typically cold in the morning with a big layer of fog over the river and vision is poor. It was no wetsuit for us and the river swim was pretty slow. It’s a pretty simple upstream swim to the turn around and come back to the start  point. It really did feel like we were swimming against the current the whole way. I was in touch with the main group at  about 400 meters and then a little loss of concentration and they were gone and I was trailing with one other guy. It also made it hard when I couldn’t see the other guys as we could only see about 30 meters up the river.

I exited the water with the fastest girls who started two minutes behind! This was a big crush on the ego and I knew I had to work pretty hard as I had a bad swim. I was struggling for the first 30k of the bike as I was freezing and had goose bumps all over. I was just praying for the sun to come out and warm me up. The main difficulty I was having was keeping my mind focused on the job and keeping positive. Once the sun poked through and I started to warm I started to ride better and by the 40k mark I had caught a couple of guys. It’s a very lonely road out there and it’s amazing the effect it has when you start to pass people after one hour of seeing no one except maybe two photographers. My confidence was going up and I knew I was riding well enough to be able to run well.

I headed out of transition in about 9th place and after my last few races where I had not run well I had a good plan on what I had to do to run well. Even though I could not possibly win from that position I wanted to prove to myself that I could pull a good run if I stick to my plans. I was feeling good and all was going well through the run course and after two miles I was starting to pass people and in some parts I could see the main line of guys except for Doe and Lieto who were in 2nd and 1st with no threat from anyone. The turnaround point for the run is a one mile lap around a lake within a winery. It was at this point I saw there were two guys who were about 1k ahead and I knew if I could hold pace I would be able to catch them. It was this point where I saw Macca who was full of encouragement and on my way out of the winery he was giving me some good words of encouragement. I was feeling good and this only made me feel better to have a Ironman world champ ride beside. Unfortunately this is illegal and he was told to move on but it was great while it lasted.

I was starting to cramp in the hamstrings but was managing to keep it under control with good technique. With 500 meters to go I had passed the two guys in front of me and was in fifth place. I rounded the last corner and as I did this I ran into an age grouper running wide around the corner. To avoid the collision I jumped over the witches hat and my hamstring cramped! I tried to run it through to the finish without the other guys seeing but Tim Marr must have noticed my big down change in pace and he came back past me and I couldn’t get it going again to get it back. So I had to finish with a 5th place and very happy to run 1.15 and have the fastest run!

Race Results