Speights Coast to Coast
Coast to Coast Double Win
Richard Ussher / 17.02.2012
It is always a rather nervous time heading into Coast to Coast, reports abound in the media of just how great everyone else is going and often about how much better other peoples chances of winning should be.
For Elina and I this year we’d had the luxury of no race in Abu Dhabi before hand so a few extra weeks in which to refresh and start a proper build up
The start of the race is always chaos starting in the dark on Kumara beach and right from the gun the pace was on. Braden Currie pushed the pace and instead of the usual line of competitors for the first time we actually ended up with a small break on the run.
After a hurried transition onto the bike we set off at top speed. We had a small group of 6 athletes formed already and Dougal Allen was especially keen to push on as James Coubrough was missing from the 6 despite being one of the first to the bikes. He’d also made it clear he wanted to try and take the sting out of the quicker runners legs and despite some of those runners forming part of our pack everyone was happy enough to roll through at a good tempo.
About half way through the ride our 6 became 4 and the pace backed off a little with less legs to help at the front.
Still given the light headwind blowing we had still made excellent time by the first transition and the first defining leg of the race began.
Braden Currie was quickly into his stride and started putting some time into us immediately but I was relieved to see the gap was opening relatively slowly. I had company in the chasers spot with Jeremy McKenzie and Dougal Allan seemingly glued to my heels, so much so that when I tripped and fell one time they literally tripped over me.
We could still see Braden whenever we had a good line of sight and at Big Boulders it was still less than 3 minutes. James Coubrough had now joined our chase group and was looking super fresh despite having caught up nearly 4 minutes in the first hour. I was feeling really comfortable and with Braden’s gap now seeming to stabilize I was happy to keep the same pace and let the other dictate if they wanted to go faster.
Just before the top of Goat Pass I suddenly noticed that James and I had gapped the other two and shortly after I let James go up the steeper section towards the hut.
It was nice to be finally running by myself, and the rhythm seemed to come a bit easier, I could see James as we headed down around 30-40 seconds ahead and I was also still catching glimpses of Braden so I felt like things were reasonably under control. Prior to the race I’d had expectations that I could be giving up as much as 10 minutes on the run and that was looking unlikely with less than an hour to go.
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