While I finished in nearly the same time as last year’s race when I won, it wasn’t good enough. Rhys Drury won ‘the gold’ in record time and full credit to him he was always on or near the lead when he was in the surf and from what I understand dominated the running legs of the race.

I was disappointed in my own race and nothing but a win would have satisfied me. In the modern version of the race there hasn’t been a competitor who has gone back to back. I wanted to be the first and as I didn’t win I am disappointed.

I didn’t have the preparation I wanted, it was marred with injury, and instead of 17 weeks full running training I got about 6 weeks in, first I had a lot of inflammation around my knee joints and after that I actually tore a tendon in my left foot.

Overall I probably wasn’t fit enough, but that doesn’t matter to me and is no excuse.

During the race I thought I was travelling well until the first run leg. It was only 4 kilometres but my calves blew out. I then went into the swim leg where I usually make up ground, but my feeling without having seen the timing results is that I actually lost time there.

My hard luck continued in the last run leg. I was running on the soft sand when I felt a sharp pain in my foot. At the time I didn’t pay much attention to it as I was hurting all over, but the next day I soon realised I may have torn the tendon in my right foot; like I had my left.

I suppose the up side is I have good base fitness and I don’t have to be at my best until February, but I also want to compete in the qualifying event for the International Challenge at Bondi. The qualifying is over the first weekend in November and I hope to be fit for it.

On the women’s side of things Hayley Bateup missed out on the hat-trick of wins , but still ran third to Alicia Marriott and Liz Pluimers. Alicia ran second a couple of years ago so the result wasn’t a huge surprise. I actually tipped Liz Pluimers to be the one who gave Hayley a run for her money, so I was close.

The Coolangatta Gold is looming pretty quickly and so I have kept training pretty hard. The weather up here has been fantastic, it’s just like summer, but unfortunately there has been zero surf!
 
As I look out at the surf now it looks more like a lake! There is absolutely no swell.
 
I’m really hoping [...]