HE won the Bathurst Wallabies Triathlon Club's Christmas long course triathlon for the third consecutive year, but such is Jack Reen's drive to improve he wasn't satisfied after crossing the line on Sunday.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Reen pushed hard through the 500 metres swim, 16 kilometre cycle, 5km run course to stop the clock in a time of 51:56 - close to six minutes clear of his nearest rival.
But as he was backing up after a fifth outright placing in the long course event at Maitland a week earlier, Reen was not able to give his maximum output.
"The idea just was to go really hard, but I just had nothing after Maitland last week," Reen said.
"The splits were slow if I'm honest, it was one of the fastest times I've ever done here, but as an endurance athlete you always want more, you always want to improve.
"That's the beauty of sport, especially in triathlon, you're never going to have a perfect day, there's always something to work on.
"You can only go as hard as you can push on the day, so if you don't get the result there's no point thinking about it, it's just back to work."
Though Reen's time was not quite as fast as his Christmas round win in 2020 - that was a 50:27 effort - his cycle leg was better.
Having emerged from the swim in second place, 36 seconds behind Will Kelly, Reen was keen to reel him in on the cycling leg.
That meant having to deal with a saddle adjustment of some 20 centimetres. Made after Maitland, it is designed to help Reen better capitalise on his power.
Though he was able to ride into the lead with a 22.21 split - 37 seconds faster than he did last year - and averaged a hot 42.9km/hr, Reen was not comfortable.
"My honest thought was it felt awful, but it was a massive change on the saddle so I was just using muscles that had not been used very much before," he said.
"I just wanted to get out of the saddle the whole ride, but everyone knows if you get out of the saddle you're losing time because of aero dynamics."
After recording the fastest cycle leg in the field, Reen backed that up with the quickest run leg. He covered that 5km in 18:07.
It ensured he sealed a Christmas treble, with Tim Robinson (57:44) and Kelly (58:11) rounding out the minors.
Though he'd wanted to go faster, there was still one thing which pleased Reen as he works towards his next big race.
"I guess if there's one takeaway today I'm happy with the transitions. Transitions have been slow in the past but they were pretty quick today so I was happy with them," he said.
"I'm going to try and do Hussky, but race entries are selling out fast and all these races are expensive, so I'll have to see how we go. If not I'll probably do Batemans Bay, a classic there on the fifth of February."
In the men's short course race it was Nick North who took the honours as he covered the 300m swim, 16km cycle and 2.5km in 58:44.
Second belonged to Mark Windsor (59:53) with Tristan Harrison (1.00:33) third.
Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content:
- Bookmark www.westernadvocate.com.au
- Make sure you are signed up for our breaking and regular headlines newsletters
- Follow us on Twitter
- Follow us on Instagram
- Follow us on Google News