The course was 40km of undulating road, with a 3km winding climb (not sure of the gradient but it wasn't very steep), about 13km in, and a 1km straight descent on the way back.
I rode most of the course the day before so had a bit of an idea of what to expect on race day, which helped a lot particularly with pacing the climb. In short, I went out hard and felt good up to and during the climb. It got tough about 17k's in and got really tough at the 20k turnaround when the cross/tailwind became a headwind
. The long, straight, gradual undulations were quite demoralising at times, especially into the wind! I hit my highest speed to date of 80kph on the downhill which was a rush but also slightly scary 
The last 10k's were hard but my speed held up, the pain went away briefly coming into the crowd-lined finishing straight, but jeeez does it hurt getting off the bike and running to the transition area! My legs were jelly!! Much respect to the people that do the full triathlon 
All in all it was bloody tough not being able to draft but good fun. I averaged just over 35kph over the 40k's in a PB of 1:07:32, with an average HR of 176 and a max of 192. I'm doing the corporate race in the Nick Gates Foundation Crit in Townsville next week, so looking forward to that and giving some club races a go in the coming weeks!!
