Ironman New Zealand

New Zealand Ironman.

It’s has been just more than two weeks since I raced Ironman NZ.  The good news is that I got my Hawaii spot for the World Champs in October.

I realized I have a really big problem with my biking ability. Despite having had a gastro bug for the month before the race, it didn’t affect me enough that I could have won the race.

Briefly, the swim wasn’t great. I came out 20 seconds behind Kieran Doe, I just hadn’t been able to swim train well in the month before and could definitely feel the lack of swim fitness compared to when I felt great at IM Western Aus. I did feel fit straight onto the bike though, and rode well, working with Bryan Rhodes until about 65km when we were caught by Luke Bell, Cameron Brown, Frederick Van Lierde, and Stephen Bayliss.

I pushed and went with them for a while, but by 80km I had dropped off the group. I went through a bad spell after halfway until a group caught me and I rode with them until the last few km’s when I really started to  tighten up in my back. I was happy I had survived the bike without massive depletion. That is, my nutrition was ok, it was mostly just my lack of strength that let me down. This came back to haunt me after just 1km into the run my back seized up. I had to stop and stretch  a few times and run slowly until it loosened up at 16km. I picked up the pace and it was a good feeling to chase down 4 guys in the second half of the marathon.

It was a big wake up to my lack of bike strength and has motivated me more than ever to improve my bike leg. I’m looking forward to a change in training and the focus on bike strength, and at the same time I am motivated to keep swimming this month, and do some sand running as I train for the Australian Surf Life Saving titles on April 3-6. I’ll compete in the 2km beach run, as well as 3 or 4 swim and team events.

I’ve never had so long at home with an unbroken block of training from now until July 13 when I’ll be racing to win and break 8 hours at Quelle Challenge Roth, an Ironman distance triathlon in Germany.

Why did I take my Hawaii Spot?

To take 5th place, the same result I got in my first professional Ironman at the same race 4 years ago, was very unfulfilling. But I took my Hawaii spot because I believe I can improve my bike this year, and that I can place top 10 in Hawaii, and hopefully I work hard enough to be in good enough shape to place top 5 this year.

It is my goal to win Hawaii, and the season is very well spaced out for me now to do some very good big blocks of training to improve to the level of the best in the world.