


Mar 27th
I came into this race with a long build up where all my life existed of was training, eating & sleeping in my Hypoxico Altitude Tent. I know from past experiences that altitude training works well for me special on my run form, so it was a simple choice to spend the 8 weeks prep sleeping in the tent.
With Ironman Melbourne being a championship race it was always going to bring some of the best athletes in the world, so for me it was a good test to see where I’m standing. It is well known that not everyone is at 100% because it is at the start of the year & I was one of them.
The last few days before the race I was not as nervous as I normally am, maybe because I could sleep in my own bed & I did not have to go and eat out.
There was a bit of panic at the end of the week when I got a bit stiff in my lower back. I was lucky to get into a see a physio on Saturday morning & he did save my race for sure.
With Melbourne weather it does change a fair bit, it is known for having 4 seasons in a day. I was prepared for anything and on Saturday at race briefing the organisation advised us the swim had been changed to a two lap swim & did also have a backup plan if the winds didn’t drop that we would still have a swim but a shortened one. All athletes were aware this could be a possibility, but that is racing.
I did a test swim Saturday afternoon to get an idea of how bad it was which went ok but was definately rough. Waking up race day to howling winds I was sure we’d have have a shortened swim and just after my warm up we got told that the swim was cut down to 1.9km. & a delayed start. I took my chance to a small nap!!
But like Marino Vanhoenacker did say at least we did get a swim, it’s not ideal to swim 1.9 but it was the right call. I think all athletes after the race agreed on that.
I did not have the best swim start, but did stay in contact with the 2nd group the whole swim, even though it was very rough. I came out onto the bike with the group, but as soon as Cameron Brown, Joe Gambles & Marino hit the front, the group started splitting up. Thanks to the massive headwind I was only doing 30-35km/h, but quickly found my own pace; With a two lap course there would still be 45km into headwind on second lap as well so didn’t want to be on empty for that. We did have a good tailwind back which was a great relief and I was able to sit on 47-58km/h the way back into Frankston.
At the start of the second lap quite a few athletes start dropping out because they had gone out too hard out, so I just tried to limit my loss to the front and prepare for a big run.
When I hit the run I was in 17th place, well down on where I had hoped for, but with 42.2km’s in side/headwind I knew a lot could happen and the weaker runners would be found out. Leon Griffin & I did work well together on the start of the run and were sitting on 3:50-4:00 pace, so it was just a matter of time before we would start to catch athletes up in front. It did go well until 20km mark where we came up to Jeremy Jurkiewicz, I tried to drop Jeremy, but ending up dropping Leon & 1km later when we hit a small hill I dropped Jeremy. I could see Petr Vabrousek 1min ahead so I used a few km’s to get up to him, and at the 24km mark I caught him and we started working together. We got splits that there was group around 4-6min ahead of us. More >
Oct 25th
Now with 70.3 Mandurah under my belt I have officially started my AUS tri season. Back in August when we decided to do this race, we
thought the field would not be so strong with Hawaii the week before, but as it got closer to the race the stronger the field got! It was also 70.3 AUS champs & good prize money up for grabs so I could understand the packed field.
I flew over to Perth & drove down to Mandurah (one hour drive south) on Thursday, so I had a few days to get used to the 3hr time difference & check out the courses.
Friday I did my swim in a pool, because shacks just love to be close to the coast in WA! I also did one lap of the bike course with Tim Berkel and in the evening I had a trip back to Perth to pick up Clayton Fettell, who was my wingman for the weekend because Aimee had to stay at home.
On Saturday I got some easy training done with the rest of Aeromax team who was racing & then tried to relax and get my body ready for Sunday.
Apr 15th
I know it’s been a very long time since anything happened on here, but when you’re “just” training every day, it can get hard to think of any interesting updates. Since Urban 2-80-20 Geelong in Feb, I have just been trying to get back into a good training routine. The hardest thing has been to keep my motivation up all the time. When there is over 3½ months in between races it is hard ti stay focused. So there have been some off days recently, but it seems that as soon I there is under 8-9 weeks until race day I can get my head around it all!
Feb 16th
Being on the starting line at Urban 2-80-20 in Geelong last weekend, I went in knowing that it could go either way. Having raced only 3 weeks ago at Challenge Wanaka, I was a bit unsure if I hd the extra gears for the shorter distance of the 2.80.20. USM Events had arranged a small, but very strong elite field which included Clayton Fettell and Pete Jacobs on the start list so I knew it was going to be tough!
The weather forecast was for a little bit of everything from rain, wind and sun, just like the Danish summer!
When we arrive at race central just before 6am it started to pour with rain and basically didn’t stop. The start of the swim went as expected, there was no one who could follow Clayton and Pete. And I had enough problems with following Leon Griffen, Tim Berkel and Matty White. There was just no power in my arms and I ended up losing 1:15min to Leon’s group, with Clayton and Pete even further up the way.