


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 >
Dec 10th
It is always special to go into an Ironman no matter what the build up, but at the end of the day it nothing else matters except how you feel on race day. I felt I had recovered really well from Ironman Cozumel which was only two weeks ago. I knew this race could go either way, but based on my history of backing up pretty well, I was confident it could go really well.
At the start of the week I made sure I got all the right treatment and arriving late Thursday afternoon in Busselton gave me time at home to recover and prepare right. I am quite familiar with the area having raced Ironman Western Australia three times before so coming later in the week was fine.
Race Day
SWIM
We had an early start with a 5.30am swim start but coming from the east coast of Australia with a three hour time difference, getting up so early wasn’t that tough.
We had a beach start & when the gun went off, I had a great start and got on the feet of Horst Reichel but only managed to stay there for 500m. I led the chase pack out around the jetty before I settled into second spot to try and save some energy.
I had a great transition and came out on to the bike course in second place with a group including Timo Bracht, Josh Rix and Matty White.
Aug 15th
After arriving in Copenhagen on Wednesday, we checked into our hotel and made our way to to the 5km Who Is Number One Fun Run. http://whoisnumberone.dk/ is a not for profit organisation established by a friend of mine Aleksander Markovic and its for cancer awareness.
It’s also doubled as an informal press conference with some of the pro and the media. It’s a really nice relaxed way to meet up with some of the other pro athletes and the media before the race.
Thursday I did some training with my Aeromax team mate Tim Berkel and Friday I had some easy training before I went to check out the expo, complete my registration and then joined Tim for an autograph session at the Newton stand.
Saturday was just about getting ready for race day and try to stay off my feet, although I did get one extra run session in late Saturday night when at 9pm I realised that I had forgotten to buy Vaseline and baby oil. Luckily I found a 24hr supermarket open not far from our hotel and I definitely got a couple of strange looks with my two purchases!!
More >
Jun 10th
Vi ankom til Cairns om onsdagen i ugen op til stævnet, og jeg var velvidende at jeg var i god form, efter at de 7 forgående uger var blevet brugt i Lennox Head, hvor jeg trænede sammen med resten af Aeromax team.
Cairns vejret var ikke den bedste i dagene optil stævnet med en del regn men temperaturen var omkring 20-25 grader, så det var ikke koldt.