Taper, carb load, race........

Race week is apon us, the Mt Half IM (NZ national long dist champs) is looming large and its time to freshen up and get ready for the day. I'm really looking forward to this years race to mix it up with some of NZ's best Triathletes. The field is always such a good one that for me to have positional goals is not optimal for my performance. This year I'm gunning for a sub 4hr race, my PB at the Mt is 4.06 so to take 6 min's off would be a great performance. I believe this is achievable with 2 years more racing and training under the belt since the last effort. I will have to be on my game in all disciplines, strong in the water, sensible on the bike and gutsy on the run. If I achieve this I will naturally be at the sharp end of the field! Its going to be great to see where I'm at and another good step along the way to IMNZ in March.

The last 3 weeks training have gone very well, my Quintana Roo Lucero is flying, Ive got a great powerful position on it and it will be well suited to the Mt course. It will be interesting to see what plays out as the guys who really attack the bike never run well around the Mount, I will be sticking to a plan and will have the blinkers on to what anyone else is doing. The goal after all is to get to the finish line as quickly as possible! Ian Thorpe wrote on this topic in his book that he approached all his races with the goal of swimming his best race possible. That never included thinking about what anyone did in the lanes beside him. If he swum his best race possible and was beaten, it didn't matter so long as he got every thing out of himself. That's the philosophy I try to apply to my races and will do the same on Saturday:)

This week is very light in terms of training, something every day but the goal is to be jumping out of my skin on race morning. I don't really like taper weeks as they can be quite boring but hopefully we will have some Cricket to watch on TV! Alex will keep me occupied anyway, shes just on the brink of crawling so is very amusing to watch and cheer on!

See you at the race....Dunc.