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.

Blog #1 :)

My first blog, hmmm, Im not much of a diary writer but hopefully I will become a little better at it going forward;). I intend to use this site as a mode of informing family, friends, sponsors and any other interested people of my activities mainly specific to Triathlon training, racing and all things associated with it. Hope you enjoy, chur.........

At present I'm in training for the Tauranga Half Ironman, our national long distance champs. This is also a stepping stone along the way to Ironman NZ in March in Taupo. Things are progressing along well, Ive had some great sessions with several top local and national athletes that has spurred me along and is getting me race ready. It has been a bit of a trying time also with me having to withdraw from the recent Taupo Half with a slipping seat post. I had just got my new titanium Quintana Roo TT bike, a real weapon of a bike but unfortunately I didn't have any long rides on it leading up to the race and not enough time to make sure everything was working aok. Not to worry, on the positive side it gave me an extra week of hard prep for Tauranga so it may have been a blessing in disguise!
2 weeks to go now till the race, I wont be indulging on new years eve, I will do the honours with babysitting Alex (good time to discuss how the days training has gone and get her opinions on things as in pic above!) and let Mand's get merry instead:) Hopefully I can do some celebrating on Jan 10th!

Will keep you updated on how things are going.........