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I’m heading over to race in the Sydney ITU age group race this Sunday. Part of it’s racing on the Olympic course which is pretty cool and we get to race over the Sydney harbour bridge. That’s sounds good too, but also could be scary windy. The last race I did with a bridge in it was in the Catlins and I came off my bike! But lucky for me I still managed to win and got a nice trophy Anyways, bridges scare me now.

The race is an Olympic distance triathlon: 1500m swim / 40km bike / 10km run

In my age group there at 80 competitors which is huge. That’s way more than we had at the world champs in Budapest. We start in age groups, so 80 of us will be all starting together at the swim – a deep water start.  I also know the run has an awful hill in it which we run up, turn around and run down and do that twice. It’ll be where the race is won or lost.

Riding over the Sydney harbour bridge

Race start is 6:35 which is crazy early. Means I’ll need to be up super early to get down there and organised. Lucky we’ll be on NZ time so it won’t feel so early.

I’m staying in a hotel room with a couple of other NZ triathletes (Emma and Chris Rathbone) so I’ll put some photos up next week.

Coach has me on a taper week this week. That means a lot less training hours.

Today my workout was:

10 min swim

15 min bike

10 min run

Since the earthquake here in Christchurch on Feb 22nd our work has moved out to Hornby as our 8 story building in the CBD is to be demolished. It means it’s 16km to work and traffic is chaos with noone able to drive through the CBD. Along with the increased petrol price this would cost me loads to drive to work each day. So I’ve decided to bike. It’s a decent 30 – 35 min bike. Although today I rode pretty hard wanting to make a PB and did it in 29mins, yeah! I could definitely go faster if I ditch the backpack and go into my aero-bars rather than on my hoods.

Smart training. What I’ve been doing is incorporating my workouts into my bike, either to, or from work. Today I biked to the pool (15mins), swam 10 mins, biked to work (20mins), then ran 10 mins. Had a lovely shower and was ready for work. Now that probably took as long as driving in the traffic!

I’ll leave you with some words of the wise (my coach Graham Park )

The most successful triathletes are those who mentally block out pain, fatique, doubt and despair. They push beyond their limits drawing energy from untapped reserves.