So, all the hard work is done, the bike is racked, one last meal awaits and some body marking and a warm up separates me from the event I've trained for all year - Las Vegas 70.3 World Championships.
I'm over the moon to have reached this point in such good shape - one cold at the end of March and one chest infection after it plus the food poisoning before Cowman have cost me 5 days of training since Jan 2nd, and I've only missed one session of my sabbatical - a swim when I had food poisoning. I'm pleased to say no injuries, apart from Sunday's ankle sprain which fixed itself quickly. One infected wisdom tooth that could have derailed things, but didn't, and probably 2 hangovers that could've grounded mere mortals, but I managed to train through. The consistency, and the amount of enjoyment (and of course pain) that I've managed this year is up by at least 20% from the past 6 seasons that I've been competing in triathlons with increasing commitment, starting at 10 hours a week in 2006 and reaching about 18 this year.
That is one journey. On to another one, my drive from Scottsdale to Las Vegas, which was rather eventful as it turned out.
Firstly, there was a Haboob, otherwise known as a dust storm, which preceeds a real storm in the desert as the high winds pick up dust from the dry ground.
So that was one reason I feel so good going into this. I also banished all my demons by downloading a couple of important songs and running that evil hill from the course last year, that I particularly dreaded. Today I had a big smile on my face as I heard:
'Bulletproof, nothing to lose, fire away, fire away. ' - David Guetta
followed by:
' What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, stand a little taller; doesn't mean I'm lonely when I'm alone' Kelly Clarkson,
and, just for a laugh:
'I've got passion in my pants and I aint afraid to show it!' LMFAO.
That's because I'm inches away (well 70.3 miles to be precise) from getting my dancing shoes on... Its been a long time since my last little dancing on the bar post-race shenanigans...
Can't wait to get out there and put this machine to the test. For anyone wanting to track online, my start is at 7:30 pacific time, which is 3:30pm GMT and there is a tracker on www.ironmanlive.com bib number 1271.
Its' time to smash it.
I'm over the moon to have reached this point in such good shape - one cold at the end of March and one chest infection after it plus the food poisoning before Cowman have cost me 5 days of training since Jan 2nd, and I've only missed one session of my sabbatical - a swim when I had food poisoning. I'm pleased to say no injuries, apart from Sunday's ankle sprain which fixed itself quickly. One infected wisdom tooth that could have derailed things, but didn't, and probably 2 hangovers that could've grounded mere mortals, but I managed to train through. The consistency, and the amount of enjoyment (and of course pain) that I've managed this year is up by at least 20% from the past 6 seasons that I've been competing in triathlons with increasing commitment, starting at 10 hours a week in 2006 and reaching about 18 this year.
That is one journey. On to another one, my drive from Scottsdale to Las Vegas, which was rather eventful as it turned out.
Firstly, there was a Haboob, otherwise known as a dust storm, which preceeds a real storm in the desert as the high winds pick up dust from the dry ground.
You can see the line of the mountains in the background becomes invisible as I enter the dust storm. Weird. Then of course the storm itself hit, and I had the weird sensation of driving a car in the desert through roads awash with very heavy amounts of flooding! I made it out of that (temperatures dropped to 23, so cooler than its been at night the whole time I have been here) into the Joshua Tree National Park. Had to do the tourist thing, and nab an unsuspecting Mr Joshua for a photo....
And then, as I looked around for somewhere to readjust my fluid balance, I heard this tsst, tsst noise. And b*gger me, there was a rattlesnake. just right there, by my feet.
As you can see, he's kind of looking at me as if to say 'What are you doing in my desert?'. I won't make that mistake again in a hurry. Got back in the car quickly, and decided I could drive a lot further before finding a McDonald's for a pee!
Anyway right back to the present, and I'm in my very luxurious suite just a couple of blocks from the finish of the race. Its not the best organisation still, as its only the second year, and they have changed their mind over a few things, but I don't expect chaos tomorrow. I had a swim on the course this morning: its warm, brown and otherwise pretty nice. About 26 degrees so a bit like a muddy bath really. Today there was a fairly decent headwind out on the first half of the bike, but its forecast to be lower tomorrow. I felt great on the swim and bike, and then had a major blonde moment, which could have completely ruined everything. I locked the keys in my fancy-pants car, which automatically opens and closes its vast sliding doors, but apparently doesn't unlock the rest of the car... oops! So I got about 1.5 hours extra heat acclimatisation in my socks waiting for Luis, a nice bloke from 'Pop-em Locks' of Las Vegas to come and sort out my predicament! I'm sure he's had to deal with a lot more grisly scenes than my car - at least there were no bodies, or other CSI-type storylines.
I'm going to have to show off by putting some more inspiration that I used for tomorrow's race, when I checked in yesterday, my timing was perfect as double world Champion (Hawaii Ironman and Las Vegas Half) Craig Alexander was also checking in. A thoroughly nice bloke, he agreed to have his photo taken, and we joked about a little competition I have with Turbo Andrew Ingoldby where I have beers riding on him winning, but he said he's going to have beers anyway even if I don't!
'Bulletproof, nothing to lose, fire away, fire away. ' - David Guetta
followed by:
' What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, stand a little taller; doesn't mean I'm lonely when I'm alone' Kelly Clarkson,
and, just for a laugh:
'I've got passion in my pants and I aint afraid to show it!' LMFAO.
That's because I'm inches away (well 70.3 miles to be precise) from getting my dancing shoes on... Its been a long time since my last little dancing on the bar post-race shenanigans...
Can't wait to get out there and put this machine to the test. For anyone wanting to track online, my start is at 7:30 pacific time, which is 3:30pm GMT and there is a tracker on www.ironmanlive.com bib number 1271.
Its' time to smash it.
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