Wet and windy bank holiday in Auckland

Well, I have flown 36 hours in order to experience a bank holiday weekend not unlike our own in the UK!

It is 3 days before the Age Group event in the ITU World Triathlon Championships, 2 days before the men's elites, and 1 day before the women's elites. And we are all hoping against all logic that the weather will improve. Its currently about 7-10 degrees at night and up to 15 in the day (if you're out of the wind and between showers!) and I've seen a lot of athletes really worried about race day. The organisers are saying no clothing over the top of your national race suit unless its an unbranded clear jacket (who has one of those??!)
This is me at the top of the Savage Memorial, one of the aptly named 4 sharp little climbs on the bike course, which we have to do 4 times.

So on Monday it will be mind over matter. To be honest, after racing in Eton at 10 degrees air temp, and swimming in Shepperton at 9 degrees water temp I am well prepared. Although there is no way I'd have gone out on my bike at home in gale force winds like we had this morning. I rode my bike around the North Shore and investigated lots of lovely areas like Mairangi bay and Brown's Bay. Its a really sport-oriented culture here - many people live here and compete at a high level in all sorts of sports - Surf live saving, netball, rugby as well as swimming for New Zealand. Down at the Millenium high performance centre there are silver ferms every where you look, and even Olympic medal-winners hanging around on poolside coaching the kids. And down at the Triathlon Expo we had Hamish Carter and Javier Gomez (top pro athletes) meeting and greeting the athletes today.

The last week has gone about as well as you could hope - highs being training in the Parnell Baths (above, sea filled and 17 degrees) and the wonderful food and company of the Mckenzies who I am staying with, lows being my ribs still giving me grief, and my luggage not arriving for another 24 hours after I did.
But I'm feeling relaxed and confident ahead of the race, based on having done all the hard work this summer, and testing out the swim course earlier, plus the bike course and going for a blustery beach run yesterday.

The parade of nations was fun, and we all got to wander around in our GB kit while checking out all the other nations kit and deciding what is worth swapping for.

Hope you like the photos, and that this conveys some of the preparations and the excitement ahead of the big event. Hoping to get a good view of the elite women's race tomorrow from the Grandstand, and another couple of days of getting blown about before it all kicks off at 09:20 (GMT-12) on Monday i.e. 9:20pm UK time on Sunday.

Sleep, pain and the Land of the long white cloud

I'm just getting ready to head off to Auckland this weekend for the ITU World Championships.
The past 4 weeks being back at work seem to have flown by, but its been a good experiment in extending my peak conditioning phase while not actually putting many hours of training in. The dark mornings haven't helped, but I've managed 5 mornings of 6am alarms to train before work this week.

Its been hard to train effectively with my ribs still recovering from the bike crash, but I keep reminding myself that, as Chrissie says: 'pain is a conversation between the mind and the body'. I proved that by racing successfully at the Votwo race in Dorney, rather annoyingly being beaten into 2nd by 15 seconds - a result of having raced in the men's wave not the women's. That will teach me to get too big for my boots! That, together with the Speedo Hampton Court Swim had proved to me that I can handle the cold in a swim again, after getting used to the balmy bath temperatures in Las Vegas.

Anyway, as usual I've been thinking.... about two different things. Firstly, now is the time to be planning the race season for 2013, and I've been helping out athletes both new and old to the sport to enable them to both assess their current season, learn from it and to form the right goals for next year. Its very rewarding and it is good practice for me to make sure I can answer the same questions for myself to my coach Tom Bennett at T2 coaching like:
1. what are my strengths and how to make the most of them?  Answer: work ethic, resilience. I will be looking at another set of mentally tough races next year to test my resilience in 2013!
2. What are my weaknesses? lack of self confidence and sometimes self-belief. I really surprised myself this year because deep down I didn't think I was capable of the results I've achieved.
3. How will I do things differently in 2013? - I have learned a lot about myself, my ability to make great leaps in performance by raising my game, and I know the conditions I need to allow this to happen next year. And rest is the key.

This is my second point- I'm thinking that there is something to be said for sleep being key to being able to make breakthroughs - for one simple reason - pain thresholds. I've noticed that while my ribs are still inflamed, I feel very forlorn, like the little meerkat that was bitten by the snake on the BBC's Life of Mammals and I am not able to push myself as my pain thresholds are not good enough.When I've slept a bit more, then I'm much more able to withstand and push through the pain -this is a well documented phenomenon, see Pertovaara et al. and any number of references to the HPA axis in response to pain.

So I'm thinking about ways to get myself new targets for next year based on achieving a set number of hours of sleep. We all know how hard it is just to get to bed at a decent time during the week. I think I need competition to encourage me. What about a strava equivalent for logging your sleep hours? No idea if it will catch on, but I want to be proud to rest more in 2013, and I'm looking for incentivisation.

Speaking of sleep, I need to try to get a whole lot of that during my 36 hour journey starting this Sunday- I've never raced this far from home so it will be a new experience to fly in on Tuesday and race the following Monday with a 13 hour time difference.

Have a great weekend and for those racing Kona - have a blast, I'll be following in envy ahead of setting this as a goal for the future. And of course it will be one way of staying awake on Saturday to make sure I sleep well on the long flight!