History With The Big Dance



This is for Miners and anyone else who may care. My history with the Ironman is:






  1. 2001 Completed my first IMOZ in Forster. Went in very, very fit but young and inexperienced. Completed the first 90km of the bike 10min faster than my HIM times. I paid for this later. Never felt so much pain for so long, but it was worth it. Nothing like hearing "You are an Ironman!"

  2. 2002 Forster again, not as fit, but good, solid race.

  3. 2003 Forster. Discovered that if you really don't train, it becomes a very slow, long and hard day.

  4. 2004 IMWA in Busselton. Loved being part of the inaugural race. Went out way too hard (again) and blew up majorly. Managed to redeem myself over the last 11km of the run, after recovering somewhat and ran stupidly fast to break 12hours. My slowest race, but one of the most rewarding.

  5. 2006 IMOZ in Port Macquarie. DNF. Got pummeled in the swim start, ouch. Exited the swim and vomited. Got on the bike and vomited. Drank some water and vomited. Didn't drink water and vomited. Ate some food and vomited. Didn't eat any food and vomited. I noticed a trend. Somehow I made it onto the run and started feeling good. 5km later the vomiting all started again. Somewhere before the 20km mark I left the course in an ambulance.


Looking to conquer Port Macquarie in 2008. Good luck to all those racing it next week!

"I have not failed 10,000 times. I have successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work." -Thomas Edison

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sandy Point Half Marathon

Image
Any race that uses a picture of myself as promotion makes me think I should compete in it. Wouldn't want to disappoint the masses. Last year my race slow and cold over the same course. A time of 1:30:20, was disappointing and a kick up the backside to get to what really works in training. Since then I have put in a lot of consistent kilometres and have seen some improvement. I was definitely going to race faster this year. Based on my race results over the last few months the hope was to see if I could get down to near 1:24:xx. The weather was very different this year. Far from cold, in fact I think it was our warmest night in a few months. However, there was a Damaging Winds warning issued, with predictions of 65km/hr gales to slow things downs a bit. The winds hit, according to the weather sites: NNE averaging around 50km/hr with gusts of 76km/hr. That made for some interesting race tactics. Luckily the rain held off until after the race. For some reason I felt ready with only 1...
Read more

Fitting Together

It's interesting how easy it suddenly becomes to prioritise aspects of life. I have missed plenty of training in the last week, but for the first time in my life, it really, and I mean really doesn't matter. That's not to say I am throwing training on the back burner. Far from it. Of course I am finding it hard working out how life now all fits together, but I am thoroughly enjoying the process. Training is now just part of the puzzle. What was a very easy load a couple of weeks ago, is now just manageable. This is what I anticipated. As things settle down and I work out of few things the training load should again become much easier. At the moment it looks like I will be able to get in all the key sessions, so in reality it is going fine.
Read more

The Gorge

For work I am currently stationed away from my normal branch. This is a recent roster change that I am not too happy about due to a number of reasons that I won't go into here. The good thing is that it gives me different roads to ride on when commuting. Nothing like a bit of variety to break things up. One particular bit of terrain that I now get to cover is known as the Gorge. It is exactly as the name suggests. The road that takes you into the Gorge is simple. One side is a very wide bend, that could almost be thought of as a straight road. The other side involves a couple of reasonable bends, which wouldn't normally be an issue, but can be when hitting speeds of 60km/hr on the descent. I want to make it clear that the Gorge is far from the toughest of climbs, while quite steep on both sides it is relatively short. So what is it about the Gorge. For me it has provided a good bench mark for my cycling fitness. Back when I first started on the bike it took all my ef...
Read more