Almost there now!

Today was a sad day for our little training group, Andew C (Eddie) came off his bike and has broken his colloar bone and will require surgery! This happened whilst he was riding with Andrew M, Jase and I on our last ride before all participating in the Port Macquaire Half Iron Man next week. Its a real shame, because he has put so much effort into this, and he has been looking forward to this for so long, and to seriously injure himself 1, just 1 week out is terrible! It shows how brittle we really are, and how very careful we need to be when out training....accidents happen so quickly. Whilst Eddie is devastated, his physical injury will heal, and he is already getting 'angry' for IM 2011....a slight hiccup for him in this journey for him, but he has all the motivation to continue on when he is able to and with greater enthusiasm! As I said to him, the boys will be waiting for his return and will be there to give him the support and encouragement to bring him back up to speed! Hang in there Eddie....

As for me this week, well, I had a bloody tough one, and so it should be given this coming week is a taper. Phew.....man, I have had some hard weeks of late, and a lighter one is most welcome. The highlights were tuesdays run, which was a 20km run with 2 x 10min efforts in the middle. When I run on my own, I keep the average pace at 4.30ish, and the efforts were at 3.40 so when I finished up, I was royally rooted! Good set though. The other really though set was a brick session on Thursday morning, which was 70mins on the TT with 5min efforts at 'hurting' levels, followed by a 8km run off the bike, 5km at race pace. I ran the 5km at 3.45 pace and by the end was sore and farked! My shin was giving me a little bit of grief, a niggle caused by me over running. Not that this is Rollo's fault, he tells me to run my longer runs much slower, but I seem to push a little more, so will have to try and follow the advice more in the future....that near half marathon on Tuesday has meant I have pretty much run 4 half marathons in under 2 weeks (all at just over 90mins as well)...plus all the riding and swimming and race pace efforts along the way....no wonder I had some fatigue in the legs!!!

I ran 100mins with Andrew M yesterday which was good, and we followed that up with our usual ocean swim off terrigal beach. It was crystal clear right out to the bouys which made my concerns over sharks a lot less...phew, now I could spot them coming from 50m away!!! And do what....I am still not sure, but at least I could panic for longer I guess! Andrew M suggested I could make history and be the first triathlete attacked by a shark at port this coming weekend, knowing my luck of those animals!!

The ride session today was great! Apart from seeing Eddie come off the bike and wathc him realise his Iron Man dream was over for 2010, which was really sad, the rest of the session was good. It was hard as we had a bunch of 10km efforts along the way to riding just a touch over 80km, and then running 8km off the bike, 4km at 4min pace, so it was really good. As always, i am so grateful to be able to do what I do, and seeing eddie come off and hurt himself made me very aware of really how grateful we should be!

So, the summer of this week is :

Swim : 8.5km (3hours)
Cycle : 130km + 2.5hours on TT - 8hours
Run : 55kms (4.5 hours)
Total : 15.5hours (ish)

One week to go, and man, am I looking forward to downing at least 2 beers for every hour it takes me to finish the Half Iron Man. Its been over 2 weeks since I have had a beer, and anyone who knows me, will know that for a normal person, that is probably the equivalent of 2 years....How many beers will I have next sunday night? Not sure. My wife reckons I will be tanked on 2 only, and if thats all it takes...great, but I think it will be a fair few more than that. I have an idea of the times I would like to achieve, so let me put them out there now. Firstly though, the goal is to simply finish, thats all I need to do, but if I am to put a time against each leg then it is :

1.9km Swim : 30mins
90km Cycle : 3.15hours (definitely a huge stretch for me)
21km Run 100mins

That should get me home in a touch over 5 hours, but there are a few things to consider. Those times are based on great conditions and probably a flat course. Port is not flat, so my cycle will be a lot slower than I would like, but thats also down to me not really being strong enough, but as i said in my last blog, put the stretch goals in, so they are!

Well, I have put my money where my mouth is, and we will see how I go next week. I am pretty nervous, mainly because of the bike, but I'll get a grip and get on with it soon enough....

On another note, Vlad has entered into the WA Iron Man in December, and I am going along to watch...it will be great to once again watch an Iron Man live, and to be able to provide Vlad and Skinny Wiggle support all the way over there.....

So, until next week, which will be my race report....have a good one, and Eddie, get well son!!