It's great to be home after a fantastic 16 weeks traveling around the world. It was fantastic to have the opportunity to race in some of the best and biggest races on the Ironman circuit. Both the Quelle Roth Challenge and the Canadian Ironman lived up to the hype. I also competed in the Switzerland 70.3 and a local Swiss race. We visited a number of places around the world and managed to do a few touristy things along the way. The places we visited included, Montreux and Vevey in Switzerland, Roth and Frankfurt in Germany, New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas in the USA, Toronto and Pentinton in Canada and Raratonga in the Cook Islands. So if anyone needs any travel advice don't hesitate to ask. We met some awesome people and learnt a lot about traveling and most of all traveling on a small budget.
My results were mixed while over seas. I was very happy with my middle two races, a little disappointed with my last one and either way on my opening race. Below is a brief description of each race.
1. Ironman 70.3 Switzerland: This race was a bit of an experiment as we had only arrived 3 days earlier. We did an organised practice ride (1 lap 45km of a 2 lap course) a few days before the race and the the terrain was hilly and the pace was hot. The day of the race the lake was 15 degrees (freezing) I had an excellent swim and exited the water in about 5th position. The bike proved to be even harder than i had imagined and i felt pretty ordinary for most of the bike, i exited the bike transition in about 16th with a lot of work to do. I didn't feel great on the run but managed to work into it and ran 1hr 31min for 21km which i was happy with. I finished 15th overall (At the end of the race i concluded that most of my time in Switzerland would be spent on my bike going up hills).
2. My second race was a local race about 40km from Montreux in Yverdon Les Bains. The race was an olympic distance draft legal race and i was going into it with plenty of tough bike miles in my legs. The day was a scorching 30 degrees but as it turned out i had a great race. The women started 5 minutes behind the men and i managed to catch all of the men bar 4 to record the fastest swim split of the day. I then found a good pack of men to work with on the bike and almost managed to break the hour for 40km. I also ran pretty strong and finished 11 minutes in front of the next female and 4th overall having run 38.30 for the 10km. The race was a good confidence booster for the coming weeks.
to be continued....