The photo is a brand new Yellow Jersey and as current holder of if I’ve the pleasure of starting this camp tomorrow in Yellow. Should get a photo in it just in case it’s my only day in yellow ! I hope not. Already I can see that I’m getting drawn in to it thinking how best I can play the points. The changes in the rules really aren’t playing to my strengths. There are no additional points for cycling. You get 4 points for completing the days ride and thats it. Furthermore if you don’t complete all the riding you’re not eligible for yellow at all. In effect this means that cycling counts for absolutely nothing in terms of winning yellow unless everyone fails to complete ! I guess there’s the odd TT where you could pick up points by being fast.

So swimming – there will be a few opportunities for getting extra 3ks of swimming – I will grab all of them. Perhaps there will be a marginal day – say 1h20 of swim time and I could try and crank out 6k ! With luck some of the sets will allow me to get extra points that others can’t.

Running this time is done on distance with 10ks counting for a point and if you hit 25k you get an extra bonus of 2. You can do this twice. You can tack on as much running as you like. Now, I’m not running as fast as I was so this now being distance rather than time based makes it tougher. Tomorrow we are running 20k as a minimum so an extra 5k will get the bonus. I’m sure loads will do it and my reaction is of course I will. However, when I engage my brain I  think I definitely shouldn’t. In fact, by not doing it tomorrow I could set the right precedent for myself. My compromise thought is … I’ll run the 20k and see how I go. There’s no reason the foot won’t hold up. As long as I’m prepared to back off if I feel anything untoward.

Getting handed the yellow made me feel a little pressure and certainly a need to give it a shot !

It’s a big camp, seems like 25 riders. Think I’ve managed to speak to them all and they seem a great bunch. Everyone looks so fit but I know that you can’t really assess how strong someone is till you’re out riding and done a few days. Will try and do as little work as possible until the dust settles a bit.

Got chatting to one guy, Roger I think. He follows this blog and told me how at Kona last year after the race he was telling his wife how he’d seen this guy just collapse on the run. Just fall over like a felled tree in agony. Then someone grabbed his foot and he screamed. He then read my blog and realised it was me !

I really feel for Jo though. She tweaked her foot a few days a go. It seemed minor at the time but has been sore to run on since. It’s looking like she won’t be able to run tomorrow – the first event on the camp. I’m impressed though at how upbeat she is. Taking the right attitude. The run minimum is purely 105km over the whole camp so she can make up the distance later in the camp.