It’s not long now till UK 70.3. I entered this last year because it’s our local race. The first time I rode the bike route I doubted my decision to enter. Familiarity has tamed the route a little bit. It is hilly, there are some steep bits and it won’t be the quickest but it is very interesting and in places incredibly fast. I think I’m looking forward to racing !

I headed up there today, during a gap in the rain, to meet Roger and ride a lap of the course. I had said “If it’s pissing down I won’t be coming” so he can be forgiven for not being there as not long after the 2:30pm meet time it was seriously pissing down. I almost felt trapped … it had been so nice getting there but while I waited in the cafe with my coffee the heavens opened. I waited till 3:20pm before deciding I just had to brave it. I got soaked. 15 minutes under a hot shower sorted me out. Didn’t leave me feeling like swimming tonight though so I happily checked my projected monthly hours and realised it would be a good thing not to swim !

This week has been pretty solid. In the past week I’ve swum 14km, biked 365 miles and run 44 miles. It’s my final big week ahead of Austria. Tomorrow the plan is to do zilch. Then Sunday I’m going to give it a real good go. My plan is to push pretty darn hard on the bike and try and mimic the legs ache of 112 miles in 56 miles so I can see what state my run is in. Not like I can do much about it before Austria but it’ll be good to get a solid effort across all disciplines before I start my taper.

My focus has been my running which I’ve been steadily building up. The target in my mind is running well at Ironman Wales. This means I’ve done my progression ignoring the race the weekend, tapering for Ironman Austria before building up again through Epic France. This week and last week will be 50+ miles each and each have included a 30km run. Last weeks long run completely destroyed me – I had to take the Wednesday off. This week I ran 32.5km, interestingly I went through 30km in exactly the same time as last week then at 31km I quite literally fell apart and forced myself through at 6+ min/km. Then wednesday I felt good – my ride produced my highest VDOT this year. I felt so good I headed out for a 15km run. I felt terrible but bashed on. Note this is the opposite to what I said in the previous post – I got some feedback on that and I decided to push on despite being very tired. I’ve rested up from running since then hoping to get my running legs in place for Sunday.

Feel pretty excited about racing…