First Post - A few days to go!

It was a busy weekend down in the New Forest, with Race New Forest's Long course triathlon - 'The Forestman' taking pace again.  I arranged to help race organisors, Richard and Joanne Iles on the saturday before as well as organise a drinks station, along with Zoom Tri, at the Abbottswell end of the run course where runners would come by at 8, 14.5 and 21 miles.  This was the third year that Zoom Tri club had volunteered to help at this location.  Similarly, Farnham Tri Club, Salisbury and Southampton Tri Club had all done the same at other locations along the course.

I was fortunate enough to be allowed to get some open water practice ahead of Ironman Austria this week, by taking part in the swim only of the Forestman.  There was thick fog for the 5:30am start which meant a slight delay, but after only 10 minutes we were off on our 3 laps of Ellingham Lake.  Sighting was made difficult due to the fog but I managed to have a canoe to follow for the second and third laps, making it slighly easier.  With such a small field (140) it was easy to find clear water but not easy to find a good draft, meaning I swam it all on my own and I couldn't hold on to team mate Will Newbury's feet for more than the first 50  metres.  I manged to exit in 53:15, much to my suprise and a welcome confidence boost ahead of this weekends Iromman.  I have to admit that the swim may have been 200-250 metres short which would still give me an 56-57 min IM swim.  For now though I have a new 3.8k swim pb :-)

Also this weekend saw clubmate Chris Booth record a fantastic time of 11:04 at Ironman Nice.  Having trained a bit with Chris over the winter and seen him constantly improve, it was not unexpected as I predicted he would be around 11 hours.  It is still very pleasing to perform on the day.

With just a few days of preparation and tapering left I am starting to feel a little bit of nervous excitement ahead of this weekend.  A few last small training sessions to do, need to get the bike serviced by Dave Doust on his return from a succesfull RAAM adventure with Team Feat.  I fly out on friday with Lee Piercy from Stanstead in what I hope to be a great weekend!