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Friday, January 7, 2011

And so it begins

In less than 24hrs it's all on again for 2011 race season. Except while most MTB'ers are choosing whether to go with the National Cup race in Tauranga, or the N-Duro in Rotorua, I've made the obvious choice....

.... Tauranga half ironman

Maybe not the typical choice for an off road athlete. NZ's premier half ironman, with a flat fast bike course that favours the strong swim/bikers. I'm on a bit of a hiding to nothing as while its a draft illegal race... the speeds are that high that the front of the race is a freight train, and I will have been unhitched very early (like in the first few hundred metres of the swim).

Nevermind, it becomes a very hard self paced time trial of swim/bike/run for hopefully not too much more than 4hrs. After giving it a nudge last year, its exciting to go back and try and improve my perfromance. I've got a time goal rather than a placing to strive for....And it should really benefit my "base" fitness for the upcoming MTB season... which will probably start the next day.



After a few visits to the candy shop that is the wideopen warehouse, my sweet Avanti chrono is now all decked out in vision parts, fast wheels, and all ready to go.

Unfortunately we can't afford wind tunnel testing... so a solid weeks training in Palmerston North between christmas and new years was the next best thing. I tried to have an easy week this week, but the weather didn't really cooperate. Stunning sunshine "forced" me into a couple of MTB missions... including the Moerangi trail. 36km of Singletrack epicness. Am sure that's a good taper? Will soon find out tommorrow.



Despite my mocking of triathletes and the "all the gear, no idea" mentality I'll even be sporting this piece of go fast goodness. Although judging by the name tag inside the helmet I'm not sure it will ever have been as slow as its likely to be tommorrow?!

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