although I placed 3rd I am actually very happy with how the race went for me.
The gun went off and I got straight down to work. I know my swim is weaker
than the other top guys but I now really work on not panicking and swim my own
swim. I basically just try and keep the time the others put on me to an absolute
minimum. By the end of the swim Kieran Doe who exited the water first had
1:55min on me and the next group, which had all the other pre race favorites in,
was 50 sec up on me. Like I said I was prepared for this and once I exited the
water I quickly got down to business on the bike. My first target was the group,
which exited the water 50sec up on me, this group had the likes of Micheal
Poole, Callum Millward, Mark Bowstead and a few others. I managed to catch
and pass this group after about 7km and I managed to blow the group apart and
only took Callum and Mark with me. Now I was in to 2nd with Mark and Callum
riding 5 and 10 meters behind. Next on my radar was Kieran Doe, which at the
20km mark of the race his lead was down to 17sec so I knew it would only be a
matter of time before I caught him. I finally made the catch and took the lead at
the 25km mark. At this point the race looked like this: me in front with Kieran,
Mark and Callum all legally behind. At the 30km point Kieran, Mark and I all
knew that Callum was the in-form runner and if we wanted to win we had to put
some time into him before the run so the attacks started coming thick and fast
and by the 32km point Callum was gone. At the front of the race now was Mark
Kieran and I, and it stayed like this until the end of the bike section. In to
transition and then on to the run. Kieran managed to get a small jump on me, I
chased him and Mark was chasing me. Mark pulled himself up to me and we
ran together for a km or two which was good as we pushed each other and
doing this bought Kieran back which meant at the turn around point he only had
10sec on me. At this point Mark started to drop back and I went about chasing
Kieran on my own but he was running really well so I wasn’t making any
ground up on him. I now had the problem of Callum chasing me down and I
new he was making up time. Eventually Callum caught me with about 2km to
go, I tried hard to stay with him but just couldn’t quite hold on to him he
eventually went on to catch Kieran for a sprint finish. I came in 30 seconds later
to round out the podium. It was a really hard exciting race, which gave me a lot of confidence for the rest of the season as I head in to my key races which are the Tauranga Half Ironman and Ironman NZ. I feel my form is exactly where it needs to be at this stage of the season. As always the support I receive from you all enables me to do what I do and for that I am so grateful. The next four weeks will be all about getting ready for the half ironman on January 8th where I hope to finally “knock the Bastard off”. Over the last few years I have placed
6th,4th,3rd and last year second so I think its time!!!!
