Auckland ITU World Champs Preparation

~ Monday Oct. 15th – Ready to Go ~

We are all packed and ready to go on the biggest trip of our lives. Packing seems to have taken a while but we are now pretty much done and just want to go today, but we have one more day of work / school before we start the journey tomorrow morning.

I went for a final training ride on my bike yesterday in full race trim with race tyres on. It’s always good to give it a shake down ride, although I’m not sure how much use that will be as I then had to give it a good clean and polish and pack it away into it’s bike box ready for the journey to Auckland. The ride itself was OK, fairly easy out to Talybont, then a hard fast loop around the Borth Loop back to Talybont before a steady ride back home. The race tyres are certainly faster than my training tyres and roll so much better but I still wasn’t fast. I was one-minute slower than my best, conpleting the loop in 35:42 compared to my bast (non-aero hatted) time of 34:42. With my aero hat on I’ve done it in 34:26.

Oh well, there’s nothing I can do about it now. I haven’t been running for about 10 weeks so my running will be terrible and my biking doesn’t seem that good either. I was wearing a jacket yesterday which although fairly tight certainly isn’t as aero as my tri-suit so maybe that was a factor. I haven’t been for a swim in the sea for over a month either so I’m not really feeling ready for the race – But then again I guess you never do feel ready for such things.

Hopefully a weeks taper and some rest will prove to be just what I need and come this time next week I’ll be ready to fly around the course.

All Packed

My bike is now packed away and ready to go. In the bike box with it is my wetsuit, swim hats and goggles, track pump and tools, my helmet, race belt, heart rate monitor, race repair kit, waterproof jacket, energy gels, several spare inner tubes and my running shoes. I have a baggage allowance of 30kgs and that little lot comes to 25kgs. Well within the limit. The other bags with all of our kit in come to 17kgs and 14kgs each. We first thought that we might have trouble with the baggage allowance, but we will be fine. Initially athletes had 30kgs allowance and non-athletes had 20kgs, but the airline decided that would be difficult to manage so everyone has been given 30kgs. We would have been OK with the lower limits but have room for plenty more now. We’ve even managed to pack a car seat for Morgan to use in the campervan.

Mind you, it does have to be said that we seem to have more gadgets than is really necessary.

Tags: New ZealandTriathlon