# 827.....Come In Your Time Is Up

Only 10 days to go until IMKY and the bib numbers have just been posted. # 827 is me and it appears that I will have to duke it out with 376 other people for the 6 Kona slots in the 30-34 age group.

There have been some recent changes to the race details and it now looks as though the swim start will be a bit less chaotic. The previous format had been a time trial start because the river couldn't handle a mass start of 2500 athletes like in other IM races. The TT start made it a bit of hassle as you had to queue up on a jetty and just wait in line until you gradually got to the front. You can imagine how long it takes to get 2500 racers into the water....last year it was somewhere just under an hour. So for this year the TT remains but they have two start areas and hope to get everyone into the water in under 30mins. The race start is still 7am but people in previous years have started to queue before 5am.....jeez! Hopefully the double swim start will make it less of an issue to queue in the middle of the night :-)



The weather forecast looks a bit dicey 10 days out and I'm sure it will change a few times before race day but currently it looks like this:





Not blazing hot but T-Storms........it could be like ChesapeakeMan all over again!

Not Much Left To Do.......

Other than rest up, not work too hard and keep sharp. The Ironman taper starts tomorrow and you can only really make trouble for yourself in the next two weeks. You can't gain any fitness but you can carry on thinking that you can and just end up way too tired on race day. The last 6 weeks have averaged 17 hour training weeks and now the body just needs to absorb all of that and get ready to go all out on August 30th.

The taper doesn't mean zero work however, and I have my final tune-up race at a sprint triathlon on Sunday. The lack of fast-twitch work means that I probably won't be blazing fast (at least not with the regular short course racers) but it will blow away the cobwebs of racing and give some open water and transition practise. Plus it is a race that I have never done before and it is always interesting to do new races.

So what will I be doing over the next two weeks. This week coming will essentially be about 8-9 hours of training, based on easy-moderate workouts with nothing particularly hard. The body needs to easily recover from the workouts and so if the temps get too hot I may head inside for cooler sessions. The high temperatures always make training harder than they originally set out to be and you don't need to be slogging through the humidity at this stage of proceedings.

The final week will be short workouts of generally less than 45mins, making sure that all the equipment is firing well and getting as much sleep as needed. The final few days will be for travel and race preparation over in Louisville. By that time it will be ready to get into race mode to make sure that the everything is ready both physically and mentally!

Got Any Speed?.......

Enough of this long distance Ironman stuff....for two days anyway! Let's get some speed in here and see if we can wake up the fast-twitch muscles that must be lurking somewhere. This Saturday I am racing at the Diamond in the Rough International Distance triathlon, which comprises a 1 mile swim, 27 mile bike and a 5 mile run. Then on Sunday seeing that the race is a five minute ride from the house, I am racing the Dawg Days Crit. So has anyone got any speed that I can borrow?

The triathlon will be interesting as I am ditching the wetsuit and using my Xterra speedsuit for the first time in preparation for IM Louisville. At Louisville the water is always too warm for a wetsuit and so they are not allowed. Speedsuits are kind of like what the pool swimmers wear and provide a smoother, faster surface than a hairy chest or a tri-top :-) I'm pretty sure the water will be close to 78 degrees tomorrow so wetsuits may not be legal....race directors are always a bit sketchy on this as most people want to wear the wetsuit and so you might find the temp. is measured at 77.9999999 degrees! I did this race as my 2nd ever tri back in 2005 and so it will be good to see how I have progressed since then.....

Dawg Days on Sunday will just be a good workout. I have no expectations and plan on doing a 3-4 hour warmup earlier in the day on the TT bike. I don't have any crit race fitness to speak of at the moment and I will just try and help teammates as much as possible....we have our ace in the pack! It will also be a chance to get out on the road bike as I think it has been feeling a bit neglected of late :-)

After the weekend it is back onto the last 5 week block before the taper for IMKY....lets hope we get some hot and humid weather for race preparation.