I decided to move up to Mooloolaba Queensland on the sunshine coast of Queensland.
There were a few decisions which i made the move for,
Firstly as a ever growing population and infrastructure, the roads around Sydney/ Cronulla are starting to get abit crowded for my liking.
Secondly Mooloolaba sprang to mind, as back in my earlier days of my short course racing, i always loved my weekend away up in Mooloolaba for the triathlon weekend, which back then was the last race on the Australian calendar for major events before the winter began and it also doubled as the Australian Olympic distance championships, so everyone was here to "go out with a bang."
For the past 5yrs or so my focus has been on longer distance racing, and this hasn't changed much with my first major goal of the season is Ironman Australia on May 3rd. But now having this iconic race (literally just outside my door) i couldn't pass up the opportunity to race one of my favourite events growing up.
As i am now in a Ironman block, i didn't leave any room for a taper, and choose to compete in the non-drafting event as this would be more suited for my racing. Like they say, "great minds think alike' as to my surprise a few other seasoned Ironman athletes were probably thinking the same, with Tim O'donald and Tim Berkel to name a few also through their hat in the ring for a solid hit out.
I really enjoyed it, from the exit of the swim, the top 6th basically stayed together, it was very hard to get away on this bike course as it was quite a flat course with relatively no wind and a mere 7m draft rule means that it was unlikely anyone would break away.
So i turned it into a 40km TT basically, trying to remain on the front of the group as much as possible as a hard 40km effort wasn't going to take to much out of me.
The run began, we all took off fairly quickly as expected for short course racing, Young ITU athlete Somi and Odonald took off and were fighting it off for 1st and 2nd, i was in 4th till about 5km into the run where i managed to run myself into the final podium spot.
Couldn't of got a better day of racing, enjoyed it and looking forward to Port Mac which is a bit over 6 weeks away.
See you next time
Paul
