Greetings friends,
Another jaunt to the land of the rising sun, another near 2 hours of full throttle aerobic endeavor, and thus, another blog update hashed out during transit home. Travel has the unerring ability to put an end to my procrastination for a number of commitments, to the extent that if my uni workload ever gets too great, I’m considering booking a long haul flight to an irrelevant destination, for the express purpose of optimising my academic achievement. Perhaps an extreme measure, but my most salient point is that travel can prove to be productive time. I quite enjoy the chance to sit down, listen to some music, and only be disturbed by people bringing me food at regular intervals, with nothing better to do than get some important stuff done. Important stuff like blogging. Ahem. Yes indeed. Important.
So, Yokohama. After a few more weeks after Ishigaki scraping away at the coal face of running form, it was back to Japan to sup once again from the chalice of pain, this time at my first World Series race of the year. In a juxtaposition to the pre-race smack talk in Ishigaki, this time such high-brow confabulation amongst the Aussie team revolved around our choice of last meal, should we ever find ourselves on death row, found guilty of an unspecific, yet evidently serious crime. At this stage I’m leaning towards a loaf of bread, a toaster and a jar of peanut butter, with a side of sweet potato fries, washed down with a Pepsi Max and a short black. While I was pretty sure I’d be skipping to the electric chair whistling a tune after this indulgence, Moffy’s main concern was an unwanted survival of the execution, should she choose a significantly indulgent final ingestion.
Moribund indulgences confirmed, it was time to race. After a solid start to the swim, I lost a little more time than I would have liked through a combination of factors over the last 500m of the swim, and thus missed the small front group out of the water. Out on to the bike, and the Japanese deluge made it slipperier than Teflon on an ice rink, and though myself and Aussie hard-man Ryan Bailie rode hard, we didn’t have too much assistance from our group, and lost significant time to the lads up front by the end of the bike, but held our advantage to the third bunch. Onto the run, and I ran pretty solidly for the first 4km, but faded a bit over the last 6km, with my legs losing strength quicker than the Greek economy. I held things together enough to finish 19th, satisfying enough for my first WTS hit out of the year.
From here, it is back to Brislamabad (Brisbane) for another solid training block before my next series of racing. Next on the agenda is the twisted monolith of this years ITU calendar, the Kitzbuhel WTS. With the bike and run course going straight up the side of a mountain, the course resembles a stoners weekend plans i.e. Getting very high, very quickly. We’ll be pulling out a bag of tricks in preparation for this topographical menhir, including but not limited to altitude tents/chambers, gratuitous hill reps, and generally Trying To Be A Tough Bastard. I’ll leave specifics for later narrative....
Until such syntax arrives...
Take care friends,
Willy
