Journey 2 Ironman Western Australia recap

In Route to Busselton!

    As the weekend approached, I wrapped up a great week of training without any hesitation about the extremely lengthy ride to come on Saturday. On Friday night I ended up staying at Nate Dogg's house because we were leaving his residence at 5am on Saturday to meet up with other riders (only 2 showed). Before I called it a night, I spotted a book at Nathan's written by former multiple world record holder Ron Clarke, whom I discovered managed to set all of these amazing records while working a normal job and having a family to tend to after the age of 26. Pretty inspiring read before the ride!

Ready to ROCK at 5am!

  Here I am at 5am leaving Nate Dogg's house, equipped with Hammer Gels, Shotz, 3 bottles, my camera, phone and mp3 player of course. It was freezing when we departed, unusual for Perth was the temperature, I think it was about 15 degrees, so it was about 50 or so for your people back home. I rocked out my TrySports gear and 2010 World Championship arm sleeves (thanks Kylee!). To keep me warm-up I also wore a 2XU vest with "the running centre" logo, it saved me big time!

The ride was EPIC to say the least, here is Nathan just in front of me leading the way just after Cody and Janna stopped on the freeway to greet us. Nathan was totally geared up looking like a pro rider out there, kudos for him for making the distance. he certainly had some rough patches but he survived enough to even throw a hard surge on me at 210k into the ride! We were so very fortunate for not having any flat tires or even close calls while riding 220k on the paths and freeway. After this ride I took a dip in the Indian Ocean and felt amazing!

View from our house stay in Yallingup, see the ocean?

Ironman swim finish

Ironman Western Australia swim finish, pretty intense! This is where I managed to lose my friends for the next 11 hrs, so I ended up getting in a long run and burning my face while spending $40 for brekky, but I had a front row seat to the Pro's racing as they ran past my patio spot while eating.

Break Your Limits

"Razor" Ray Lampard, had a cult in attendance as you would think they were a sponsor of the race because so many had "break your limits" shirts on. Great job to all of the "BYL" athletes who raced!
http://breakyourlimits.com/

While watching the race unfold, I was able to see Luke Bell numerous times around the course because it was a 4 lap spectator friendly layout. Here Luke was still maintaining his 2 minute lead until Courtney Ogden eventually overtook him for the strong win.

  Amazing to watch some of these athletes come off of the bike and run sub 3 for the marathon!

Millions of dollars in bikes

  Kate Bevilaqua entering the finish chute for her breakout Ironman win over Bec Keat. She truly pushed herself to the limits as she was in complete PIECES by this stretch. She looked as if she was hammering from 5k into the run and she just kept chugging along.

  It was a great day for Western Australia, because the male and female winners were both locals whom had a lot of support. This was both very inspirational and eye opening watching my my 1st ironman event. I truly know that I am not ready for this distance and hope to keep my goal of attempting my 1st one after I turn 30, which is around the corner!

Ironman Western Australia Winners


  Here I am just before we depart from the event, my face is burnt and red. Many people asked if I had not thought about using sun screen and I said well if I had my wallet or phone or my bag ( sunscreen in it)which was left in the car, then I would have gladly used some. Thankfully I took a step back instead of getting upset over losing my friends among the crowd, I soaked up the experience in every way. I had a great run with a group from Perth and even added an extra hour on with Simon, a local cannondale and sugoi rep.

  I want to give a big shout out to all of you who have completed the half or full ironman distance. It really takes so much dedication to training properly for these events, I don't think the rest of the population understands. I even stood in amazement, thinking about how crazy my life sounds with my minimal training regimen and to think these people were doing much more than I, with normal lives.

  It was a treat to see people such as Matt Illingworth (whom pieced my bike together after arriving from the US) rock out a 9:30 Ironman, but the kicker is he biked 4:30! Last year he split 4:17:25 for the bike record! OUCH. Sweet T, the training beast managed to break the big barrier of 9 hours with a time of 8:59:57, AMAZING! Scott Thomson, a "break your limits" athlete, also ripped up the course with a 9:36 Ironman in his debut! He rolled to a 3:05 run split, great job guys.

  Life is truly a gift for all of us (forgive me for getting philosophical), I hope that I can push my limits or "break" them as well as these people have. We all have our own individual gifts, it may be just your charisma, or the way you bake food, but I believe that I have some talent as an athlete and want to continue pursuing some lofty goals ahead of me. After cycling for 220k, while pulling for about 70% of the ride, it really gave me heaps of confidence on the bike. I managed to sleep a fair amount and then run nearly 2hrs the following morning and then come back on Monday with a double run. My fitness is truly coming around and I am very thankful that I have been injury free as I have eased into my workout load the best that I can.

   This Friday night I am very optimistic that I am capable of setting a new personal record for the 5k, as I will be racing against my good friends Cody Angell and Nathan Doig at Challenge Stadium. Cody always bring out the best in me, so hopefully I can focus and not falter with pushing the both of us along to new heights. The goal is to run sub 15:20 if not a bit faster, with the ultimate goal by the end of summer to break 15:00 for the 5k. My workout last week went very well, so we will see how my legs recover from the long weekend with my 5k under the lights. Thank you to all of the people whom I have been able to train with while here in Perth. Wish us luck this Friday night! I will post the results ASAP.

One last shout out to Jason Nuttman, whom faced a heat wave as well as a brutal course at the 2010 Asian Oceanic 70.3 world championships, placing 5th in his age group! Way to go

"Inspiration is among us everywhere, all you need to do is take a deep breath to take it all in and face the realization of it"