Towards the Season Finale

TTW in retrospect

My own role with the race has been mostly to be an athlete and race hard to put on a good show.  The results in the end were perhaps a bit disappointing as I finished 3rd but the race itself was definitely a good show! 

The swim was pretty amazing as pretty much the entire course there were spectators within a few meters that I could hear and see.  The venue with truly amazing with massive sailing ships on the sides and stonewalls rising up from the banks of the river Aura.  I suppose my results in the swim suffered because I was not paying attention to the race enough but looks around at the amazing place I was swimming!  Lesson learned… when the gun goes off, focus 100% on doing my best possible swim. 

Having given away a couple extra minutes on the swim to the top two guys, I knew I would have a hard bike ride ahead of me and quickly settled into a tough but sustainable pace.  Rolling onto the E18 highway for the first lap was a pretty cool experience having driven it many times.   At least in this segment of the race, I was able to focus well on my efforts and by the end of the bike I had taken back almost all of the 4,5 min lead the front guys had. 

Flying into the run, I started at a tough but sustainable pace just like I did in the bike.  Unfortunately, the front guys were able to start harder than me and I lost 1 min to them in the first 5km.  After that it more or less stayed the same the rest of the day and near the end I was able to even pull back a bit of time. 

It was quite a surprise to myself and probably everyone that the young Turku athlete Henrik Goesch was able to not only hang with the legendary Timo Bracht but actually drop him in the closing stages of the run to take the win.  A truly amazing performance for a young guy in his FIRST half Ironman!  I am looking forward to a rematch with him and Timo next year! 

^{©Aarni lehto / valonhiljaisuus}

The Final Push

After my exciting day out in Turku, I recovered as best as possible for a few days before pretty quickly getting into the real heavy efforts of my final preparations for Ironman Chattanooga, which is the main goal for the year.  It was a pretty tough first week of training coming after a 4 week block of racing that included two half Ironman events and one full distance.   But I suffered through that first chunk and by the 2nd week I was seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and began to feel a lot better.  The 3rd week was the toughest in the Ironman buildup training and included some REALLY long training days but the results were very positive and I have loved the training!   Ok, the ‘heat training’ in the sauna perhaps got a bit crazy…

Now I have a week of very easy days to ‘suck up’ all the hard work I have put in during the past 7 weeks.  After this brief recovery period, we do a final week of race pace training to get tuned up for the event in two weeks.  At this point I can easily say I am at the highest level of fitness I have ever had and mentally I am more than ready to take a step up in my Ironman racing.  The only thing left to do now is execute the final few days perfectly and then do my thing on race day!

It has been a very different kind of approach to the year where I have been able to slowly build the whole season toward this one race.  I am very confident this approach will generate to results and I look forward to sharing more of this experience when the race is near.  Check in soon!