Here I am...

In the blink of an eye... a few thousand lengths of the pool... a handsome amount of cycling and plenty of running mileage under my belt we're here in Vancouver (well Victoria actually) and I can't believe how quickly it's come round. For you guys reading this it will be Monday but for us it's Sunday evening and we both feel a bit wrecked from the journey, the missing bag, the endless hours spent on transport, top that off with sleep deprivation and you'll understand why things all seem a bit surreal!

I can't wait for the race on Sunday, I'll be giving it my all in my GBR kit which has the Southern's logo proudly printed on it all and having the kind support of Andy KJ, his lovely family and his wonderful office furniture company has made our trip out here a little easier, so a huge thank you AKJ, it's really appreciated.

I've had to be a bit ruthless with this race. Of course qualifying and having the opportunity to race in the GBR kit is fantastic and I can't wait to get over to Vancouver (on Thursday) and be part of the team. Unfortunately it's fallen in the worst place in my training schedule for Ironman Germany which is of course my 'A' race. This means that I'm going to have to go into the race on Saturday a little fatigued and with no taper. In fact the week leading up to flying out here has been one of the toughest weeks I've had and I'm still feeling the effects of that and we still have some big sessions to do while we're here but I'll still give it my all for Queen and country come the day.

Last week was massive with some great quality both mentally and physically, culminating in my biggest training session to date. A 107 mile ride with a 20 mile run off it. It was arranged by Tom and our mate Ben G (training for IM Switzerland) and they'd planned the route for the ride and the run, quite simple really... ride 7 times round a 15 mile loop, get off the bike and run 1 mile out and 1 mile back...ten times. Now that's a session not just for the body but for the mind and on completing it (and believe me when I say there were moments when I really didn't think I could do it) I was exhausted, bent over double and unable to speak, but hugely elated. A few LBT'ers came to play too, Martin, Ady and Richard L all did their thing out there and it helped push me on when things were getting tough. My shoulders were killing from being on the tri-bars for 5 and a half hours and then I had terrible stomach cramps on the run for the first 7 miles and couldn't face anything except water which meant that I was a bit low on energy. Seeing Tom finish an hour before me was mentally tough too as I still had 8 miles to go when everyone else had finished and that I found hard but I did it and it was a fantastic session.

So here I am in a beautiful part of Canada, our room overlooks the sea which we could walk to in less than a minute it's so close. We're up at 6am to run to a lake about 2 miles from here which we'll swim in and then run back. Then after breakfast we're off for a 3-4hr easy ride , home for lunch the we'll do our Tuesday tempo run in the evening round Elk Lake. It looks like a fantastic place to train and we're looking forward to getting stuck into it. Wednesday we've got a 100 mile ride planned and Thursday am a 22 mile run before we go back to Vancouver via Ferry and I'll embroil myself in the task at hand.

I must hand the laptop over to a very heavily sleeping and jet-lagged Tom so I shall sign off. Thank you to everyone for your cards, support and love, I've brought them all out here and they'll be with me while I kill myself round Stanley Park at 7.35am on Saturday morning, (plus the eight hour time difference for you lot.)

Southern's...I'm taking you out into the International arena, COME ON!!!

H. x