Thursday's here...

Thursday's here already and for some reason once Thursday arrives IM all starts to become very, very real.  The Ironman village is always very quiet and not always completely finished even though you can register on Wednesday.  It looks neither finished nor started with only a few smatterings of athletic looking people and their blingy bikes.  And in fact in a city like Zurich we all get swallowed up by the many tourists, trams, cars and people of all sizes and ages flying around on their sit up and beg bikes.  However, Thursday appears to be a popular day for the regular Ironman athlete to descend into their sporting arena.  

Myself, Tom, our mate Andy Scott and Team Southern's member Flaps all rode the largest loop of the bike course yesterday, complete with motorbike outriders and a few drops of rain. It's a fairly fast course, the hills mostly being very long drags as opposed to being leg smashing hills but this is where you have to be careful.  These little buggers tend to take it out of the old legs slowly so keeping an even pace is going to be a hard discipline but a great one if carried out correctly.

In about ten minutes we're going to walk down to Lake Zurich (see above pic taken last night) and recce a loop (this year it appears to have an Aussie exit that goes over the middle of an island in the lake!!) Then Tom's pa is arriving and the Ironman jitters will begin as talk of time, condition, health, expectation, worry, fear, dread, excitement, wonder... and a bazillion more adjectives and oxymorons that follow the thought processes of racing an Ironman all set in.

Not much left to say really except, if the weather stays as it is I feel so much more confident of holding the contents of my stomach...in my stomach.  If it's not ridiculously hot I think I'm going to have a great race.

My dream race would be as follows:

Swim: 1hr

T1: 1.30mins

Bike: 5.30-5.40

T2: 1.30mins

Run: Sub 4hr (3:59!!!)

Total: between 10:30-10:45

My best in Germany was 10:53 so a PB would be nice ;)

Thanks to everyone for their good wishes, love and support, we couldn't do it without your love and encouragement, help and advice ;)

Oh and I MUST put right a HUGE mistake I made when I blogged after Austria last Sunday. I made the worst mistake an athlete could ever read... I wrote Ironman Sam's time down as 12:33 and it certainly wasn't that, I meant it to read 12 hrs and 33 SECONDS 12:00:33 APOLOGIES MR ALLEN!!!

So, on I go to take the Ironman baton from Alison's wonderful race in Nice, and also from freshly broken legged ironman athletes...Jo, Ady, Sam, Kev, Simon, Simon, Skinny Steve, John & Sara Blyth & Jez (all from Austria) and the lovely Jevon who raced in Germany... hopefully I'll take it across the line in Zurich with a smile on my face :) I take inspiration from you all. x

iphone photo's for the last two weeks will be posted whence I return to Angleterre, I've loved taking them but had no time to upload them.

Catch you all soon.

Hells Bells. xx