70.3 New Zealand

Hi All

I'm sitting in the Hawkes Bay region of New Zealand ( Wine country ) thinking about the week gone... What a crazy week it was.
Kate and I flew from Perth where the temperature has been consistently above 35 degrees Celsius into New Zealand where its struggling to get over 18 Degrees Celsius...
We flew here for Ironman NZ; the first IM in the calender year. To cut things short, basically a severe weather warning was issued for the North Island of NZ and the race was cancelled for Saturday. However; not all was lost as they were able to put on a 70.3 for Sunday... ( first ever 70.3 on NZ soil I believe )

Kate and I rolled with the punches, but we felt sorry for the first timers who couldn't get to do their IM.

So race day rolled round and the chilly waters of Taupo "invited" us in for the start at a civilized hour of 7:45am.. YES!!!
Once the gun sounded the pace was on. However everything settled down after about 400M and we rolled round in a group of 8-10 with all the main contenders in touch.



Onto the bike and for the first 10KM the pace once again was hot, a few riders got dropped from the group... Fortunately for me I managed to hold on and the pace settled into a consistently HARD effort..( hope that makes sense )





Coming into town the crowd was awesome... the streets were lined with people and it had a real IM feel to it ...
through T2 the guys were flying... so I thought "it's a no sock day" as I didn't want to lose touch.... With Tim Reed and Terenzo starting at 3:15 K pace I thought it best to stick with my race plan and ended up holding 3:50 K's for the duration of the run...However the choice to wear no socks was definitely a bad one as I ended up with huge blisters on my feet.... on the plus side I have named them.. hahah

In the end I finished 8th , but a happy 8th.. The season is early , but the body feels good and I'm confident I will only get faster from here.




RESULTS

1. Marino Vanhoenacker - 3.55:03
2. Timothy Reed - 3.55:51
3. Cameron Brown - 3.56:38
4. Romain Guillaume - 3.58:03
5. Aaron Farlow - 3.58:57
6. Marko Albert - 4.00:43
7. Terenzo Bozzone - 4.01:51
8. Guy Crawford - 4.03:29
9. Jamie Whyte - 4.12:05
10. Shanon Stallard - 4.14:46

I'm excited about 2012, thanks to you all for your support

Thanks and talk soon