Ironman Western Australia

Hey Team,

Well IMWA is over for another year.
I'm sitting writing this from Margaret river in the south west of Australia. Soon I'll be off to enjoy a few wineries and a week or two of down time before it all starts again.

Onto the race at hand.

I had a great build up and was exited to race IMWA for the 3rd time.
It was a stacked line up with Andreas Raelert coming down to race and host of other Ironman winners and top 10 Kona finishers. Still I was excited to see where the fitness was at against some of the best.

Race morning dawned and the conditions looked great with perfectly calm waters and no Shark sightings (always a relief).
The race started with the usual madness and after a few hundred meters I founds clear water and was leading the swim, about 1000m in I was passed by luke and eventual winner Jeremy, I made a poor decision to choose my own line and the pair ended up pulling away from me.
I excited the water in 3rd with a small group of 4. I knew I was in good company with David Dellow and Andreas Raelert.



We set to work on the bike, the pace felt more like a 70.3 than an Ironman and judging by my watts it was! It was a quick first lap and before I knew it Andreas was gone (struggling with the same injury that put him out of kona) then Alex dropped off and it was just David and I left. Ideally we would have preferred to have Andreas and Alex in the group to share the work load. That left just David and I in 2nd and 3rd on the road. Towards the end of the bike the suffering had really began and a quick flying Matty Burton caught us just before T2.



In Transition we all took off practically together Matty White, Matt Burton, Myself and David Dellow. I knew I couldn't go out to quick so I tried to settled into my own rhythm and really focus on my own goal of a 3 hour marathon. Every thing was going great, I ran through 21k right on target and then BOOMMM I hit a dark spot, kind of light black ice on the road..I spent a good portion of the 3rd lap in the pain cave, but managed to pull myself out of it for the last 10km.
It was a weirdly satisfying to be able to pull myself out of a whole and get back into the race.
It can only mean I'm getting fitter and faster. (Maybe getting mentally tougher to)



I finished in 8th place with a 8:36:31 time.

Thanks again for all the support. I'm really looking forward to a big 2014 and hopefully racing In Kona next year!

Very happy to have you all along for the ride!

Guy



Sent from my iPad