Passing through


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Another weekend, another location. This time 3 days training in Almunecar, Spain. I will take the opportunity now to get the obligatory weather commentary out the way – all there is to say is that for a change I am going somewhere where it’s sunny and warm. For a change I have no complaints!

Spain will be a few days of bigger volume training, a first open water swim of the year and who knows, maybe I’ll get a bit of a tan. Getting back into training this week has gone well so far, nothing to strenuous, but some decent sessions. Recovery went a bit out of the window again once I was back home and having to go to work and muscles have tightened up a bit. The past weekend definitely let me recover, but at the same time climbing did stress the muscles a bit and they’re still pretty tight. Plenty of time till Switzerland still, so nothing to worry about.

Segueing massively on the subject of fitness I became an uncle for a second time yesterday. I now have 2 nieces related to me which according to the coefficient of relatedness is the equivalent of one daughter of my own. It’s about as good as having your own offspring, but without any of the hassle! At least from the perspective of my genes anyway.

I’ve bought my ticket to Oz and set a date for departure. I leave the UK on September 18th 2008 and I’ll arrive in Oz on the 20th. Things go to plan I won’t be back here until 2010! Having chosen the date I’ve also produced a number of spreadsheets planning races and training down there. There is so much I could choose to do, suddenly a year doesn’t seem so much time. I’ve broaden my search from just triathlon to adding in road running, ten maybe some crits? How about trail running? Adventure racing? Not forgetting going climbing… The list goes on.

More decisions – bike kit for my trip. I’ve made the decision to take the road bike and leave the time trial bike at home, it’s just more versatile and that’s more important when I’m away for a year. Next up have been decisions about seatposts and tri bars. Bontrager XXXLite seat post is the first choice – reversible so I can adjust my road position for time trialing. Not chosen clip-ons yet, will need to be something that can sit close to the bars and get me low on a road bike. Final big choice was race wheels, and it’s going to be the Zipp 404s going with me, again just more versatile than my Xentis wheels. They were fun, but I think they’re going to have to go to ebay.

My gut feel is this is the set-up I enjoy riding the most. I did well on it at the UK Ironman 70.3 last year and had a good race at the Monaco Ironman 70.3 on it the previous year. I love to ride my road bike and the set-up looks good, which is important. Having made the decision the question in my mind now is should I just go with this set-up now? Rather than racing Switzerland on the Cervelo, race it on my road bike instead. I might try a couple of my upcoming races on it and see how I feel/perform.

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