New Wheels

 I am very pleased and excited to announce that I have just signed a deal with Specialized to be riding their bikes in the 2011 season. I was lucky enough to have received my Specialized Tarmac today (pictured bellow). This will be my training bike for 2011.  

I am also really looking forward to picking a new time trial bike in the near future. However there are no stocks available in my size at the moment. So unfortunately I will be riding the old TT in Singapore. But fingers crossed the new TT will arrive later in the year before the Busselton half.

I must take this opportunity to thank Nick and the Guys at Garland Cycleworks for their support in helping the deal go through. I have only recently developed a relationship with Garland Cycle and the service I have received has been amazing. I will again take this opportunity to highly recommend the store to anyone, either for a world class service or for the biggest Specialized dealership in WA. Nick is very committed to helping the needs of all triathletes in WA and is very passionate about the sport. So I am really excited about the relationship I have established with Nick and the guys.

I am now looking forward to some quality training and racing on the Specialized bikes and I hope to have a lot of success on the bikes racing both nationally and internationally.

Bold Park

When I mention Bold Park, most athletes will think of either hard riding up Reabold hill, hard running on the Zambia trial, or some may even think of swimming at Bold Park pool. However the last thing most of us would think about is that smack in the middle of all these locations is a natural amphitheatre. On Monday night I was lucky enough to see a group of athletes performing at Bold park amphitheatre that were world class, and would challenge any of us local athletes that regularly train on these grounds.

By now most of you may have figured out that I went to the Ballet at the Quarry Amphitheatre on Monday night (valentines days). Unfortunately for some I am not going to sit here and write a review on the performance, because to be honest I know nothing about Ballet. But what I can do is highly recommended the night, it is a beautiful setting and a fantastic event. So any guys out there wanting to impress their lady friends, step out of that square and do it. You may even enjoy it, I know I did. 

Back to training front. It is now just less than 5 weeks till Singapore 70.3 and I am really happy with my progress over the last few weeks. I’m also pleased to say that I had another good race over the weekend at the Point Walter 16k fun run. I managed to run 16k in 56min in very windy conditions, on very tired legs with an average pace of 3min 30sec per k. I have an easier week this week which I am looking forward to and then one more block before the race.

Really exciting news to come on my next blog about new bikes for 2011.

Time Trial

Another weekend done and another race completed. Last Sunday I competed in my first ever time trial run by ATTA. As you can see from the profile below it was no easy race.

The race start was in Toodyay with the finish line being in Gidgegannup. The entire course was run on Toodyay Rd, so there was no chance in getting lost. ATTA had organised a shuttle bus for you and your bike to the start in Toodyay. So all you needed to do was turn up at the finish in Gidgegannup, jump on the bus and it takes you straight to the start. The conditions for the day were less than ideal, with very gusty conditions and a lot of branches on the road from the wind. The race distance was 44k and it felt like you were continually climbing, and if you weren’t continually climbing you were hanging onto your bars trying not to get blown off.

So after 44k of pain I was happy with my race with an average speed of 39km/h, I had a 6^th place overall, with a few big scalps. Managed to beat the world champion female TT and a male pro tri athlete who recently had a top 10 finish in Ironman Switzerland. Both athletes are training in Perth to get away from the European winter.

So after the TT the day was not done, having not done a brick session for the week it was time to strip out of the cycle gear and jump into the running gear. So with a solid 10k on the programme it was time to lose the cycle legs and find the running legs, and that I felt I did successfully.

Summing up I was happy with the race. But I still need to do a little work on the TT bike before Singapore, in less than 6 weeks. The race was very well organised and I am really looking forward to doing another, in the not so distant future.