Coming close to qualification last year in Bolton, and after the disappointment of IM Wales, I was ready to pack it all up. But being so close, and keeping improving, I followed friends' advice, and I “followed the slots” with my ticket to South Africa. At a championship race with 75 slots on offer, and ageing up for one of the largest age groups, I hoped I could get close to the top like at IM UK, and if not in the slots directly, get myself a roll-down.
One that has been on my list for a long time, because it looked awesomely hard. Sadly, the day didn’t go to plan…
After good results in Lanzarote the last two years, I was on the hunt to find the right race to try and qualify for Kona. With a fair amount of travels for my last races, this year’s long races were going to be on home soil, especially if I manage to qualify and have to finance a trip to the big island quickly! With this in mind Bolton was race 1, and IM Wales is going to be the “back-up” qualifying event.
I registered last year to be part of the Black Line London “special place in the sun” - its birthplace on the island of Mallorca - and have a nice warm race before concentrating on the final preparations for Ironman UK in July.
Having never been to Mallorca, but knowing that it’s the spiritual birth place of Black Line London, I had in mind to go check it out at some point, and I had registered for the 70.3 later in the year.
But prior to this, in April, is held what use to be the Tristar race, now known again as the Portocolom triathlon.
Accident at home! I don’t even have a fun story of dropping a fridge or other heavy equipment on my toe. I just walked straight into a door frame.
It’s not broken, but given how it looks, that means no running for a while, and that means no Mudman next week-end. :-(
Although the conditions were absolutely perfect for a PB, the race this yer fell the day after the hard Iceman off-road duathlon. Therefore, racing it hard would have been futile and frankly stupid. HAving been ask by Carel to pace him for roughly a 1h45, I took the oportunity to stretch the legs on that crisp morning, chatting all the way.
