The Year Ahead

Well its now 3 weeks since Powerman Zofingen has been run and won which means its time for me to get back into some formalized training. Thesepast weeks have been used to give the body both a physical and more important mental break from the day to day stresses of training. I’ve also used this time wisely by looking over the last 12 months, working out what i did right, what i did wrong, what needs to change or be worked on as well as planning out the next 12 months of racing with some big and exciting changes for me moving forward. 

First of I will be racing at Ironman Melbourne. There is a couple of reasons why I’m doing this race. One is that I want to finish an ironman and when the opportunity comes up in your home town to do so I had to enter. Secondly this will be used as a training day and to gain more experience in long course racing. As an athlete wanting to specialize in long course duathlon and lack of LD duathlon in Aus there is not many chances to gain experience. The Big challenge for me is pretty straight forward, I struggle in the water so I’ll be spending plenty of time in the water in the lead up. I have no goal time for the IM, the aim is to finish. There are objectives that I want to get out of the race but by not setting a goal time allows me to spend the extra time I need in the water without putting pressure on me to fit in enough bike and run work to go “fast”.

My main race for the year will be Powerman Zofingen again. 2013 will mark the 25th year of the race so will be a big one to compete in. This race means the world to me personally and even if I went well enough in IM Melbourne to qualify for Kona I would roll it down. The races are to close together and both deserve your full focus. By doing both I don't think you would be giving ether race the respect the require. With some luck I’m hoping to get TA backing so I’ll be able to compete for Australia in the ITU section this time meaning I can race for an ITU world title. Also I’m hoping to help promote this race and get a few more Aussies to come across this time other than just me flying the flag. Not totally sure on how I’m going to do this yet but am working on a few things.

Training wise I’m going back to basics and keeping it as simple as I can. Working in 14 day cycles built around a few key sessions that are to work on some key areas I need to improve with base sessions filling in the gaps. Ended up picking the 14 day cycle over the 7 as it just allows me to speed things out a little more. I’ll post more on this in the coming weeks.

Thats all for now. at this stage my next race will be the Vic Duathlon Titles in a few weeks time, just depends on how the body’s going once it gets back into training.

Hopper