I'm sat on the bus leaving T1 heading back to the race hotel for the "carbo dinner" and thought I'd use the time for a brief blog update.
I'm in the first few days of a pretty long trip away, culminating I hope with a great performance at IronMan Western Australia in December. That race is the main focus of this trip, with 4 weeks of training prep in Australia near Brisbane leading into it, but first I've "stopped off" in Taiwan for the 70.3 race here this weekend.
I've not "tapered" for this race and as IM Oz is the focus, nor has my training focused on a "peak" performance. However IF I can have one of "those days" that you sometimes get during training (when you feel really good) then hopefully I can have a decent race.
The last 2 days haven't in truth been ideal for a great race though. A LONG journey in time, distance, flight changes and energy drain so close to a race isn't the best. Worse still is that as I sit here now, my bike STILL hasn't arrived. Building my bike (assuming it gets here tonight) at near midnight, then racing on jet-lag and hardly any proper sleep, well its about as poor as preparation can be. BUT I'm not bothered by any of that and certainly won't be using it as excuses for whatever happens out there tomorrow. One of my favourite sayings is "you always have a choice even if you don't have control". It's about making choices with what I CAN control. So I'll do all I can, to do everything as well as i can. And most importantly, I'll do it all with a positive attitude and expectation.
I've been trying in the last few weeks to really work on getting "mentally fitter", having realised that this was an area I'd grown weak and sloppy in. Tomorrow should serve to really test all of that and I'm quite looking forward to it. Keys to this will be not to over-think and over-analyse everything, especially external factors. And if/when the tough moments come, just to try and focus on positively impacting what I can control.
So... food (i hope at least some of it gluten free) awaits and then a night of as much sleep as possible and bike building, followed by a really great race. I'll report back soon on how it all works out. :-)
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