Monday 27 September 2010

LA Triathlon pre race


So this Thursday I'm off to California for my last race of the year. It's been a LONG season and I feel like I've raced everywhere this summer, so being in LA for my last outing seems fitting.

Excited about the race for a myriad of reasons:

  1. It's LA
  2. Gomez won it last year and is racing again this year
  3. My hero Greg Bennett will be there
  4. It's LA
  5. It's the last race of the season
  6. It's a point-to-point course
  7. It's a 2 lap run (which I prefer to 1 or 4 lap courses)
  8. It's a sea swim
  9. I'm off to Kona 2 days after the race
In terms of how I'm feeling and race performance pretty simply I'm just going to go as hard and fast as I can. Literally have no idea how I will fair, seeing as it is October and has been a long year, but I have gained lots of experience this season and will try and get some more racing the big guns who will be on the start line with me.

I'm feeling perky today (6 days before the race) but from experience I know that rarely means anything though I am relaxed and looking forward to just going out and seeing how things go. One thing I learned from my last big US Pro race was not to litter on the course (even if unintentionally) ... see here for my post race report from the NY tri last summer. As was with New York in 2009 this race will be similar in that it is a rare chance to go up against a literally fully stacked (Javier Gomez, Bevan Docherty, Greg Bennett, Matty Reed etc) field in a non drafting format and just go head to head. Experience wise there is nothing better, just bare knuckle racing, no tactics, no drafting, no ITU transition penalties :)

Will be a fun trip, especially with my little Kona jaunt added in at the end. Being able to support at Ironman World Champs will be awesome, hopefully I'll be the one racing one day.

Enjoy winter training, I'm off to find some sun!

Mike

ps. Will try and get another Mike + GB pic at the weekend


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