Final Preparations

Leading into what will be quite easily my biggest week of racing with both Alpe'D huez long course triathlon and Ironman UK, everything feels like it is on track to get some good results.
Over the past few weeks we have done some massive sessions and I am feeling alot stronger and confident than I have for a long time.
I've even had some luck go my way. On Saturday I was out riding with a small group of the boys on an easy ride, we were about 100m from the summit of one of the climbs which was going to be our turnaround point and we decided to have a bit of fun and race each other the last few metres. With my amazing lack of speed I was holding the wheel of the guy in front, both out of the saddle and sprinting as hard as we could when his handle bar simply snapped and sent him straight to the ground in front of me, I had no time to react, hit him and went straight over the handle bars. Amazingly I came out of it with barely a scratch while Dan, the other guy who came off ended up with some pretty bad cuts and bruises and my chain-ring in the back of his leg. So it could have been alot worse!
 
On Thursday my new Time trial bike should be ready to ride and I'll have the rest of the week to test it out and get used to it. After waiting seven months I am quite excited that finally I'll get to ride it.
The big week starts with the long ride to Alpe'D huez with the rest of the team on Sunday and Monday then our race Wednesday. That afternoon I head back to Leysin and pack for Ironman UK which is on Sunday. If all goes well I will be back in camp on Tuesday for a week before heading home for a short period to celebrate Tylers 1st birthday and christening then return to have a crack at some more of the European races.
Otherwise everything else is going along nicely, I have settled into camp well and coping with the workload better than I expected, a bit of fatigue is setting in now after some big weeks and I have been a bit lothagic with my blogging and emails but with a bit of freshening up I will feel like a million dollars. 

Aaron.

Just a quite training week in the hills

Bit of a quite week last week after my trip to Denmark. I got back on Monday and just tried to get back into a bit of rythem with training. It took until Saturday before I started to feel good again after the food poisoning episode but everything is back on track now and I am feeling good.
Most of us are heading to France for a race on the 27th of July at Alpe D'Huez so that will be my next appearance and from what I have heard, a very interesting race. The 115km bike leg finishes with the climb to the top of Alpe D'Huez then we run around the top at some crazy altitude. I think its 2200m. So that should be alot of fun...
As part of the trip we have to ride to the race, which is about 300km away over 2 days before the race then back home. But I think I might have found something even crazier to do instead. I have entered Ironman UK the following weekend, so will probably just leave straight from France.

Time to head for bed and prepare for another long day tomorrow..

Aaron.

What a disaster!

My first trip to Denmark was certainly one to forget. Most of my memories of the weekend include something to do with the above picture..
After some good preparation and recovery leading into the race at Aarhus I ate something bad along the trip and spent the rest of the weekend sick with my head down the toilet bowl.
From Friday morning I couldn't eat anything without bringing it back up but for some reason decided it would be best for me to have a go at the race regardless. I knew I probably wouldn't finish but if I didn't have a go I would have been left wondering what might have happened.
As you can imagine things went bad and I ended up crawled up into a ball on the run course with massive stomach cramps, not even able to move.
We made the trip home yesterday and I attempted some light training today unsuccessfully, still unable to keep my food down. Hopefully I can get rid of this in the next few days and back into some serious training again.

Not everyone in our team had such a bad time though, Caroline ended up winning the womens race with a massive gap back to second and another couple of our girls went 1st and 3rd in Ironman Austria. So Congrats!!

Aaron.