2010 Race Schedule

This week I entered Ironman 70.3 South Africa which is on the 17th of January 2010. This will be a "B" race as part of my preparation for Ironman South Africa. I thought I can enter closer to the race date but then I saw the closing date is already the 8th of November, so I had to enter.

I decided to plan my 2010 season as in the past I did whatever race whenever I feel like doing it in my build up towards Ironman SA. I decide to plan next year more carefully if I want to do well at IMSA. Therefor I decided to plot down the races I want to do and plan my training around it.

My first race for 2010 and in my new age group (40-44) will be Ironman70.3 South Africa on 17 January 2010. This is the only official Ironman70.3 in South Africa and attracts a big field even with the bike course being very challenging.

The next race will be the Prestige Half Ironman on the 21st of February 2010. This race has always been my measuring race whereby I measure my readiness for IMSA. In the past this race was one month before IMSA but this year IMSA is three weeks later than last year and the Prestige Half Ironman is almost two weeks earlier making it two months between the two.

Just three days after the Prestige Half Ironman is the Panorama Primary School 10km Night Race. The timing is not perfect but this is the night race my previous employee's been sponsoring for ten years now. This is a really challenging route with a lot of hills as it runs through our neighbourhood. I have been involved (planning, sponsoring and racing) in this race since it's started.

My last race before IMSA will be the South African Triathlon Championship on the 21st of March. This is an Olympic distance race. I decided to do this race because of the big cap between the Prestige Half Ironman and IMSA. Being an Olympic Distance event (1.5 km swim, 40 km bike, 10 km run) this will bump up my fitness just before IMSA.

Ironman South Africa is on the 25th of April this year. This will be my last race for the first half of 2010 and it all depends on how I perform on the day. Whatever happen at IMSA I will then plan the rest of 2010 after the race. If I qualify for Kona I will then work towards Kona but if I don't qualify I will take a break and switch to the Duathlon season which is during our winter.

This year I didn't participate in any Duathlon races as I prepared for Kona.

It's been now one week since I started with my challenge to loose weight. I only lost 1.5kg but I think I will start losing more weight this week as I get a bit more active. I have only done 30km of running and the one swim session this week. I will get on the bike this week and also start with some gym session.

I went for a swim at the local gym on Friday afternoon and did 1km in just under 19 minutes. It was better than I expected with me not swimming for three weeks. The only problem was the water was 18c. This is the gym I avoided during the winter as the heater didn't work properly and the water was 13c at one stage. We are now well into summer and they still struggle to get the water to an acceptable temperature.

With the new gym in town that opened last week I am thinking of joining it this week. The only problem I see if I join the new gym is that according to their website they only open at 5am. The sales rep could not tell me for certain if this is going to be the official opening time as they are open 24 hours during the first month to get a feel of what time suits the people best as a lot of people work shifts in Witbank ( Mining community)

I can swim at the gym in the city I work in but I don't like driving 100 kilometers back home after I am done with swimming. If I am finish with swimming or for that matter with any training I want to relax not spending another hour driving home.

I struggled yesterday the whole afternoon to make a video about my race in Kona. I did get the photos with the song I want to use on one CD but I could not get the photos in the order I want them and the program re-size the photos making the quality bad. I also could not get the slide show to end when the song ends never mind fitting a script to the video. I think I am going to take Bryan Payne (www.trainingpayne.blogspot.com) up on his offer to help me produce the video.