At the end of October I lined up for my third crack at the Auckland marathon with the aim of getting under the 3 hour mark. I went to bed early and woke to my alarm just after 4am. After several minutes of debate with myself over the pros and cons of sleeping in or running the marathon I eventually got up and by the start time at 6am,and a couple of energy drinks later, I was ready to go.

Just 8 weeks after completing Ironman Nz I was back at the start line of another Ironman in Australia. Backing up from Ironman NZ had been pretty tough, I can definitley now understand why its recommended to have a month of rest after completing an ironman.

Well the NZ Ironman is done and dusted for another year and despite terrible conditions I managed to put together a pretty good race.

I'd been eagerly awaiting the tauranga half ironman all summer. After implementing a different training regime this season Taurnaga was going to be a good benchmark to compare myself to last year.

Well it’s been a couple of months since Ironman NZ so I have had a bit of time to have a rest and think about what I want to do for the coming year.

My Ironman day begin with the alarm going off at 5am after a surprisingly good nights sleep. My preparation had gone pretty well so i awoke feeling pretty excited and was looking forward to the day. Compared to last year where i didn't sleep and felt nervous about whether i was even going to finish, this was a very good start.

The Tauranga Half Ironman is one of NZ's premiere triathlon events and this year had sold out within an hour with about 1300 competitors entered to race. This event doubles as the national champs so there was a strong field of elite athletes racing as well.