Western Autralian Ironman 2007 - The Build Up

My Great buddies Chris and Chantal turned up in Malaysia on Friday evening with their kids India and Kofi.











I had Chris out on the bike at 6.45am the next morning for an easy 81K bike around the Hulu Langat loop. Stuart, Emma and Julie (all new multisport converts)and Randy also joined us.

Julie, Emma and Chris followed up the ride with a 4.4k run while I addressed my long overdue swim and knocked out a 4k. The rest of the day was taken up with a bit of a pool party in the afternoon and generally playing with the kids.

Sunday morning started off in a similar vain with me dragging Chris off to Bukit Aman (Lake Gardens) for the usual Sunday morning run. As "Sam the Early Waking Up Man" was off taking part in the Raja Muda Cup (yachting) we managed to get an extra half an hour in bed and started at 6:30.

The plan was to do Double Hill (11k) as IM WA was only a week away. After about 7 or 8k my hamstring and Achilles were hurting so much that I had to slow to a walk/jog. I decided to cut a kilometre off the course and meet the rest at the car park - it didn't bode well for the Ironman but hey that was a whole week away. The rest of the day was spent eating and playing with the kids again.

On Monday we flew to Perth, the twins were pretty good on the plane and we managed to get 9 seats between 5 of us.

We picked up the hire cars and drove over to Peter and Maizan's who had very kindly invited us all to stay. They've got a gorgeous house 5 minutes from the beach and overlooking the river.

We had a wonderful time there, visiting the beach and a park with Maizan, the boys and Chris' family.

Lovely lunches etc... Chris went for a run along the river the next morning but as I was still injured I decided not to. On Wednesday we headed to Busselton to get into Ironman mode, but first thing in the morning after hearing about Chris' run the day before I just had to have a trot along the river and test out my rather fragile legs.

It was amazing, I ran down to "The Old Traffic Bridge" which is on the outskirts of Fremantle. There was a strong wind blowing but the sun was warm and the air as clean as you can imagine. Everyone I passed got a rousing "Good Morning" from me but as Chris had relayed after his run, the responses ranged from mediocre, reluctant or simply nonexistent. Very strange, I suspect that these people really don't know how lucky they are to live in such beautiful surroundings. They should be celebrating every minute of it rather than trying to ignore some annoyingly cheerful jogger.

In Busselton Shilpa had sourced some fantastic accommodation about 7k from the race start, right on the beach with a grassy garden for the boys to play on. Sid and Seb went crazy, the cooler weather obviously agrees with them - they just loved it.

The next morning Chris and I went for an early morning swim (about 1.5k) followed by one loop of the bike course (60k). It was starting to get a tad windy and my back wheel being a full disc made bike handling a little juicy to say the least.

Friday morning was followed by another similar swim. The wind had gotten up and it was getting somewhat choppy. Later we took the boys to an ice-cream factory - no objections from me as I passionately believe that ice-cream is the food of the gods, we then went to see a nearby lighthouse but the rain got the better of us so we abandoned that and went for lunch and a play on the beach once the rain had gone.

We then went to register for the race, check out he expo and on the way back pick up a couple of things in the local bike shop. How spooky was it then that in the bike shop we bumped into Tom and KK who were just doing some running repairs to their bikes after having been out on a rather hair raising (sorry Tom, no pun intended) windy ride. We made a plan to meet at the swim start the next morning. Later that evening Chris and I went for a 6k run along the beach which was fun but the wind was getting to a point bordering on scary.

On Saturday morning the wind and the rain had gone and the conditions were almost perfect albeit it was a little bit chilly. I met up with Tom, KK, Lisa, Sam and Carmen, collectively and affectionately known as the Bussleton Buddies.

They all went for a swim while I took photos.

Over breakfast we all compared notes and then went to the race briefing.

In bed by 8:30 only to be woken at around midnight by the boys who's caught a bug. Oh dear who needs sleep anyway...