Week 3 to Challenge Cairns

And I am sick again. Fortunately, not too sick but still will need to lighten my training load on my own. Had a tinge of tingling throat irritation on Thursday evening. Friday lost bits of my vocal range. Saturday lost some more. Today, its barely audible.


Was suppose to do an easy 180km ride in the morning as I had to work full day on Saturday - meet the parents in school as well investiture rehearsal. Woke up and I felt fine. However, decided that I should see a doc and to get the bug out of the system quickly. Will likely to go on the trainer, hopefully for at least 3 hours after seeing the doc. Yes, I am feeling fine. No dizziness, no weakness, just the damn throat. Staying out of the road may be advisable too. Breathing intensely through the mouth and nose may just get the throat to be infected even more.


Yes, 3 weeks to Challenge Cairns. My countdown has started much later than usual. Preparedness for this race, I dont think its optimal but it will have to do. I started training for this event since 2 January. It has been a non stop action, except for the 2 weeks of reservist and 4 days of illness after the reservist. That knocked out almost 3 weeks. And with this current throat infection, though unlikely to get me down for too long but will still be considered as downtime, I would have done 18 weeks of training to fine tune my fitness compared to IMWA 2010. Will this be enough to give me another sub 12hour ironman timing? I can only hope so. As I mentioned before, I have to manage my expectations because I am not quite as fit as I would like to. I have changed my running regime and had thrown in intervals and tempo runs followed by long run. I have tried to get back to my swim as much as I could and on Friday, my arms seemed to be getting its life back. So there is a glimmer of hope. As for my bike, I will be able to hold out for 180km but I dont think I have worked too much on the speed this time.


Doing 2 ironman in 6 months, excluding down time like what I have experienced so far and hoping for a miracle, I cant kid myself. No, its not negative thoughts. I will still go all out on 5 June and do what I have been training for. If I manage a PB again, it will be a bonus. If I dont, I dont want to stay disappointed for too long. As Coach said to me, there will be another race another time.


What will be in my mind when I run on that fateful evening on 5 June, will be something I read while running at IMWA2010, "If you cant endure the pain, disappointment will be another 12 months."


For me, it should be 18 months till the next ironman.