It has been a great week hanging out here in Western Australia with Kelly and her good friend Tamara who’s wedding next week in Bali we will unfortunately miss. On Thursday we drove down to beautiful Busselton for the Ironman 70.3 Busselton event. A race I have heard so much about and am thankful that I had the opportunity to make it down here to experience it first hand. It ended up being a super tough day and as much as I would have liked to take line honours, I’m content to take the silver this week behind Sam Appleton.
Race start was a 7am and before I left NZ a couple weeks ago I made sure to check the temperatures in all my destinations on this trip, it was hot hot hot everywhere I was going. Sure enough race morning roles around and we are on the start line in 4”C temperatures. Warming up I had all mine and Kelly’s 2XU gear on – 5 layers in total, I was on the verge of putting my Aquasphere wetsuit on underneath all of these layers too. I decided to put a rubbish bag under my race suit to try and keep a little heat in, it worked well but my fingers and toes were 100% numb until about 5 kilometers on the run
Good friend Guy Crawford lead the swim and set a good pace that started stringing out the very stacked men’s field. It seems though as soon as we exited the water some of the guys found a whole new gear. Crawford, Appleton Kahlefeldt and myself soon had a gap on the rest of the field. The pace was very quick and soon it was only Appleton and myself in the lead averaging 44 Ks/hr for the 90km flat cycle and building a 6 minute lead over the rest of the field. Changing gears and tightening my Sidi cycle shoes was near impossible with my numb digits but you know what they say – if you need to warm up, just go a little harder…
Off onto the flat 3 lap run and Appo and I were neck and neck until 18km. I tried a couple times early on to get a gap but Appo raced like a champ and after a hard bike he was the one who had the extra gear in the closing stages of the race to pull away and take the win. James Cunnama had a blistering run and ran himself into 3rd place.
All 3 of us are part of the newly formed Bahrain Endurance 13 Team, watch this space ne
xt week for the team unveiling.
In the girls race it was a speedster ITU podium with Felicity Sheedy-Ryan – 1st, Liz Blatchford – 2nd and Katey Gibb – 3rd.
Next stop for me is going to be Ironman 70.3 Vietnam in Da Nang in 8 days. Kelly and I had a great time there last year on our belated honeymoon but unfortunately she wont be able to join me this year.
Kelly and I are super excited to announce that we are expecting the birth of our first child in July. It is going to be a great new chapter in our lives “the Bozzone chronicles.”
Until next week – legs up and loads of recovery.
Leave a reply