So the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii were about a month and like an ostrich, I have been burying my head in the sand. Firstly trying to find a reason for my poor performance which had me retiring from the race at 120km into the bike section after struggling worse than I ever had for the previous 4 hours and secondly trying to bounce back and get a bit of hard training under the belt so to finish the season strong.
My plan was to freshen up after Kona and finish the season with the Aussie pro 70.3 champs in Mandurah, double up my Aussie experience with Ballarat 70.3 then finish the season on a high with the big money inaugural Challenge Bahrain. I had managed to get a few good training sessions under the belt but I had an underlying feeling that something was not right. After sitting down with my sports doctor and coach yesterday and going over my blood tests from the past few weeks we had to make the extremely tough decision to give my body a rest and go into offseason and call it a year on the racing front before digging myself into a hole that would take a long time to climb out of and potentially write off my 2015 season as well. I am extremely gutted with this outcome as I was looking forward to closing out my season well, but deep down I know this is the right call and I cannot wait to come back in full force in 2015 and show the world what they have been missing.
In short here is an outline of the what, how, when and why went wrong. Training was going extremely well leading into the final 2 weeks in Kona. I felt I was in the shape of my life, leaner and stronger than ever and mentally I was in a position to take a step forward with Ironman. We had arrived on the island 3 weeks out and coming home from dinner on the Thursday night we saw a young man crash his scooter. I went to his side to comfort him until an ambulance got to the scene and in doing so I kicked my toe on a lava rock. Later that evening the infection in my toe got so bad. The anti-biotics helped my body fight off the infection in the area fast but the cost to me was going to be much greater. That overload on my pituitary gland (where all your stress is stored) tipped the scale and basically shut my body down. My testosterone levels are still completely depleted and I have not been able to have one training session since then, now 7 weeks later where my legs have felt normal. I was hoping my body would bounce back in time but unfortunately, the stress on a cellular level has taken its toll and my glands are still swollen. It is going to be of utmost importance to let my body recover fully before giving things a good push but I am looking forward to great 2015.
On a brighter note, I had the opportunity to work with Andrew and Davis from Aether films leading into Kona. They have done such amazing work capturing my journey, I hope that you enjoy the videos.
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