7 weeks to go & update from World Ironman Championship, Kona-Hawaii

Well, another week of training in the bank. Before I get into it though, a quick recap of the historic World Ironman Championship that took place last night in Kona Hawaii.

The World Ironman Championship is the pinnacle of triathlon, where every triathlete in the world strives to go. There are the professionals racing there for the world title, of course, but also more than 1,500 non-pros (age groupers, like me). For age groupers to get to go to Kona Hawaii for the World Championship, we need to qualify by placing very high in an Ironman race somewhere else. It's a massive achievement to even qualify for Kona.

So, it took place yesterday, and it was unique in many ways: Craig Alexander won his 3rd Kona title, breaking the course record in the process, which had stood for 15 years. Chrissie Wellington claimed her 4th title as well, despite a bad swim and average bike.

On a more personal note, what made this race even more special is the fact that 4 of my teammates were there! They qualified earlier in the year and trained even harder to race in Kona: Aja Stevens, Edward Hawkins, Simon Marshall and Neil Flanagan. They all finished a grueling Kona Ironman in under 11 hours, despite fighting the hot and strong winds and blazing sun in the lava fields of Kona. A massive congrats to all of them.

Here are some pics of the world champs.

Craig (Crowie) Alexander - Winner and course record holder: 8hrs 3min 56sec

Chrissie Wellington - Winner: 8hrs 55min 08sec

Ok, now back to my week. Another good week of training in the bank, 7 weeks away from my first Ironman. The swim and bike are coming along nicely. I'm still having problems with my run due to the injuries I had earlier in the year, but I'm making slow but steady progress. If I can get to the Ironman and put in a sub-5-hour run I'll be happy with that, considering.

This week's tally: just under 16 hours of training.
- 2 hours of swimming
- Just under 10 hours of biking
- 2hrs45min of running
- And 1hr of strength training.

Not a bad week but a bit below the targeted 19 hours. Mainly due to cancelling 2 swim sessions as I felt myself fighting a cold, and my long run on saturday was cut short due to bad circumstances.

Amazing how much water and calories one consumes in this sport, and I'm still losing weight! This is a pic of what I consumed during one bike/run session on Friday (5hr bike 1hr run): 5.5L of water and around 1,300 calories consumed...

Till next week!