The first piece was that I entered my next race yesterday. The next race on the calendar after Challenge Iskana Puteri will be Challenge Vietnam. Challenge Vietnam is on the 11th of September and so it lines up very nicely with the rest of my planned calendar. 2016 will be the first time the race will have been run which is cool, it is always fun to be involved in a race's inaugural year.
Below is a little trailer for the event.
As you can see, fairly spectacular location. Getting there from Perth is a little tricky, but I am hoping the effort is worth it. Certainly a chance to visit a country that I have always wanted to get to. I have heard nothing but good things about Vietnam.
Besides being pretty, the course should be a good one, it looks flat and fast, but as always when racing in that part of the world the climate could play a real part. Hard to know. I know 70.3 Vietnam is a very hot event, but that is at an entirely different time of year. Being in September I wouldn't rule out seeing some higher temperatures though. That suits me just fine, a course that it tough but not insane is just the sort of thing I like.
The other piece that has recently starting to fall into place is swimming. I had another really positive swim this morning. It was a long one, pushing up towards 6000m, but good quality. I really think the increased mileage is part of why I am seeing improvements in the pool.
I led my group for the first part of the session and I was very happy with the times I was able to hold. Coach Paul Newsome said that based on the session he would feel confident in placing my CSS around 1:24/100m, which is finally starting to get closer to where it needs to be. As always, faster is better but I will take 1:24 for now. I still feel like there are lots of improvements to come, but gaining around 8 seconds on my CSS over 6 weeks is progress that I am happy with. I am really looking forward to pushing that CSS downwards 1:20/100m and beyond, but this is a journey that has to be taken one step at a time. Keen to see how much of that journey can be made before I start racing again though.
The final piece of the puzzle that has continued to rock precariously and may start to fall soon was running. As I mentioned yesterday, I wasn't really feeling the running love last night. Besides being tired the weather was making things difficult, bringing grey and rainy weather to the session. Just the sort of thing to sap motivation. Still I managed to get through the session and once again I was happy with the results. Last night was similar to Tuesday in that it was a bit more speed work, slightly less distance, but higher intensity. It went well enough. Similar to swimming, running is very much a work in progress, but I am happy with the progress. The efforts felt pretty good and the speed was good enough for now.
I think for me running will always be the weakest leg, but over the last 12 months it has been gradually becoming less weak. Last night was a continuation of that progression.
So there you go, a few puzzle pieces starting to form up. I will be very interested to know what the final picture looks like once the rest of the pieces are in place.
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