Cairns 70.3

Count down is on for Cairns 70.3 and Cairns IM tomorrow. I have to say this is the most excited I have been to watch a race in a little while.

While the IM is the big dance and I will be interested to see how it goes (there is a strong pro field there this year), most of my attention is actually going to be on the 70.3 event where all my athletes are racing, there will be 4 of them going around for this event. As I have mentioned before, for this race it just feels that most of my athletes have had a good lead in one, so I am pretty keen to see how they do.

There have been a couple of hiccoughs along the way, like one of my athletes who forgot her running insoles and then crashed her bike during the week, but it looks like all four of the athletes will make it to the start line in the morning. The injuries from the crash may take their toll, but I am hoping that once she gets going the adrenaline will kick in and be sufficient to get her through the event. She is so well prepared that it would be a pity for her race to get a derailed at this late stage.

The other big question for race day will be the weather. All week people have been posting images of a very rough swim course (including today) and there has been rain on and off for a few days now. I know it has a lot of athletes nervous. Tomorrow is looking a bit drier at least (not much rain on the forecast), but there could be a bit of wind, including a head wind on the long ride back into Cairns from the northern turn around. As always the weather will be what it is, but I think the swim leg is making a lot of people edgy. At least in Cairns they are likely to reduce of cancel the swim if necessary, unlike Busselton in May. Fingers crossed for a good day, but we shall just have to wait and see. If the weather does turn nasty then I have told my athletes that caution is the word of the day, I have had two friends DNF at this event due to crashes in bad weather and we definitely want to avoid that.

Yep, definitely looking forward to this one. Here's hoping for a good day our for all.