IM Run course

Well here is the run course.
Thanks to Trev from transitions for putting this together. You’re a champ mate.
The plan.
Swim
My goal here is to swim anything under 1 hr. My worst Im swim to date has been 58min and my best 54min. I think this year anything could happen. The first 500m is going to be critical. From what people have been saying there is not going to be enough room for everyone to spread out in the swim. For that reason, I’m guessing I’ll need to take the swim out a little harder then what I would like to try and avoid the congestion that could really slow things up. In training Scott and I have been practicing this for a couple of weeks now. During our ocean swims we have been doing some in outs of around 500m swimming as hard as we can. I send Scott off 30sec in front of me and then try and catch him before he reaches the beach.
Once that first 500m is over I guess I’ll be quite out of breath and working hard for a while in an attempt find a good pack to sit on. I’ll then just kick back and relax as much as possible while I let the others guide me around the course. No need to put any efforts in from this point onwards. The goal is to just have a comfortable trouble free swim.
Being a new course it will be difficult to know what is going to happen on the day. Like I said I’ll be happy to have anything under the 1hr this year. I’ve put the work in and with a dream swim I could possibly exit the water around the 55min mark. My worst case scenario would be a anything over 1hr. It won’t bother me if this happens, and if it does I’ll just roll with it.
Bike
This is a tough one. I can’t really say accurately what time I think I’ll do. So my range will be from 5:10-5:20. I’ve really focused a lot of my training towards developing my bike this year and I’ve had a pretty solid and consistent period of riding well. Scott and I did endless amounts of sustained power on the bike by doing TT’s from repeats of 20/40min evey week. We would TT through the hills on the flats and on courses that we felt that would match Port as much as possible. We also did plenty of 180-200k rides to really work on our nutrition, arousal control and mental strategies. Being closely matched on the bike with Scott has worked very well for both of us as we have pushed each other along and lifted our strength on the bike to new levels. If anything I would say Scott probably has an extra gear on me. Towards the end of the bike leg is where I suspect he will really dominate. Good luck big man you are riding very strong.
Being a 3 lap course my plan is to ride the first lap below IMpace, the second lap at Impace and the third lap to just break even with my second lap split. I think, even with the hills, drafting will be a problem. I’ll need to watch this carefully as I have a habit of looking down too much when I’m TTing. My front end is quite low this year for me (12cm drop) and I definitely don’t want to get caught in any packs this year. I’ve spent too much time working on my bike strength this year and I really want to test it.
Run
Another tough call. It will all come down to how my foot holds up in the 1st 21km. If I can make it to the 21km mark of the run I’m past the danger zone. My foot always gives in within the first 1-1.5hrs. If that happens I’m in big trouble again. If it doesn’t I’ll be running if my life depended on it. I’ll be carrying nurofen as a backup and I just hope I can have an opportunity to run without breaking due to injury this year. I’m still searching for that perfect race.
Scott and I haven’t been able to run much together this year due to my foot problems, but on paper I think I’ve done the best I can with what I have. Scott has been running exceptionally well in training and I’m looking for him to have a blinder run on the day. My goal on the day is to hold him off for as long as I can. We have talked about this at lengthen and he agrees that he has a big carrot (me) to push himself along and try and mow me down. It is going to be a fun day out there dueling with Scott, my training partner, for the last 12months.
If everything goes well I hope to get as close as I can to a 3:30 marathon. If your watching ironmalive and you see that I have reached the 21km in 1:45 then I think it will happen. It will mean that my foot is not giving me grief and I be drawing on every ounce of energy to evenly split that second half of the marathon.
The first 12km of the run is basically flat. I'll hope to run this first 12km in around 58min. The goal is to build a slight buffer before I hit the hills. Once I'm in the hills I just maintain an even tempo on the way up and look towards running on the grass on the way down. I want to avoid damaging/faiguing my legs on those descents as much as I can.
In training when I had the opportunity to run long I would run 2km splits as 9min on and 1min off. That way I would get used to running between aid stations and use that 1min recovery to keep the fuel coming in. Time will tell if this training strategy has worked or not.

So that’s the plan. A PB (10:06) is what I’m chasing this year. A sub 10 and I’ve nailed the race. Anything below that, will mean I’ve had my perfect day.
We have around 17 people heading up to Port this year from the Illawarra. It's been a pleasure to ride the high and lows with all those guys and girls that have been training for Port. Looking forward to catching up with everyone after the race.
Goodluck to everyone else doing the Ironman.

fluro
Thanks Mick and Fiat, I really appreciate your support.