How Is Toby Going?

Well I'm as ready as I'm going to be now, just got off the massage table sitting back getting a bit of H2O into me to clear the rubbish out, gearing up for a hectic day of travel to get there.

The last week has been so enjoyable - I started my taper a week and a half out because I know my body likes a short taper or a bit more of an extended one to perform well. Being the case that this will be the hardest race of my career so far, I decided to go with the longer version, starting now to feel really fresh and ready to go.

Nothing real exciting to report on the training front, no interesting milestones. I just erred on the side of easy just to make sure I'll be well recovered, not going to make any huge fitness gains in the last 10 days.

Swim 10.5 km
Bike 290km
Run 50km

It may seem a little different but Bianca and I thought that for prosperity's sake I should get a few good photo's taken of me doing the three things I enjoy because I may never do something of this magnitude again (who knows how I'll feel when I cross the line on Sunday, I may decide to start lawn bowls). It's also really hard to find a good photo out of a race as your not usually thinking about giving the camera the blue steel treatment. So Friday we had a morning with photographer Ralph Meznar. The morning started off in the studio and we got the pose that I thought was going to be the hardest first shot (it still was hard but we only had to do it once) then we headed to various locations around the town to get a few more shots of swim bike run. Overall we got some great shots that will be fantastic to show the grand kids one day bit of a "back in my day" sort of scenario. So thanks to Ralph for his expertise and my new stylist Bianca for a very enjoyable day.

Thanks to everyone for all the well wishes, I'm definitely not feeling at all nervous as I know I've done the work over the last 6 months and have done an appropriate apprenticeship over the last 4 years. This is just the next progression and I just want to get it started so I can sink my teeth into it, can't wait for that finish line feeling.

There is a plan in place at the moment for Bianca to do some live photo updates throughout the day through this blog with a bit of commentary also there will be live updates and live video stream from 2pm all available from here - http://www.ironmanoz.com/ironmanoz/race-day-coverage.htm. This won't be my last blog entry before the race I'll work on getting some more stories.

Toby