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I left my family 5 days ago and headed back up to the USA to do a race in Morgan Hill, California and to catch up with two of my key sponsors.
Leaving home is always tough, and Emma and Tahlia came to the airport to send me off. I will be away from my family now for 6 weeks which feels like an eternity. We speak everyday but to say I miss them would be the biggest understatement of the year. This year has been a lot tougher as with Tahlia starting school, I have to do a lot of the travel without them. It was a sad goodbye at the airport and I jumped on the Qantas flight to LA with the determination to ensure that my time away from them was as productive and meaningful as possible.
I arrived in LA and we immediately headed up north to Morgan Hill. This is about 2 hours south of San Francisco and 30 minutes from San Jose. It is the home of one of my key sponsors Specialized. After 2 years riding with Specialized I had never had the opportunity to spend some time at the headquarters. We took this opportunity to get up and spend some time with the team and discuss my bikes, my needs and work with the huge team they have at Specialized. As a bike company, there really is no comparison. Specialized make absolutely everything and their desire to work with their athletes and engineers to build better products from gloves to bikes is mind blowing. It was a remarkable experience and I walked away feeling very pumped about the future with this remarkable company.
I was set to do a race on the Sunday, and this was the key to the trip up to Morgan Hill. I spent most of my time training around the region as the riding is incredible. I went out on the Specialized lunch ride on Friday midday and then logged another 6 hours on the bike through the mountains to Santa Cruz and return on Saturday. I wanted to make sure I got some mileage in as I have a series of races to do in Europe starting next week and was expecting this smaller event in Morgan Hill to be just a hit out.
I arrived at the race on Sunday morning to discover that this local event drew a solid start line of about 750 athletes including some big pros like Chris Lieto and Brian Lavelle. It is their local race so it was easy for them to come through and get a hit out in their backyard. I made a mental note to myself – make sure to check start list before doing a heavy three days of training before a race.
I perked up for the event and put my head in the right place. I knew Chris would be riding exceptionally hard, and Brian is a great swimmer. I just needed to stay as close as possible and strike on the run. This was my plan.
I had a great swim and exited the water on Brian’s feet. We had a little gap on Chris and I tried to capitalize quickly with a fast transition and setting an early tempo. Chris moved through the field pretty quickly and caught me at about 5 miles into the 18 mile bike ride. He was moving very fast and I picked up my tempo to go with the fast pace he was setting. Brian and young Aussie Michael Murphy were shelled quickly, and it came down to the two of us.
After 18 miles of bike riding Lieto and myself jumped off the bike together. We had a 5-mile run ahead of us and a big gap on 3rd place. I didn’t have much in the legs. Chris had ridden hard and the last few days of work had sapped my speed. I decided to run off the shoulder of Lieto and save it for the sprint to win the race. With 300 yards to go I made my move and ran away with the win which was a relief. Both Chris and myself blew the course record apart, setting a new mark almost 3 minutes quicker than the old mark. It was a solid day and I was really happy with the day.
After the race I spent some solid time with my other key sponsor Clifbar. We did some filming and knocked over some sound stuff for their site. It was an enjoyable to catch up with Dylan and the team and as always we had a few laughs. I got to trial a few of the new products to be released by Clifbar this year and plan my needs for the season.
As I am spending a lot of time in Europe it was the perfect opportunity to spend some time with Clifbar.
I head off to Germany on Wednesday and am looking forward to locking down into some solid training for Ironman Germany. In Europe this is always a good thing as the training is exceptional. I will be based out of France for a couple of weeks and then moving to Darmstadt in Germany for 1 month before Ironman Germany. I head home to see my girls on the 9th July and am counting down the days.
Will write again from Europe.
Safe Training,
Macca
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