yo, back in Dubizzl. Straight flight from Durban on EK with my favourite plane of them all, the 777 300 ER. So much space. Really tight plane. Durban is a cute airport, really small. I love South Africa and have a soft spot in my heart for the place. The people are very hospitable, straight forward, humble and know sports. Also the Ironman events held in SA are operated on a very high level. It is fun to race in South Africa, no matter what distance or race. Durban has revamped their 70.3 a little bit different swim in a better place, less exposed to the big waves which make Durban a rather cool surf spot as well. Last weekend also happened to be the SA open of Surfing. So cool. So tight. So fresh. So clean. I arrived on Thu and stayed at the Hilton in Durban next to the cricket stadium. Tight hotel. Durban has a good vibe about the city. It is quite tropical with a lot of Asian influence. I like it personally. The race was on Sunday so i had good time to check out all the sites. What i always like about SA is, when you check into the hotel, they got all the channels with all SuperSports content you want, so you get all the sporting events going on live and in HD. For someone who doesn’t have a tv at home that’s pretty tight. So i watched US Open Golf and followed some of the cricket as well.

The race had a consistent weather forecast with quite a bit of wind on the bike course but not so much waves on the ocean. The weather held up and we just got that. I was in the leading group in the swim, and now with these self seeding starts you really don’t get to warm up no more. So it was cold turkey bum bum from the gun and i had a good swim start. My work is paying off. Held the leading group all the way, and of the guys was sprinting away a little bit near the end, but that was okay i took over in T1. Got out of the water in just over 26:00. Still need to work on technique and rotation though. Not totally happy, but ok. Long Beach run. T1 was quite something, ca. 800m long, and it took about 3.30 for t1 to get through that. Very very long and it added up on the time in the end. The first 4K was a non overtaking zone in no aero position. Then i got lost for ca. 30 sec 1min on the bike course because the signing was not there at all, didnt know where to go. Once on the highway put the foot down so hard, took the turn at 45k in 1:02 very fast indeed. Wind helped a bit on the way out. Very hard bike course indeed total of 1100m of climbing over konaesque rollers in quite a bit of wind on the way back. Clocked 2:15:00 with getting lost a bit. On a course like that with such wind inclusive of getting lost, that’s tight riding. I am quite happy but pedaling technique over first 35k was fucking horrible. Sort of got better on the way back. Looking for improvements on the bike. Got on the run and already had an 8min lead on 2nd place. Tough to stay motivated. First 10.5k in 38 min but no real motivation to push super hard after that and then cruised a little bit home but still increased the lead to almost 13mins in the end. My stride was good consistent but could improve on some other technical elements. The Ironman IT department is not the best, they added T2 time to running time, which i find very weird. I ran in 1:20.00 for a total of 4:08.00 with monster bike course and transitions.

All in all a good race, leading from beginning to end to take overall win in 70.3 Durban which was an age group only race, which i didn’t know until i got there. But it don’t matter. A win is a win. Congrats to everyone who did this race. Met some cool South Africans as well.

Looking forward to training and improving to be better in the upcoming races. See you guys out there and enjoy it because that’s what i do.

So tight.

Peace out

James Bulger