Coupla days before the race

Should have split that previous post.  Too hard.

We came to do the half ironman and after a lap of the bike course we were wondering how we were going to run off the bike.  The roads in Austria are pretty smooth in general - they just go up and down a lot if you leave the valley you happen to be in.  And during the race you have to leave the valley.

On the climb.  Did I mention the scenery?

Top of the climb

The descent after the steep bit

More descent

Country roads on a beautiful morning

Its hard to emphasise how green it is

On any day the ride for the bike course would be on anyone's list as a great morning ride.  The main loop is 65ks and includes two long steady downhills separated by a serious climb with a killer last two ks.  The first couple of ks of descent from the climb are steep and include four fast open hairpins.  It calls for some serious braking - so serious that I overheated my front carbon wheel either on the trial run or during the race, but enough to put a couple of warps in it and cause it to fail on the long descent of the Grossglockner the day after the race.

There was over 200 athletes from Australia, the third greatest number after the US with over 600 and Germany.  Hard to see how all the US athletes get in.  Could be something to do with Ironman being a US company.

Because the next 70.3 "World" championship is in on the Sunshine Coast there were representatives at the trade expo from Triathlon Australia and Queensland Tourism to promote Australia and encourage athletes to try to qualify.

Australian competitors and supporters were given t shirts to wear in the parade in the days before the race.

The athletes of each country wander through the streets under their flag.  Our t shirts were blue.

Went to the athletes's dinner where one Ironman official made a speech followed by another and yet another.  All congratulating us for making it and congratulating each other for being great supporters of the company.  These were followed by a short list of Austrian tourism officials who each made the same speech thanking us all for coming.  During this there were several types of pasta served but no serious food for anyone on a gluten free diet.

Being a day or two before the race we had time to be tourists - so went to the top of the world to the Kitzsteinhorn glacier.  More in the next post.