Pre Race Report from Western Australia

After a long and nice flight with Qatar airlines, I arrived Perth on Monday, where I met Gøril, my cousine, coming from Norway to join me for the Austrlia-holiday. As usual the bike didn't arrive, but since the first days were vacation in Perth and on the beaches at Rottnest Island together with the “Quokkas”, it didn’t really matter… And after a couple of days just before heading for Busselton, the bike arrived too.

Since it is December, Australia of course also have all their Christmas decoration and Christmas trees in the streets in the cities and in the shops, where they also play “Santa Claus is coming today”. That is a bit strange however, because in my mind it doesn’t fit together with 20-35 degrees, beaches and summer…. But anyhow, we enjoy the summer and the beaches here… Western Australia is not a very urban place (Except for Perth city), it is looooong beaches, roads, woods, and few houses and cities, and it is completely flat! And it is expensive…. I thought Norway and Switzerland were the most expensive countries you could find… now I am not sure about that anymore.

We are living in an apartment 6 km south for Busselton centre, there is not very much here, except for a very long beach and the Indian Ocean…. A good place for relaxing and preparing for the competition. On Thursday I did the start number pick up, a little bit shopping in a very small expo…, and had a short swim exercise in the biiig waves along the swim course (which is one loop around the nice, long Busselton Jetty). Hopefully the waves will be smaller on Sunday…

And Sunday is the race day! That will be exciting. I should be fit and in a good form, I think, but time will show, you never know, it’s a long race, and it will be a long day. One of the most difficult thing will maybe be remembering keeping left on the road…. but I have only done a few mistakes with right-side-cycling until now…:-)

The race should be possible to follow live here: Ironmanlive (or if it doesn't work, simple try ironmanlive.com).

And my race number is 989
And I have just learned in the pre-race meeting that there are no sharks in the ocean outside western australia.... 

Next news to come: Post-race report….

And some pictures from the days in Australia until now can be found here : Bilder