State Champ 2011

State Champ and first win in 2011 at 2. Barmstedt Triathlon. This Olympic distance race was a perfect preparation for the K-Swiss Ironman 70.3 Branson in two weeks.

Even though the competition wasn’t deep, one competitor made the race much harder than anticipated.
Personally, I planned a hard swim, hard bike and easy to mediocre run to save some energy. As expected, I was down about 90 seconds after the two loop 1.5k swim, leaving the quiet lake in third position. Starting the bike I was already in second and intended to catch the leader within the first 20k.
Well that never happened, after I took a wrong turn at the 5k mark as one of the race marshals seemed to be asleep, showing the wrong direction. I wasn’t able to make up this additional deficit of roughly 30 seconds and finished the bike in 58:09, still down 90 seconds. Even though I had to bike extremely hard over the entire 40k, I still felt exceptionally well, knowing that I have a chance to catch Matthias up front. Especially my last track work out (7x1600) last week made be believe and think positive about this 10k.
At the end, it took nearly 6k and a total run split of 35:50 to charge for the lead, as Matthias seemed to have an exceptional day. All in all, it was a perfect last test, with a final time of 1:55:03.

http://www.barmstedt-triathlon.de/pdf/Barmstedt_Olympisch_Einzel_2011.pdf

Everything is set for Branson now and I am very excited that K-Swiss will support me at this half ironman. Looking forward to race in the new K-Swiss uniform and representing this cool company and their sponsored event. You can follow the K-Swiss Ironman 70.3 Branson live ticker on ironman.com on Sunday September 18th.