The body seems to have hit the wall! All I want to do is sleep.

There were two highlights during the past week - well one was a highlight, the other ....

First, I had a one-on-one sea swim with coach Tony O'Hagan. Must say I was pretty nervous, as he can sure swim (and bike, and run ...). I just wanted to get a good sea swim with him to show him I can do it, and also give me some more confidence in the sea.

So, last Friday, Tony met me at Takapuna Beach. The sea was flat, as it was a strong SW wind, and this doesn't usually affect the beach too much. Tony decided on the course and distance and of course the time I had to do it in (no pressure!). The first 15 minutes I had to stop regularly to get the heartrate and breathing under control, but after that I managed to get into a rhythm and swim (yay!). We did about 2.5km in total, and Tony still reckons if I keep my head together, my swim time will be around 1:30 on Ironman day. I would be very happy with that.

One thing that did relax me, was watching Tony "try" to swim slowly for me - I was folllowing him (like a little puppy!!). But in order for poor Tony to swim this slowly, he floated on his back, did butterfly backstroke, breaststroke etc... This keep making me laugh which helped relax me too. When he was doing breaststroke - of course, doing it properly - everytime I looked up to sight him, to check I was going straight, he had disappeared. He was completely underwater, and then would pop up. So, it was a good distraction for me and made me keep going, as he wasn't keen on stopping! We even got a heavy downpour of rain which I haven't encountered before - I just laughed and thought, god, I wouldn't have thought 12 months ago, that I would be out here in the pouring rain swimming in the sea. It did feel good though.

Thanks Tony for your endless patience.

The other "highlight" which I was dreading, was the 90km TT on Cateye windtrainers Saturday morning. We all have to use the Cateye WT's so Tony has a constant measure - usually I use my own, and I prefer it.

I have no problem with doing time on the WT - but 90km??? I have only done 20km TT's before with Tony, and my head was not in the right place before this. Neither was my back which has been giving me awful grief all week. This is the first week my back has been so sore - which I am amazed about. I have had to rest it, and do lots of exercises to get it right, but has been a slow one this week.

So, back to the 90km TT. There were about 12-15 of us doing it at Westlake Girls Gym Hall, with a few others doing 20, 30 or 60km TT's as they are not doing Ironman.

Amazingly, I got through it. My back was killing me (despite dosing up on painkillers), and at the 20km mark I didn't think my back would let me do it - but I pushed through it, and just keep up a steady pace. In the end my time was 2:53:28. I am pleased it is under 3 hours, but with this being my first 90km TT, it was hard to know how hard to start without blowing up towards the end. So, thankfully that is out of the way, and I'm not keen to do another one, anytime soon!

Oh, I nearly forgot. I have been lucky enough to be loaned some wheels for Ironman. Jason from AvantiPlus, has loaned me his carbon Roval wheels. I took them for a test spin yesterday and they feel great. Thank you Jason, I'll try not to crash!

That's about all for the time being ... not long now before it's time to packup the car and head to Taupo.