up and downs

It is a while ago since my last blog. I will start blogging more from now on again to keep the interested more updated on what I am doing.

Most of you know, 2010 was not an easy year for me. I dealed with injuries and was never able to reach my full potential. And at the high level our sport is now, your body and mind has to be a 100% ready to get the results.

In October 2010 my dad, my biggest fan and supporter, past away. He fighted cancer for three years. It defenetely made me see the sport from a different angle. I think I already knew what is important in my life, but this tragic event made it much more clear to me. You look at a lot of things very differently then before. Lots of things are not the same as before anymore.

But life goes on. Over winter time I had to work on my injuries and thanks to a great medical team I was able to solve one of the major problems. I had a great preperation in my „second home“ Noosa. Over the last years Australia has always been a very important part of my racing season preperation. We have a great group of people down there and we all support each other in a certain way. There is a great support and respect in between the so called „Noosa crew“. Very honest and humble people. World Champion or a local race winner, everybody gets the respect and can have a great time. This is what it is about. That makes real hard training much easier as you can focus a 100% on it.

Thanks to the good and hard training in Noosa, I got a great 3rd place at Ironman New Zealand. I raced out of training and with no real Ironman focus in my plan at that time of year. So I was super happy with the result. Even more as we raced in the worst weather conditions you can imagine. Pouring rain all day and cold. As you know, not my favourite race conditions. But I proved the people wrong who thought I cant race well in those conditions.

After the Australia camp Nicole and I only spent 6 days at home in Switzerland. Then we were off to the US again. That means double jet lag. Maybe I underestimated this a bit. But the fatigue and 30hours of sitting on my hamstring in planes didnt help me at all. In the half Ironman distance race in Texas (70.3 Texas) my hamstrings completely shut down after 50km on the bike. Back in transition I couldnt bend my right leg anymore. Very frustrating, but look, at the end its just a little down. Like I said, I look differently at certain things by now and this is a problem I can solve. I give my body a good treat now. give it a bit more time to recover and I will be back strong till Ironman St.George (May 7) .

I am now in Boulder,Colorado since 2 weeks. Enjoying a great time with our great friends Greg&Larua. Lots of hard training at altitude. Starting to feel very good and strong again.

Up and downs are part of the sport. Life is full of it.

Mathias