T - 123 - Rest Day - Monday 27th October

Great fun - but I was a little twitchy from having had such a crap Sunday.

However the im,portant thing about this rest day was that it was the first day of the build period. I'm out of my interminable based period which has been brilliant in improving my strength and fitness 0 if not my speed. My skills have come on a long way since June and I'm now pretty confident that I will be able to finish in Langkawi. Times are still an issue and I've no idea what is reasonable to expect. So for the moment I'll stick with a 12 hour finish. an hour and a half on the swim because I'm crap and I don't want to spend the energy going fast. 6 hours on the bike which may be a bit optimistic but I am now fairly comfortably able to average about 30km/h on a normal road with all the traffic light stops and starts and a bit more when II'm sailing free. Can I keep it up for 6 hours though and then run. As I get closer to the day I'll start predicting my times on the basis of power and then race to that on the day. Finally the run - 4 hours - which I'd be fairly comfortable in doing in a stand alon marathon in northern Europe. In the heat and after 7 or 8 hours of exercise it may be tough. But a stretch goal is always worthwhile. And at the end of it these are targets - the goal is simply to finish :)