Why Ironman Texas? I wanted to do an early season Ironman with the possibility to take the Norwegian Ironman record and with plenty of time to recover and build up to Norseman afterwards.

Ironman Texas was crazy fast last year, due to a bike course which was 5 km too short because of safety reasons. I expect the course to be correct length this year but the fastest guys will definitely go really fast anyway. My goal is to perform my best, and if I reach it, I can guarantee that I will go sub 8:26:20, which is the current Norwegian Ironman record.

The preparations towards the races have been good. My training has gone according to plan with good progression. The test I did in the wind tunnel showed upper world-class aerodynamic performance, but I was not able to get it quite right in Patagonman. I have been dialling in my equipment and bike position to get much closer to the wind tunnel results. On last Friday I rode my 10,5 km long test course back and forth twice during 60 minutes and averaged 42,2km/h at 270 watts, Ironman race pace. Since the test course is not flat and I changed to faster tires and tubes afterwards I expect to be able to do 43 – 44km/h in Texas with a similar effort. My running form is actually at an all-time high and I am very eager to show it in a race.

What I am not super confident about is the swim. Honestly, my swim form has not been as good as it was just prior to Patagonman. It’s maybe 2 seconds per 100m slower, which by no means is horrible, but it always tough to not hit the number I did prior to the season break. With the strong possibility for a non-wetsuit swim for PROs it does not help my confidence of being a second pack swimmer.

Another possible issue might, of course, be the heat. We had minus degrees in Oslo until just a few weeks ago so I definitely haven’t lived in similar conditions. What I have done is trained a lot indoor on the turbo and treadmill, with different degrees of cooling and spent a fair amount of time in the sauna. For that reason, I feel that I have done my best to prepare for the heat. The weather looked great when I arrived on Wednesday with 21 degrees, cloudy and rain. Just what I prefer. The last days it has turned to more typical Texas spring weather with up to 28 degrees at the highest. I can pray for cooler weather and more clouds but are prepared to become hot.

All in all, I am very happy with my preparations and truly excited to test myself against some of the fastest guys in the world. There will be live coverage of the race on Facebook at Ironman NOW and it would be cool if you checked it out 😀 My big number is 30 🙂