My goal in Ironman Austria 2008, which is only 2 and a half hours away from my residence in Zagreb, Croatia, was to be in the TOP 5 athletes and with that result qualifying for the Hawaii Ironman World Championship 2008.
6 months of preparation that’s behind me paid off. On Sunday July 13, I successfully finished my second Ironman race in a 10-year long career in sports and took the 5th place with a new croatian national Ironman record time of 8 hours, 28 minutes and 4 seconds.
Brothers Brad and Anton Storm, which are widely recognized as very fast in the shorter distance races of triathlone, led the way swimming through the Worthersee lake. After the swimming portion of the race (49 minutes) I was holding an excellent position with the leading group of athletes which consisted of many well-known names, like domestic favorites Norbert Langbrandtner (2nd place Ironman Austria 2002,2005, 2007), Werner Leitner (4th place IM Austria70.3) and Olympics-bound Norbert Dominik (2nd place IM 70.3 Monaco 2006) with only one man ahead of us; the winner of Ironman Austria in 2006 and 2007 and a big favorite to win the race, Mr. Marino Vanhoenacker (5th place IM WC Hawaii 2007).
Bike portion of the race was organized into 2 circles of 90 kilometers each with two more significant hills on the track. The rest of the circuit was faster and technically less demanding, which led to some inappropriate behaviour of some atletes called drafting. It was penalised with a black card, which meant 4 minutes added time to the final result.
After about 40 kilometers on the bike, weather worsened and heavy rain started to interfere with my planned pace for the bike section beacuse of the slippery turns and poor visibility due to evaporation of water up from the asphalt.
Somewhere along the 65th kilometer on the bike I started to experience some technical dificulty with my gear shifter and I had to let go of the first group to fix the problem. By later trying to catch up with the leaders I drove somewhat carelessly through one of the left turns and received a red card, with which they made me wait for 4 long minutes in the transition zone after 180 kilometers on the bike without eating, drinking or getting any kind of useful information about the competitors’ current position and time. I have to say that judges were pretty successful in discouraging drafting within the PRO group of athletes, while they were more relaxed with the EDGE group of athletes.
From what I could tell, I started my marathon run somewhere between 12th and 14th position in the race. In spite heavy rain and slippery track in some places, I managed to run the halfmarathon distance for 1 hour, 22 minutes and 20 seconds, which gave me a boost to finish the race with a 2:48 marathon time, and take the 5th place overall. With that my goal was complete.
Since the race was being held so close to my home base myself and 5 croatian athletes , who competed within the EDGE group, enjoyed a very massive and very recognizable red and white-squared support. Fans and family always represent a huge support and motivation to every Ironman, for which I am eternally deeply grateful.
My next big goal of the season is, of course, Hawaii, before which I will participate in some training-races across Europe.
Hello Dejan. How to be a star?
Once again congratulations on the succes that you made a lot of themselves, and for Croats in the World Triathlon and the triathlon in Croatia.
I am confident that you will be in Hawaii among the best because you have everything you need to pass.
emm. bookmarked )
Hi, interest post. I’ll write you later about few questions!