Source from Luke McKenzie

That hurt! Today was one tough day at the office. I am stoked to report that I repeated and won Ironman Japan for the second time today.



We have been experiencing a lot of hot, sunny, humid weather here in Goto Fukue since we arrived on Wednesday and this morning we woke up to cloudy, foggy skys and cooler temperatures. The wind even came up a bit just to add to the mix.

I had a strong swim and exited with a group of five on the tail of Kieran Doe and infront of Cam Watt, Tim Marr and Hiroyuki Nishiuchi. Out onto the bike our group soon became three with Nishiuchi dropping behind. Cam Watt and I spent most of the time leading the group which remained together till about 140km when Cam layed the hammer down and broke away from Kieran and Tim.

Back to transition Cam and I went onto the run about 7 minutes ahead of Kieran and Tim and about 8 infront of Australian Courtney Ogden who rode really well solo all day. I felt great in the first 10km and went out a little too fast as the course gets harder each lap between to the 16 - 22km and 34 - 40km points. I built a steady lead on Courtney by the 15km point my mate Shane Smith was telling me 10 plus minutes. I didn't get a split again till around the 34km point and I tried to keep my pace around 2 hr 55 min mark therefore making Courtney or whoever was behind needing a 2 hr 47 min run or better to catch me. Shane finally pulled up beside me at 34km and said I had at least 15 mins on Courtney but this coincided with the last hilly section of the course and that mental relief that I had a good lead really hurt me. I struggled from that point on and my pace really slowed. I suddenly went from feeling great to having nothing in the tank. It was so good to see the castle where the finish line is located. Whit Raymond was yelling at me to break my last years course record and I had no idea if I needed to sprint? I sort of picked it up but definitely didn't sprint and found out I had gone 41 seconds quicker this year.

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