Packed and ready to go!

Seven weeks ago I was panicking at the thought that the Uni World Champs was less than 8 weeks away. I was feeling slow, unfit and had very low self esteem. It is now less than a day until I leave for Taiwan and although this seems like just yesterday, an awful lot has happened and changed since then. Thanks to tremendous support from Cath (my coach), everyone at vision, my housemates, my family and my friends I have somehow pulled through this semester in one piece, faster, fitter and leaner than I was before. Many prayers have been answered!!!

Since finishing exams a week and a half ago I have been able to focus on preparing for Taiwan (with the minor distraction of a 21^st birthday thrown in there) and it has finally sunk in that this is real! I am so excited I get goose bumps just thinking about it.

Doing a triathlon on my first bike, with my first swimmers and first helmet at my 21st

I fly out of Brisbane on Wednesday morning at 6:30am and arrive in Taipei at 9:45pm that night. Although it will be a very long day I was very relieved when these flights were booked as we were originally on an overnight flight with ridiculous stop over times, taking more than 24 hours to get there!! Thursday will be spent assembling our bikes, getting in some training to get our legs moving again after the flight and getting the official accreditation done so that we’re allowed to race. After lunch on Friday we have a chance to familiarise ourselves with the course before the opening ceremony at 4pm. My race is at 8am on Saturday morning, with the men at 10:30am. The closing ceremony will then be at 6pm that evening followed by the farewell dinner. We fly out at 1:30pm on Sunday so it’s a short trip but it should be an amazing few days.

The start lists came out at the end of last week and I was pleasantly surprised to be ranked 11^th out of 44! It’ll be the largest field I’ve ever raced in by far and should make for a great race (see start list here). The course is a 2 lap swim in the Dong-shan river, followed by a flat but technical 4 lap bike and a 4 lap run along the river. Maps

I have finally finished packing and miraculously my bike weighs in at 23kg exactly on my scales (let’s hope the Qantas scales say the same!). Travelling with a bike sure has its challenges, leaving almost no weight allowance for any clothes, shoes and other racing equipment as my bike + case alone weight 18kg!

Packing my bike

The weigh in

Packed and ready to go!

The team profiles have been added to the unisport website and can be seen here. Unfortunately I’m not sure there is anywhere you can follow live timing but the results should be up here shortly after the race is finished. I won’t have access to my phone while I’m over there but I should have email and facebook. I’ll try and keep you up to date on the happenings but I anticipate I’ll be quite busy enjoying myself, taking it all in and getting ready to race ;P. I do promise to take lots of photos though and I’m sure there will be an excessively long blog post to follow as soon as I get home. For now though, I’m off for one last session in the pool before I leave.

See you on the other side!