Just over a week out from Ironman Japan now, so let's talk run strategy - the bit that actually decides the day for me.
Coming out of T2, I'm starting conservative - somewhere between endurance and low tempo pace, around 4:40/km. Not fast, on purpose.
Mentally I'm not treating it as one huge marathon. It's four 10kms. First one, fully controlled. Middle two, building if it's there. Last twelve, whatever I've got left.
The aim's a negative split, or as close as I can manage - second half faster than the first. Start conservative, build into it, rather than front-load the effort and hope it holds.
Same logic as the bike: keep something back. You don't want to find out at 30K that you spent it all in the first 10.
My Ironman marathon PB is 3:15. If I can match that off the back of this bike course, that's the dream outcome.
Everything's prepped now. All that's left is showing up and executing it.
