In the Driver’s Seat with…GT
One of the things that we’ve been able to step up quite a bit during the big winter break is the physical training side of our preparation. Traditionally you tend to taper your training going into race meetings and then recover on the other side of the race weekend with your training. Whereas with this two-month break we don’t have to worry about tapering, we just keep smashing the training week in week out. So from a fitness point of view that’s one of the things where we’ve taken the opportunity to really step it up as much as possible. The training is a bit of a mix of activities but because we haven’t been driving the racecar there has been a lot of lifting heavy weights that you generally don’t get too much of an opportunity to do during the racing season. There is also a lot of running and cycling in the training mix. With the cycling I tend to average around 150km-160km a week. We generally do a lot more running and as long as you look after yourself and don’t injure yourself, you kind of get more bang for your bucks on foot. And at the moment I’m training hard to be ready for the Noosa Triathlon straight after the Gold Coast Armour All 600 meeting in a few months time.
It’s an important time of the year to be fit anyway with the endurance races and then the Gold Coast meeting added to the long distance mix. But I’ve also got this goal of doing Noosa and to do a half respectable job. I’ve done a few short triathlons around Melbourne in the past. Each summer I do two or three of the smaller distance ones. However Noosa will be the first one of significant stature which is a triathlon renowned around the world and uses the traditional Olympic distance format of a 1.5km swim, 40km cycle, and 10km run.
Pic: Making a few moderations to GT’s commodore before the enduros
As everyone in V8 land would be taking advantage of as well, we are taking the opportunity to go right through everything within the team and make sure we are more consistent. We haven’t felt we have been as consistent as we should have been this year. Preparations for the long distance races are going well and for me going to Phillip Island (September 10-12) I’m pretty keen to do well because if I can do the job this year it will be three 500’s in a row. And then Bathurst obviously speaks for itself. You go there to win it regardless of what your record is in the past and I was lucky enough to win it for a second time last year. I’m pretty motivated at this stage of the year to get some results so I’m looking forward to getting back in the seat again.
Cheers,
GT
