Emma-Kate Lidbury: It’s all about Vegas

After a busy first half of the season racing here, there and everywhere, the past few weeks have been a lot quieter and have mostly involved me getting my head down and banking some solid training blocks.For the past three weeks, I’ve been out in Morzine, France, where the Alps have been giving my biking legs a proper thrashing – and my swim and run training hasn’t been too soft either.

I’m building up to my ‘A’ race of the season now: the Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Las Vegas on September 11, so over the next few weeks I’m looking forward to injecting some real speed into sessions so that I’m on that Vegas start line in tip-top shape. It’s the first year the Worlds have been held in Vegas and already there’s a real sense of excitement building – not just about the race, but the post-race party too!

Morzine has been a great place to start focusing on Vegas and it’s been a lot of fun too. The first few days were cold, wet and testing. All of us (Rachel Joyce, Cat Morrison, Keavy McMinn and Jo Carritt) were wondering what on earth we’d signed up for. The outdoor 50m pool was doubling up as a fine ice bath some mornings and take my word for it when I say swimming 5K in 22C water is far from clever (cue 20min hot shower and several pots of coffee).

With the Alps now bathed in sunshine, it’s a much different story and riding here has been nothing short of fantastic. I’ve been loving putting a lot of the new women’s dhb bike clothing through its paces – nice work Team dhb!

Yesterday’s climb up the Col de Joux Plane was probably one of the most scenic rides I’ve ever done and I’ll be flying home at the end of this week knowing that so many mountain miles should hopefully bring Vegas smiles. I’m looking forward to a couple of weeks training at home before heading out to Miami for a fortnight’s pre-Vegas acclimatisation. Bring it on! Happy training and racing all
EK