The Queensland titles have come and gone and I was able to become the state’s Ironman Champion. The race panned out perfectly for me. All the breaks went my way while my competition failed to have them go their way.

The order of legs was ski, board and swim and after opening up a lead on the ski I was able to extend my advantage in every leg and finish around 100 metres in front of anyone else.

It was a good feeling and gives me confidence heading into the Australian Championships in Perth next week.

While I am looking to do well next week and try and repeat my performance of five gold medals from last year, I have to get over a dose of the flu first. It’s knocked me around a bit, but it may be a blessing in disguise because it has forced me to have a bit of a rest.

The championships are being held at Scarborough beach and, aside from it being a great venue, it will be an action-packed week. There are 28 races overall and I am taking part in 8 events which should test me right out.

Those events are ironman, swim, ski, the team swim, team board relay, taplin relay, team ski relay and the double ski.

As you can see it’s a pretty packed program and at this stage I plan on contesting everything, but if one event has to go it will be the individual ski race. There are heats, quarter finals, semi finals and then a final in the event and if I’m feeling tired it will be the event to go.

The week will start for me with an appearance for Telstra at Scarborough beach at 12:30 on Wednesday, so come down and say g’day!

After that it’s straight into racing at what I am told is the largest sporting event outside the Olympics. Two years ago at Kurrawa there were 8000 competitors at the National Championships and this year the number is set to be around 5000.

That is one reason why I love the Australian Championships. The other is the competitive nature. It’s practically the best field in the world in the ironman and if you win it you know you have done very well.

See you there - Zane

I don’t think anyone was more surprised than I was when I won the Kellogg’s Ironman series at Coogee on the weekend.
 
I knew I could win the race but I never thought Shannon Eckstein would finish fourth. I can’t remember the last time Shannon finished fourth before last weekend. He is such a consistent [...]