UPDATE ON IRONMAN CAIRNS

I have had to make the tough decisions to withdraw from Ironman Cairns which I was due to race on June 3rd. I aggravated an old back injury at Ironman Melbourne in March and after it initially got better in early April and I was back into the full swing of training it decided it didn't want to go away. I haven't been able to do any running since the middle of April now and last weekend I competed at the Busselton 70.3 and struggled through the pain to finish 4th. This was literally the only run I have done in the past month and an indicator that running a full marathon is out of the question right now. 

I have been getting good treatment but realistically the quickest way to get back on my feet and back to racing as soon as possible is to stay off it and rest. I am currently sitting in 14th position on the Kona Points Rankings and I am very confident that I have done enough already to secured my spot in the top 50 for Hawaii in October. This takes the pressure off having to race another Ironman before Kona and makes it a little easier to miss Cairns. I really wanted to take on Cairns because I feel I race best in hot, humid conditions and of course it's the first Ironman to take place in my home state of Queensland. Looks like I will have to postpone this one till 2013?! I am looking forward to racing a couple of Ironman 70.3's in the US in July, August and September. I am not fully ruling out racing the 70.3 event at Cairns (run on the same day as the Ironman) if I am back running soon and I don't think it will impact on my recovery from this injury. Obviously running 21km is a lot more manageable than running 42km off no training. Guess we will see how things play out in the next few weeks ...