Daily training journal — building toward IRONMAN 70.3 Melbourne.

Home is where there are no questions—just the work, done before the city wakes.

I start at 05:37 with a short 1.47 km warm-up, easy spin to shake off sleep. The legs respond quickly; it's 18.9 km/h, heart rate climbing gently to 105. Fourteen minutes later I'm rolling again, this time for real. Sixty-three kilometres towards Noida, out towards Parichok. The road is familiar but the effort is different today. Two hours of riding, 31.2 km/h average, heart sitting steady in the 143s. One hundred and fifty-four metres of elevation, nothing dramatic, just relentless. There's a rhythm to it—the kind that only happens when you've done the small mornings before. When you've earned the right to go long.

By 08:11 I'm peeling off the bike and into a five-kilometre run. The brick session—that peculiar discipline of running on tired legs—used to feel like punishment. Today it feels like progression. Five kilometres in thirty-one minutes, average pace 5:52 per kilometre. The heart rate climbs to 164, which is where it should be at this effort. I finish exhausted, completely drained, but content. There's a difference between being wrecked and being satisfied. This is the latter.

One of the hardest training weeks I've done. Not because any single workout was exceptional—none of them were—but because of the cumulative honesty. No shortcuts. No skipped sessions. Just baby steps, week after week, building something real. One hundred and eighty-nine days until Melbourne. The distance feels right. Not too far to lose focus, not close enough to panic. The only thing that matters is how I'm progressing, not where I am or what the numbers say on paper. That understanding—it's taken me forty years to really feel it.

Small consistent work. That's the secret.