Woody got back into the swing of things with the Hungarian Zanka Triathlon Half Ironman distance event, here's his account of what seems a great race..........

As always seems to be the case when i race this year a heat wave rolled in for the weekend, i traveled to the race with my team mate and training partner Zoli on the Friday morning, we left 9am and watched the temperature rise steadily from 25 to around 40 by the time we hit Budapest and onwards to Zanka!!!

The race organisers moved the start to 9am from 10 to try and save us a little suffering!!

Friday night we drove around the course, a 2 lap bike course of undulating terrain, perfect for me and a really nice road surface so fast!!

The race had a competitive line up with Hungary's 2 time Olympian Kuttor starting, and the usual Hungarian line up! The swim was fast with Kuttor putting 1 minute into us out of the water, i exited with a small group and my team mate just 30 seconds down. My plan on the bike was to settle into the first lap and really put the hammer down on the second lap to get some distance for the run as my run training had been a little compromised due to illness. This worked well, i was joined by Zoli and we rode up to Kuttor at 30k, at which time he was toasted after going all out!! We had Kis Gyula riding with us also which was a little worrying as he runs very well in the hot!! After 50k i started to up the pace and dropped Kis but Zoli managed to hang on, was a great second lap, suddenly felt like a permanent tail wind and i was spinning away (well at my usual 80 cadence!!) in the 53x11/12. Certainly riding the best i have in my life at the moment, and loving it, i had been training for ironman Austria before getting sick and this showed as the bike distance was very easy!!

I got off the bike with a 2hr11 time and started the run with Zoli, he was suffering a little in the heat so i pushed on and put a nice gap on him, the run course was a little surprise as we could not see before the event, basically 3 laps, running 2k up hill, a k or so through a forest off road at the top and then back down to start!! I had managed to get a 3 minute advantage on Kis by the end of the bike but when i saw him on the run he was flying!! He caught me at around 10k when i was seriously overheating!!!

Not long after this my body started to shut down, tingly arms, goosebumps in 40 degree heat, never good!!! I just put cruise control on and got back to the finish for a 3rd place finish, bit disappointed to not win but i gave it my all, maybe i should have been a little more controlled at the start of the run but we live and learn!!! Was a great day out and an amazing course, i will be back to win next year for sure!!!

After the race we drove back to Tiszaujvaros as the next day saw the ITU world cup event taking place!! There was a lot of suffering out there in the heat but great to see Andrea Whitcombe win for GB in the women's race and always great to see Gomez running, not effected at all by the heat!! Greatest thing to see though was my training partner Dimitry Gaag on the podium again after a gutsy effort over the last 3k on the run!!!

The world cup event here is known as the best on the circuit, the athletes love it and the after party is amazing!! We certainly all put away far too much alcohol, but was a great evening!! A great way to clear the head and body before the ironman UK prep starts!!!