team TBCSportaid

its been a little while since my last post - that period immediatly after a race being typically both manically busy- lots of catching up to do on our return to the uk, with plenty of inter-county travel and relocation, preceeding a tentative return to training last week. It was good for me to get back to mum's in taunton and spend a bit of quiet time down there after a manic couple of days in london and able to focus on some solitary post race training. ot to mention unwrap several boxes off gear that had arrived from new sponsors of The Team Formely Known as ActiveInstinct in my absence. I'm all kitted out with Powebar bars and gels, plus an array of branded gear (including a powerbar washbag!), For Goodness Shakes recovery drinks and powder (that stuff is The Business!), a new Polar does-everything wrist-worn training computer, and a Sailfish wetsuit. Mum's loft rafters are groaning and she's havig nightmares about waking in her bed with half a ton of sports nutrition having fallen through the ceiling and smothered her!

Sunday evening, after a glorious weekend in somerset, which included a fast-paced preveiw of the IM UK course (pretty gnarly), it was back on the intercity to meet my new team mates in west london in advance of Monday's Press Launch. We arrived and discovered yet more packages of kit - it was like multiple christmas's all at once! - from Saucony and the team TBC Sportaid kit race/training kit.

The Team is currently going under the name of TBC SportAid in teh absence of title sponsor. Ryan has done an awsome job for us in drawing up sponsorship from all of the product sponsors named above, as well as from Profeet who will be providing us with their very advanced biomechanical shoe and bike fittings, prologo saddles, in a very difficult economic environment. The team concept works well for sponsors, with the diversity offered by the athletes on teh team, they get exposure spread wide across the range of triathlon, from sprint, itu to ironman. There'll always be one of us out racing, and hopefully many sucesses reported amongst the team this year.
However, the tough finiancial times really hit home when the main (cash) sponsor that had been in on the team had to backout of the agreement due to budget review shortly before the team launch. Negotiations had gone far along, and Ryan had obviously done a great job in securing sufficient finiancial commitemnt upfront to enable the launch to go ahead. So, until a new big sponsor comes along, we are TBC!

The launch day was great fun - from getting to know my new team-mates, which was really interesting to learn a bit about the world of ITU racing and life as a young up and coming triathlete, and meet the other long distance guys who i've known of from the ironman scene for the last year or two, we spent the morning in photo shoots, had a pub lunch and then in the afternoon had teh oppurtunity to speak toreps form our sponsors and the tritahlon press. you'll be able to read all about it in the next few weeks, i'm sure.

It was a fabulous expereince for me and after more than a year of working towards this with regular bombardment of Ryan's in-box amongst my other emailing,letter writing and exposure of my tri career thanks largely to the support of at Tri247, i finally feel like things are all happening for me....this is a large step in the direction of making a sustainable living out of being a triathlete.


so, now i just got to get out there and justify it!
better pack - my great mate Kev is gving me a lift to Stanstead for fligt to Zarautz at 4am tommoro....and unior apprentice is on tv.
im soooo torn.