With under a week to go to the start of the ITU World Cup season the Gold Coast is filling up with triathletes. The rest of the British Team arrived a couple of days ago and are staying about 20 minutes drive down the coast. Emma, Stu, Michelle and I may or may not see the guys before we all head up to Mooloolaba next week.

The last few weeks training has been extremely tough. We have all coped well and are looking forward to a taper into the first two races. Mooloolaba is one of the tougher courses on the World Cup circuit with a hard sea swim followed by a windy and hilly eight-lap bike, and finally a four lap hilly run. Each bike and run lap goes up and over the same hill so you end up doing sixteen reps on the bike and eight on the run! This will be a perfect race to see how the training has gone.

The following week we all head over to New Zealand and New Plymouth. I have fond memories of New Zealand as it was in Queenstown in 2003 that I won my first World Title in the Aquathlon. The temperature there will be significantly cooler than the Gold Coast and both Emma and I have packed arm warmers, leg warmers and jackets as we venture back to cooler weather. From New Zealand we travel back to Australia as the season gets well and truly under way.

I will aim to keep everyone posted on events in Mooloolaba and New Plymouth. Whilst in Australia I have taken the time away from training to learn and understand a bit more about my website: www.richardstannard.com. I have started updating it myself and adding a few cool new tricks. Check out my Gold Coast photos which I have animated into a short movie on my multimedia page. I hope to keep these montages running for each event and training camp throughout the season.