Kristian Blummenfelt says he will use the ‘slap in the face’ that IRONMAN 70.3 Dubai provided as the fuel to power him towards that glory bid in St George on May 7.
The Norwegian superstar suffered defeat in his 2022 debut as he came home 10th behind Marten Van Riel almost two weeks ago. That didn’t tell the whole story though as a stumble at the swim start and a mechanical on the bike hampered him.
Afterwards Kristian though was brutally honest, admitting that pretty much everything had gone wrong and also that he would not have been challenging for the win even without the mechanical.
Watch: Big Blu in Dubai
A couple of days on from that initial debrief, he reflected further on the loss in a fascinating video detailing his trip to Dubai (well worth watching if you click on the embed below).
While the pain of losing was very evident, Blummenfelt says he’ll channel that into a positive as he now looks forward to the big showdown in Utah at the delayed 2021 IRONMAN World Championship.
“Obviously still disappointed with how it ended, but I guess it’s good to get this kind of slap in the face two months out from St George. So I’m just trying to keep it as fuel for my training for the next eight weeks.
“The last two days now I’ve been trying to re-evaluate the whole race and what happened, what went wrong.”
Blu on bike setup
One big takeaway Blummenfelt was planning to act on was his bike setup, as he explained.
“I’ll probably have to change a little bit my bike setup for example. My quads are still very smashed after the bike. So I guess I’ll have to put my saddle further back again to activate my hamstring more.”
As he signed off ahead of travelling back to Eindhoven, Holland for more work in a windtunnel, Kristian’s disappointment at his defeat was again clear. As was that desire to put things right on the first Saturday in May.
“It hurts more to lose, it’s awful post-race, but anyway, It’s just good fuel for the next few weeks of training.”
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