The current ITU Duathlon World Champion, Catriona Morrison, is ready to get back to basics in her bid for success at the World Ironman Championships in October.
Morrison has returned to Scotland following a stunning run of results, including three wins from three events during a six-week spell in the USA.
The 34-year-old, who represented Scotland at the 2006 Commonwealth Games, won both the full and 70.3 Ironman races in Texas, with a third-straight 70.3 St Croix title sandwiched in between.
Now she is back home in Broxburn to recharge the batteries and build towards the 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike and 26.2 mile run in Kona, Hawaii.
She said: “I should have enough points now to have secured my place on the Kona start line. When you race as much as I have, the volume of training obviously drops so you don’t get the consistency of long distance training you need to pull out another Ironman.
“I need to get back to working on my running technique. While I’ve been racing I’ve slipped back to the default approach so it’s been a case of two steps forward and one step back. Now is the time to address things and make sure I am able to run pain free so I can run faster.”
While the main focus has turned to training, Morrison has pencilled in plans to race at the Ironman 70.3 European Championship in Wiesbaden in August and the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Las Vegas a month later.
Sickness has impacted upon her performances in her previous two Kona appearances, failing to finish in 2010 and emerging 16th in 2009, giving the steely Scot even more motivation to make it third time lucky.
“I’ve picked the next few races carefully as the target is all about staying fit and healthy so I can perform in Kona. I’ve read people saying I can’t cope with the heat and the humidity, but the wins in St Croix were in the heat and Texas showed me it’s not an issue.
“I just want to get there, attack it and run my own race. If I do then I know I can finish in the top five and I want to be on that podium. That’s why I’m taking my time just now and focusing on training.
“When you are doing well and winning races it is easy to go all out and keep surfing that wave, but the more races I do the more I’m risking everything. It’s a case of the head ruling the heart.”
