Luke Bell on what's in store for 2010.
Luke your pre season has been a tough one, there’s been an accident, there’s been a car accident as well. How’s it all gone from your point?
It was really about a 2 week span I reckon. The season so far was going quite well and I was lucky enough to hook up with Greg Henderson who is now racing for Team Sky previously Team Columbia. The cycling was phenomenal. I was literally getting the text message “this is what we are doing today” and you would go “okay”, you nod your head, get out the door and try to hang on to the wheel as long as you can.
So I had a good 5 weeks out on the bike where everything was rolling along great. We were just getting back into consistent running and unfortunately on a recovery ride was Greg’s wife, Katie Mactier, who you would think being an Olympic silver medallist would know how to keep her bike upright, but unfortunately a few gears slipped, chains slipped, she went down, brought down Greg, I superman’d over the top and fractured both the heads of the radius in my elbows and copped eight stitches in the chin which put a setback on things.
So unfortunately Geelong went out the window and Ironman New Zealand which was the main goal for the early part of the season. I was really looking forward to getting back and having another red hot go at Cam Brown and hence getting out on the bike with Greg and doing some mega miles, That was the main focus but at the end of the day it’s two broken elbows, they healed and I haven’t lost too much fitness. It was a matter of more of shuffling things around and rescheduling the year.
Is that moment of panic when it happens? What was the first thing that went through your mind as you were sitting there on the road side?
It was quite funny because previously Greg was about to leave to head out to Spain so we were talking about going out that night with Katie and Lucy (Luke’s wife) and myself and Greg catching up for one last final nice dinner. It would have been nice, we were discussing a bit of Donovan’s (local and very nice eatery) action which would have been good. Lying on the ground, I turned my head and looked at Greg and I’m like “I guess dinner’s off then?”.
You’re a veteran now though; we’ve got to put you in the veteran category. How do you get up every year? How do you sit here in January, February and start looking at the year ahead? How do you get yourself up and motivated?
It’s hard. We were talking about this exactly the other night, Lucy and myself, this will be our ninth season overseas and you’re talking nearly a decade of travelling overseas come winter time. You do struggle with it, some years are better than others.
This year’s been quite good having a few of the guys around to train with and get out the door with and other years in the past it’s been no secret that I’ve struggled sometimes at this time of the year for motivation and I'll get through the minimal amount of training and hope that that’s good enough.
I’ve literally learned to take it as it comes and being a decade in the sport now. There’s a lot of volume in the bank and some years you rely on that and other years you learn to build on it.
You talked about Ironman New Zealand being a goal of yours, looking at the re-jigged year, what’s on the agenda for the first half?
Well originally it was going to be the first bit of the year was Geelong 70.3, Ironman New Zealand then Ironman Utah St George. It’s (the injury) definitely canned Geelong, it’s canned New Zealand. We thought about Port Macquarie (Ironman Australia) but that’s still a bit early on the agenda after the accident and so Ironman Utah is still a main goal.
That’s one course that’s definitely a strength course so we are doing a fair bit of base miles for that now and then six weeks later we’ve slotted in Ironman Japan. This will be my first year where I’m really going to focus on doing 3 Ironman races. We’ll back things off, freshen up and before you hit things out for Hawaii later on in the year.
On the point of Hawaii, you’ve experienced the highs and the lows on the big island. What’s it like for you again up for another campaign and getting ready for that after taking a year off the Ironman circuit?
It was quite good I think, really at the end of the day. I needed to take that year off. I’m extremely happy that I decided to watch the race (Kona ’09) and experience the race. It was amazing and to be able to walk around town and get the whole vibe and the atmosphere and not have the stress involved of racing. It made you realise why Hawaii is what it is and after this year, there’s been a little bit of email shot back and forwards and this year I’ve been chatting to Macca quite a bit.
It looks like probably August I will hook up with him. Do at least a one month block with him in Kona this year and we are talking about maybe doing the whole Kona prep together and seeing how things are going. I figured he’s been there, he’s experienced some lows, I remember running by him in his first few years when he was sitting in a water pool on the edge of Palani Hill and he has been second, he has won it and he come back and last year had a phenomenal race to finish fourth. So, to learn off someone like him will be something new and exciting. It’s definitely got me keen to go back there this year and after discussing it with Huddle and Paula (Luke’s coaches Paul Huddle and Paula Newby Fraser), the coaching guys I’ve got around me, we think that there’s nothing wrong with it and Huddle followed around Mark Allen for years and it didn’t do him any harm. It’s always good to experience something new.
What did you learn at Kona? Just sitting there watching it. We crossed paths a couple of times on that day last year and I saw you actually looking quite intent as the race was unfolding. What were some of the things you picked up there as a spectator?
It was more the few days leading in you realised how stressed people got and at the same time it is still just another race. It’s an eight and a half hour event and we all talk about patience but I think the thing that worked in was you get out of the water with the group and the pace in the first 20 - 30 kilometers is extremely high and if you get dropped it’s no big deal.
Where in the past you used to stress about where you were, where you would be sitting in the bunch, all the way out to Kawahi, you’d be stressing the bunch has got 20 guys in it, there’s so many guys there that are great athletes.
But I think you looked at the race unfold (last year) and you saw Macca was two and a half to three minutes down out of the water in the first 15 km with Normann (Stadler) with him, Cam Brown was there also and one of the guys in the bunch turned to us and I was out there spotting asked where Macca was and we were like “mate don’t worry about it, the race is done he’s not involved, not at all” And then 40-50km to go here comes Macca by the group looking stronger than everyone else. He puts four minutes into him off the bike and had a bit of an up and down marathon and finished off with the fastest last 10km out of everyone there including Crowie.
You realise this is a guy that earlier in the day we’d written off and said race is done, race is over after the swim and he’s come through and finished fourth and was contending for the race albeit until the last 15 km.
He certainly he was a beautiful marathoner last year. You said this season was number nine coming up and you’ve been painstakingly close to an M-Dot win, to an Ironman victory. You were second to Galindez in Brazil; you had a head to head duel with the Lord of New Zealand, Lord of the Rings there Cam Brown. Do you consider yourself an underachiever because you haven’t won an ironman?
I think yes and no. It’s a bit of a two way street. You think, and this is something that I’ve chatted to the likes of Chris Legh about and I guess Macca about too, is it’s so close, so close. But at the same time being so close I think has gotten me the respect and the credibility I from racing those guys that has carried me through and enabled me to get my sponsors and to be able to be looked after the past decade rather than chasing an Ironman Malaysia, a Korea, a Louisville if you may, race.
The guys that generally go across and do that, the rest of the world doesn’t really look at. I guess it’s very frustrating and not to have that win there but at the same right, I wouldn’t change a thing and I’ve always gone about. You get the credibility by racing the best in the world and those guys were the best. Whether it be in their time or at their races and I think that’s in turn what’s helped me out at the same time.
When we talk to you in a few months time, post October what would you consider a successful year for you?
Successful year would at this stage I just want to get back into top 10 in Hawaii, have a consistent race there and I think that would be about it. If I could do that and roll around there in the top 10 again then I would go home happy for sure.
Luke Bell thanks for your time
Thank you very much
You can listen to the interview in the gallery below
