Trizone Speaks to Joe Gambles and Paul Ambrose on their 1-2 at the Ironman 70.3 in Washington

Trizone spoke to Joe Gambles about his race today and asked him how he felt after this win. “I felt good going into the race but having not raced for 11 weeks I was unsure of whether I was ‘race ready’. You can train really well but there is nothing like racing to really find out your weaknesses”.

Joe was very happy with his race. It was a very strong field to compete against in his first race back since injuring his achilles in June. “With every endurance race nothing ever goes exactly how you want it to go. My swim was a little off today and because of this I had to work really hard on the bike to get back in the race. Luckily I had my running legs working well today!”.

At no point in the race did Gambles think that he was on top of Luke or any of the other competitors. “It’s a long race and I had to push very hard all the way to the line”.

We asked Joe why he had had a relatively quiet season this year. “I had planned to race even more races this year than previous years, but after sustaining an achilles injury I had to take a break and re-think my 2010. I am in training but I hadn’t put it together in a race this year”.

What next for Joe? “I have Timberman 70.3 this weekend. If I recover quickly enough I hope to be competitive against the likes of Potts and O’Donnell.

Paul Ambrose

How did you feel going in to the race after backing up from Boulder the week before?

I felt really bad in the chest actually, the rest of my body was ok, but all week even when I arrived back down to sea level I had real problems with my breathing and my heart rate was all out of whack. When I was warming up before the race I still felt it very difficult to breath and my heart rate was unusually high, so I said to myself “I’m here now so I might as well just give it a go and see what happens”.

Was there any part of the race that you were unhappy with?

Well there was, I had a break away on the bike with (another athlete I wasn’t familiar with), anyway we were away from the rest of the main group and putting time onto them and Luke Bell, we were riding really strong, but the race was open to traffic and we got held up by a couple of different cars. We didn’t want to cross the double yellow line on the road in case we got disqualified, so ultimately our gap was completely lost and the main group including Gambles and McKenzie caught back up to us, (could of made the difference in the end).

At what point did you know you were going to catch Luke Bell? Did this push you on?

I was pretty confident that I was going to catch Luke, I was putting significant time into him straight away on the run, I actually thought Luke’s race was over as I thought he had bonked. I caught him really quickly at around the 8km mark on the run and then put some time into him. He actually started to run better on the 2nd lap and put in a good effort to stay in 3rd place.

Are you happy with where your bike and run is at?

I am, like I mentioned before, I was riding really strong, I could of rode with Bell on the bike, but I didn’t want to bring the whole group up with me, so I waited to jump across, which would have been successful if there were closed roads.

What have you got planned for your next race?

I am scheduled to race Ironman Louisville in less than 2 weeks time. I will be race fit for it, but am just a little paranoid that I haven’t done enough volume.