One of the best parts of being a member of Endurance Nation is access to a global community of athletes working together to be their personal best. Enjoy this latest dispatch from Australia, where Team EN member Tom Daemen makes the most of his race!   You can join Tom and the rest of our global community online here anytime.     ~ Coach Patrick 

Just wanted to say a huge personal thank you to you and the gang.

I wasn’t sure how it was going to play out after 8+ years out of the tri world and turning 50 earlier this year, but I ended up at 5:13:15.

Although slow by EN standards, for me it was a great result given the training/life/work balance I struck this year. And it’s all thanks to the flexibility of your system. Covering Southeast Asia means ton of time in the air and training in places with no connectivity or resources. The fact that I can download everything in Sydney and then just pull-up a Final Surge workout on my Garmin 945 and go for a run in Bangkok or swim in Vietnam made it a brainless exercise.

I loosely followed the intermediate plan, which gave me so much fitness for the race that my heart rate was so low coming off the bike that I completely overcooked the first km of the run. I then had this image of you yelling at me for violating Key 1 and dialled it back. My fastest kms were 1 and 21. Literally, the ONE thing you keep emphasizing to not do.

Oops. I made all sorts of mistakes, used a road bike and was humbled by the youngsters, but it was great to get out there again with 1,600 of my closest friends.

In short, thank you. Great plan, use of technology and online resources.

Happy Thanksgiving up north, and see you somewhere.

Tom

P.S. I had to laugh when the announcer said something like, “And here comes Tom Daemen representing Endurance Nation.” Ha, if only he knew you guys were 19 time zones away. What a world.