Maxim Kriat

My 2011 race season already done and I am currently visiting and enjoying my family back in Ukraine.

I want to say couple of words about my 2011 season . First of all I what to say HUGE THANK YOU to
all my Sponsors and Team who been supporting me thru the year and who I shared with my victories and dissapointments. This year was succesfull for me, but without them and they help and support it would never happened . During this year it was lot’s of up’s and down’s, happiness and disapointments that made me stronger, better athlete and gave me lot’s of expirience.

I would like to note three my achivement for this year. First one its the victory on the toughest 70.3 ironman distance at St.Croix. That was one of my brightest dreams and dreams come thru with hard work ,  I was realy happy that I made it. Second its a three half ironman distances back-to-back with second place on the last one 70.3 Augusta. And the last is 8:10 on the my second Ironman ever with 2.44 marathon at Panama City.  Hopefully that expireance and performance will help me to revange in Las Vegas 70.3 Worlds in 2012 and will help me to qualify for Ironman Kona in 2012 .

I want to wish everyone good vacation and see you next year .

One week passed  since Ironman 70.3  Syracuse, but  recovery seams to be  not that fast. And one  day before the race I  felt like I am falling  apart: I was out of  energy, couldn’t push  on the bike and didn’t  even try to run at my  warm up. I still tried  to do the usual  routine before the  competition and I had  a small hope that the  race day will be  different and  everything is going to be okay. But in reality during the first part of the race I was seriously thinking to drop out: on the swim I didn’t have the power to have a good stroke and swim felt so long even though it was with a current; my hip joins and back were hurting on the bike and I couldn’t drop my heart rate to normal level. After an hour on the bike I finally warmed up and started to feel better, my pain was gone, heart rate dropped a bit down and I felt like I am back in the game. Before the run segment I was confident that I can get on the podium and even to win the race and only Viktor Zyemtsev could interfere it. But his Ironman race 4 weeks ago and a leg injury didn’t let him to do that. So I crossed the finish line first and broke Bennett’s last year course record.

Now I have a recovery week in my schedule and next race is Ironman Miami 70.3 and World Championship in Clearwater.

After two months break I continued my 2010 season by racing in  70.3 Ironman Syracuse. The race was absolutely new and I could  just guess about the race course and the weather condition, so, I  didn’t have the strict plan. The weather was a bit chilly and bike  course came out as one of the challenging courses in Ironman 70.3  series. It benefited me. By looking on the start list I pointed out a  few guys, Paul Mathews and Andrew Yoder, who had a good  chances to win the race. And the goal for me was to be as close as  possible to those guys after the swim. I almost made it, I was just  26 second behind Paul and even closer to Andrew, but as I figured  later it wasn’t enough to follow plan on the bike. They pulled out,  the gap started to grow and I’ve lost visual control. From now on I  knew I could fight for 2nd or 3d place. And when I saw Andrew  dropped out of the race I was pretty sure I can finish second today and I was satisfied with that place especially with Ironman 70.3 Augusta comig up in one week. My running split gave me a good self confidence. I felt like I am getting in a good shape. Hopefully I will have a good race in 70.3 Ironman Augusta. Once again I wanted to congratulate Paul Mathews with his great race and sorry that Andrew Yoder didn’t show his performance in Syracuse that time, because of his stomach problems. Follow me at Ironman Augusta 70.3.