Ironman - Juggling skills key for Bozzone

Terenzo Bozzone hopes his juggling skills have improved enough for him to seriously challenge ironman maestro Cameron Brown at Ironman New Zealand in Taupo today.
Last year, Bozzone mismanaged his resources in the 3.8km swim, 180km cycle, 42.2km run event, and suffered the consequences.
Ahead by more than seven minutes midway through the cycle leg, Bozzone paid the price for pushing too hard early on as Brown reeled him in on the bike, then powered past in the final run to eventually win by a touch over 8 minutes.
"Patience is the big thing," Bozzone said after last year's race.
"I haven't had a lot of that all my life."
Now, he is determined to exercise restraint, get his timing right and push nine-time champion Brown right to the line.
"It's a bit of a juggling act. When you're feeling good, you've got to make sure you don't push yourself too hard," he said yesterday.
"And when you're feeling bad, you've got to think why you're feeling bad and what you can do to get out of it as quickly as possible."
Bozzone said taking the emotion out of ironman meant being in charge of your own race, ironing out the peaks and troughs and being aware of the danger of over-reaching if you feel too good as well as the temptation to ease off if you're going through a bad patch.
Last year, Bozzone emerged from the water with a two-minute lead over Brown, then pushed hard on the bike leg, a decision he later regretted.
"I started riding the first 40km quite fast and I kept getting time splits ... three minutes, four minutes ahead.
"I was riding away from him and I felt good. So I thought 'why not keep pushing it?' and I kept pushing and kept pushing, and before I knew it I was riding harder than I wanted to, but putting a lot of time on the other competitors."
Brown's discipline and patience, along with a 2h 47m 35s closing marathon in blustery conditions, won him the event for the ninth time in 10 years.
Bozzone, in his fifth full ironman, clipped out a respectable 2h 56m 53s marathon for second, adding more valuable experience to his multisport vault of information.
At just 26, Bozzone has plenty of time to develop in the sport, with many world champions not reaching their peak until their mid-to-late 30s.
"I definitely learnt a lot last year and I'm still learning from every race," he said.
"I think I'm in a better position now than I was last year. I have that much more training behind me, that much more experience.
"I know a little bit more what to expect from my body and a little bit more about where I can push my body."
Adding to that learning curve was his 2010 world championship effort in Kona, Hawaii, where he finished 20th in 8h 38m 23s, 4minutes down on 17th-placed Brown.
Bozzone sums up that effort in October last year in five well-chosen words: "It didn't go too well."
He said the best results came when "you can hang on that line, push that line between going fast and overdoing it, and not doing enough. You want to be on that line for the whole day."
The nature of the multi-discipline ironman means a multitude of opportunities for things to go wrong.
Elite runners, swimmers or cyclists have only to peak in their sole discipline to win a race. Triathletes have to get it exactly right in all three, in one day.
"That's the tricky thing. You can train hard, put in a lot of work and be in the best shape of your life, but if you get out of bed on the wrong side, you're in for a pretty tough day," Bozzone said.
"There's a lot of variables and I guess that's part of what makes a champion whether you can balance that or not."