Kelly fit and firing for worlds

Having fought and tamed the mighty Ironman New Zealand beast back in March, Tauranga triathlete Michael Kelly met his match when the savage bit back.
Kelly, who will line up in the world long-distance triathlon championshipsthis weekend in Holland, found himself questioning his sanity in the months after the Ironman New Zealand race.
"It's hard to explain, particularly for a guy like me who loves going out and training, but the month or two after Ironman, in terms of my motivation, was a real struggle," the 25-year-old said.
"Physically, it only took me a couple of weeks to recover but mentally, it took me ages to recover and for a long time there, I questioned what I was doing."
For a guy who loves hammering out gruelling seven-hour sessions on his bike, Kelly said clipping his feet into his pedals and sitting in his driveway wondering what he was doing was an odd feeling.
"Speaking to people, it's the nature of Ironman. You put so much of yourself into building up for that one day and for a lot of people, it's a huge goal achieved _ but it's the ones like me who carry on who have to dig real deep to find the energy and drive to push further.
"I'm lucky I had an event to focus on to motivate me."
Although almost 20 Tauranga triathletes qualified for the world long distance championships at the Port of Tauranga half ironman in January, only Kelly and sisters Kathryn and Natasha Lydiard took up the option of travelling to Europe.
Kelly warmed up for the world championships last week by competing ina 70.3 (half ironman) race in Antwerp, Belgium, finishing 56th in 4:19.10, 33 minutes behind the winner, Belgium's Marino Vanhoenacker, although he didn't push it, using the outing to get back into race mode.
He has been based for the past month in Belgium with CommonwealthGames road cyclist Logan Hutchings, choosing to head to Europe early to give himself every chance of success this weekend.
"It's a world championship event, so I figured if I want to do well, I had to head over early to acclimatise.
"It's a different environment to New Zealand _ pan flat and really windy."
The long-distance worlds are a strange beast _ the 4km swim is the samedistance as an Ironman, backed up by a 120km ride and 30km run. Having survived Taupo, Kelly is in the best shape of his life and knows he can compete.
"If I want to go further in triathlon, it's a huge stepping stone and I'd love to knock off a few of the professionals again.
"If I can sneak into the top-five in my(25-29 years) age group, then it mightopen a few doors to the pro leagues in Europe.
"It's my first world champs though, so it's an unknown _ but I owe it to myself to give it a decent crack."