After enduring a touch day last time out at IRONMAN Coeur d’Alene, where he suffered three punctures and ended up withdrawing from the race, American Sam Long has double down on his middle-distance ambitions for the season.

Foregoing IRONMAN Lake Placid and thus a chance at a spot at the IRONMAN World Championships in Nice, Long will now focus solely on the middle distance “championship” season, which will take him to Milwaukee, Singapore and Finland.

With a baby on the way as well, Long revealed his plan for the summer on his YouTube channel and shared why after a long domestic season, he is excited to get back on the road again and chase some big wins.

“This has been the vision all year”

Revealing that the schedule for this summer has been influenced a lot by the mistakes he made last year, which included a huge amount of travelling, Long is ready to go all in on three big races.

“I have to keep the bigger picture in mind, so the bigger picture for me is Milwaukee and then Singapore, both of those are part of the PTO series, and then I am going to go to IRONMAN 70.3 Worlds.

“I am going to have three big middle-distance races within three weeks and get this, Milwaukee is August 4th and my baby is August 2nd, so that is a little bit of a question mark. Hopefully the baby comes early or on time and then I’ll be ready and go.

“This has been the vision all year. If you look at last year, I travelled way too much, I travelled to Chile, then I had a European summer, so this year has been all about minimising travel and keep training so I can spend my travel coins on Singapore and 70.3 Worlds so I can be ready and fired up there.” 

Baby comes first for ‘Big Unit’

Sharing his excitement at becoming a Dad, Long did confirm the priority in early August was the birth of his baby, so if the due date clashed with Milwaukee, he would be missing the PTO US Open and doubling down on Singapore.

“I am not going to miss my baby’s birth, so if the baby is coming in late, I’ll miss Milwaukee, carry on with training and just double down on Singapore.

“Then that might be the end of the year for me, we will just have to wait and see what else comes. At the moment though, I am just fully focused on the birth of my baby and those three races.”