Rising Berwick Paratriathlete Jack Howell is getting ready to jet off to Yokohama for the World Triathlon Para Series race on Saturday 13 May.
The race will be an opportunity for the teenager, gunning for a place at the Paris Paralympics, to test some new things.
It will be his first time travelling solo after having parental support for his overseas races last year, so although the points will not count towards Paris qualification, the event represents an important step on his journey.
It also offers the opportunity to gain valuable race experience before the window for Paris qualifying opens where more will be riding on each event.
Already this year, Howell has raced at the Para Championships event in Stockton in February and the Para Series in Devonport seven weeks later.
Having raced both courses several times before, he claimed silver at both events.
Each time he was beaten by fellow Aussie, David Bryant.
Bryant beat him by 40 seconds in the first of those races, with the margin trimmed to 25 seconds in Devonport.
Impressively, after Bryant, widely regarded for his ride, opened up a 100-second lead after the cycling leg, Howell was able to close in by 35 seconds at the finish line, exemplifying the strength of his running.
Both the Stockton and Devonport races are an improvement on what Howell produced last year when he was more than a minute behind the fellow Aussie.
“I don’t need to be making great headlines already – my timing will come,” Howell said.
“I want to get the timing perfect so I am making him work for his worth at the qualifying period when it counts rather than when it doesn’t.
“It didn’t register in my head how big a gap that was,” he said of the run in Devonport.
“I got off the bike and from the get-go, I was running as hard as I could.
“It showed to me I was working in the right direction.”
Following Yokohama, Howell will race in Montreal and Swansea in the middle of the year, before completing a test event on the course that will stage the paralympic event next year.
Howell was born with an absence of the left hand and shortening of the left forearm, known as symbrachydactly.
Thus, his left hand sits in a cup-like device during the race, allowed in the PTS5 category where athletes race with mild impairments and are permitted to use supportive devices.
The nature of the disability reduces his power in the swim and also affects his ride, an area he is continually enhancing.
The event sees athletes swim 750 metres followed by a 20 kilometre cycle and five kilometre run.
