Finally it’s the end of season, it may be a week earlier
than normal, but coming into my last European cup I was feeling tired, and a
poor race in Romania confirmed that I was done, so I hung on for a nice local
race at Clacton where I managed to take the win, and now I’m currently enjoying
a week of doing nothing triathlon related…
Now for a quick recap of my last couple of races
My first European cup was in Karlovy Vary, and what a
race. A beautiful town, a testing,
technical and difficult course meant an honest race and I was pleased to take
24th in my first ever European cup, as my main aim at the start of
the season was to use these as a learning experience to take into next season.
And here are the main things I learned
·
A 20% hill is not nice to go up once let alone 7
times…
·
A massive flight of steps on the run do nothing
to help your legs
·
A pontoon that is about a meter above the water
leads itself to a diving competition at the end of each swim lap (it felt like
there should have been a panel of judges marking them…)
·
I still need to work on swim take out speed to
not get flattened at the start
·
I can hang on the bike with some of the best
riders on the circuit
 |
| Swim start - it was a long way down |
 |
| The Hill... |
Taking these lessons into my second race in Romania, I was
hoping for a great race, and after a flying out on the Friday, course reccie
and briefing on the Saturday it was a long day of sitting around on the Sunday morning
ready to go, and from the moment I set of, I felt flat. The swim was crazy
rough, considering it was meant to be a lake, and I just didn’t have any go, so
onto the bike I worked hard on the first couple of laps to bike up to the chase
group, caught at the dead turn, and then immediately got dropped, so then it
was a long way round, occasionally working with the odd athlete, but mostly on
my own, and then the run was a case of survival. If I counted the number of
times I thought to myself shall I stop then I’m sure it would have been in the
hundreds, but I stuck it out, and collapsed over the finish line. Not quite the
race I was looking for, but now to asses why this happened – whether it’s the heat
that doesn’t agree with me or just end of season tiredness, but hey I finished,
and beat the 20 odd people who DNF.
 |
| That was painful... |
 |
| Relieved to finish |
So it’s onto a block of solid winter training now, and
hopefully back stronger next season.
