May has been a fairly disappointing month, I’ve had two big races. The first was Llanelli Superseries. It was the first triathlon of the season and was also the European qualifier and the Super League qualifier which I was hoping to qualify for. 

This was my first Super series triathlon as I am a first-year youth so there wasn’t too much pressure before the race. It was a long drive to Wales and we stayed in a Premier Inn around twenty minutes away from the venue. Later in the evening we headed down to the course to do a recce of the bike. The course felt fine apart from an angry horse on the side of the road that ran out in front of me and almost caused a crash, after that we decided to call it a day and headed back to the hotel.

On the morning of the race I had my usual breakfast which consists of Nutella on toast. After that we headed back to the race venue. I did the usual steady jog and stride outs before getting my wetsuit and heading to race start. It was a beach start and due to my ranking at the performance assessments I had one the worst starting positions but had a good run into the sea and swam hard to the first buoy but went around it in around 40^th position and knew I had a lot of work to do. I exited the water in around 35^th. I had a good transition and ended up in a big bike pack around 30 seconds away from the main bike pack so we worked really hard to try and catch and by the end of the bike we were about 20 seconds away from the next group.

I had a bad second transition and ended up losing five places but we were onto the run and I immediately started catching positions. By half way I had passed around ten people and on the back I caught around about another ten people and ended up 17^th overall and 8^th youth A which I was extremely disappointed with but I got over it and was already looking forward to the next race which was Blenheim Palace triathlon. 

The second triathlon was Blenheim Palace tri which I was really hoping to do better at. It was my second triathlon of the season and was possibly the most important because it was my last chance to qualify for Super League.

We travelled down on the Saturday and stayed at a very posh hotel in a little village around 15 minutes away from the race course. We headed down to the venue at about mid-day to do a bike recce. The bike wasn’t to technically demanding but the course was very narrow and had some quite steep descents so I knew I had to be careful in the race. After that we decided to head back to the hotel and have a big dinner and get some good sleep before tomorrow’s race.

The race was at 8:28 in the morning which was an early start so we decided to get up 3 hours before the race, we got some breakfast and headed down to the race course. As soon as we got there we headed down the transition, I racked my bike and did a few practice runs into transition and then decided to head to the swim start. I did the usual warm up got my wetsuit on and got into the zone, I had a much better starting position this time but it was in water start which didn’t suit me. I had a good start and got onto a fast swimmer’s feet and sticked on him until around half way but my arms started to really hurt but I pushed on and came out of the water in around about 30^th it was I really long steep run into transition which really suited me and I ended up making up around about 10 places and came into transition in a big group, we all left transition at the same time.

The bike course was difficult in a big group due to the narrow course so we weren’t really catching the leading groups until the bike group split into two but I ended up in-between the two groups and had to work quite hard to get into the front group. The course was easier to ride in a smaller group so we started to catch the group ahead of us. As we came into transition I pushed to the front of the group to make sure I went into transition first, I had I fast transition and headed out for the run in around about 20^th, it was a long run but I decided to set of fast and ended up catching everyone in the group ahead within 1km. About 2k in to the run I started to pass people from the lead group but my legs really started to hurt but I held on to my position and finished the race desperate to find out what place I came. I got told I finished 9^th and was over the moon but my excitement was doubled after I was told I had been selected to represent GB at this year’s Super League in Jersey.