July has been a very quiet month with my only race being Hetton Lyon’s Super Series.
The event was split into three races, a qualifier, a final and a relay. The qualifier started early in the morning so after a good night sleep I headed to the race course. I’d already done a bike recce so I went straight to transition and racked my bike. After I was done in transition I did my warm up, got my wetsuit on and headed to the swim start. It was an in water start and I chose I good spot in the middle of the buoys. The start was violent and I got punched in the face a few times, I also chocked on water which forced me to stop swimming so I could breath. When I started swimming again I was at the back of the swim and it stayed that way till the end of the swim.
I had a fast transition and was able to make a small chase group, the bike was annoying because nobody was really working very hard so we didn’t catch any time on the group ahead of us but I had another fast transition and headed onto the run around about 40seconds down on the leaded. I ran hard and was able to get myself into 8th position which got me into the A final which was all that mattered.
I had a 6-hour break until the final so it was a long wait which consisted of eating and jogging. With an hour to go I re- racked my bike and went to get my wetsuit on but just as I was about to put it on there was an announcement that the swim was now non-wetsuit. So, I headed to swim start and decided to pick a position closer to the buoy on my left. The start was fast but I was able to stick with the pace to the first buoy where I passed about five people so I was able to hold my position to the end of the swim. I came out the water around 20th, I had another good transition I was able to make the big chase group.
We worked really hard to catch the lead group which we did with around 200m left of the bike. It was a big group entering transition and I was the last person to enter. I had another good transition but as soon as I started running my calves cramped up and I struggled for the whole run but was just able to claw myself into 5th position. the lesson from this is to stay hydrated between races. I wasn’t happy with my race but we still had the relay to come.
We only had an hour between our final and the relay so we headed straight to transition racked our bikes and then headed to the start. I decided to go second leg, when the first leg person came to pass onto me I ran into the water and started to swim as hard as I could. We were racing the juniors so the swim was hard but I came out the water in a similar position to what I went in at. The bike was only 1 lap so I bombed it round and ended up catching two positions. On the run I ran the second fasted run time and ended up catching 6 people. Our relay team ended 8th which wasn’t a bad result.