Not quick enough....

This Sunday saw the first of the World Championship qualifying races take place at Ellesmere all the way up in Shropshire. This race, with it being the first Olympic distance race of the racing calendar, combined with the fact that there are World Championship places on offer pretty much always means that this is the most hotly contested of the qualifying races (there are 4 races with qualification slots for this year's World Champs).

Having looked at all the results from the last couple of years, it was quiet obvious that I was going to have to as close to 2 hours as possible if I wanted to have any chance of being able to qualify here. In the back of my mind, I was quite worried as I had done no where near enough running (I have missed two races recently) due to the fact that the crash on the bike damaged some muscles in my chest and hence made running pretty hard. Still, I had been biking okay so I thought that I may be able to sneak in if I could knock out a very good bike split....so that was the plan, swim hard and ride really hard and then just try and hang on for dear life in the run.

We arrived at the venue the day before and had a little look around followed by a gentle run to see what the course was like for the run. Is hard to convey just how much my heart sank when we rounded the first corner of the run to see what a pretty steep incline in front of me...not only had I missed lots of running training, I had also done hardly any hill work since about February, Still, we ran the first 6k's of the course and the theme of hills just seemed to continue....I knew then that the run was not going to be much fun at all.

Anyway, went back to the B&B which was owned by a very strange lady indeed....breakfast on race morning involved discussing whether we were "pre-cool" or "post-cool" in terms of when "cool" became a common word in the English lexicon - still, it took you're mind off the task in hand.

The race finally kicked off just after 11 (it is run by a county council, so I assume they struggle to get out of bed early or something?). The swim felt okay at the time, but in effect, was a bit of a disaster. I ended up making a decision to swim with another 3 people and just save my energy...I should not have done this as they were actually swimming a lot slower that I would have liked to have been going. Still, I did get out the water and feel pretty good, so there was some benefit...the end result though was that I had lost a minute to those that I was racing against.

Out on the bike, it was not long before some people started to come past me. This just totally infuriated me....I refuse to be passed on the bike at the best of times, let alone at this race. I eventually got my race head on and then for the next hour I just got stuck in taking out the next person in front of me. In the end, I was not passed once and I thought I must have done okay. I was hoping that I had picked off everyone in my age group, but alas, I got back to transition to see that there were about 3 bikes there already...I was gutted. Plus, I now knew that I had that run to go....10k's of it as well...I was struggling to even recall the last time that I had run 10k's on it's own, let alone after 90mins of hard labour.

Anyway, I started out well and the legs kinda felt okay. Got to the first hill and got passed by 2 in my AG. I was pretty sure now that I was not going to be able to qualify. The rest of the run was just a pretty miserable experience really...the km markers just seemed to be taking ages to come by and then I missed one and thought I was on the longest ever km. I was overtaken by another chap in my AG with about 1km to go. This guy had won the AG last year, so things were not so bad I suppose.

With no watch on though, I had no idea of my time. I asked some guy what he had done and tried to work out mine from his. I thought I had done a 2:03 or something like that. The final results are out now though and it would seem that I managed to get a 2:01:25 which, although not fast enough on the day, is a new PB for the Olympic distance by about 5 minutes and I also managed a sub 39 min run on that course which I am totally shocked by.

At the end of the day, I have rationalised the whole thing with fact that, had I not fallen off the bike and hurt myself, I should have been able to qualify at the fastest of the qualifiers which is quite a nice thought. Now, it is all down to Wakefield in a few weeks time to get my qualification slot. If I don't puncture or anything else stupid, I should be able to get my spot there.

Have my anniversary of Olympic distance events this Sunday as I head back to Windsor for the first of the glamour events of the year - I can't wait. I managed to just sneak in under 2:10 last year, so hoping to be a fair bit faster this year.