Myself and another chap from my club headed out there on Thursday for what was going to be a pretty boring few days before race day. It is perhaps one of the hardest bits about travelling to a race...all you really want to do is go out and have some fun, but at the end of the day, you are there to race so need to save the legs. Thursday was just spent milling around and then on Friday we had to all register etc. All quite boring and all seemed to involve lots of walking around...sorry, sounds like I am some big moaner doesn't it?
Saturday we got to see some of the elites racing and this was pretty good, is always amazing to see how fast they are able to run off the bike. It just seems amazing that someone is able to run a 30 minute 10k after all of that. I was starting to get pretty nervous during their race though as I witnessed about 4 punctures out on the course and I had already made the decision to race on my fastest tires...the ones that have punctured twice in recent races.
Anyway, Sunday finally came round and it was good to put the ol GB kit on again and head down to transition to rack the bike and start getting ready for the race. The conditions were perfect on the day, having had 3 days of high winds and rain on the days before. On Sunday, it was warm, dry and only a little bit of wind - perfect racing conditions.
After a few delays at the start, all of the men under 39 got into the water and before we knew it, we were all off for 1500m of fun. The start was nowhere near as bad as I thought and I seemed to find some clear water quite quickly before the first bun fight on the first buoy. I think that all the open water swimming I have done this season is really helping though as I am nowhere near as timid as I used to be in these situations, I actually quite like the whole rough and tumble of getting round that first buoy now. I finally managed to settle into a steady rhythm with another chap and we pretty much paced each other round the course. I got out in a new PB for me...although, to be honest, it must have been assisted by the tide as I am just not swimming 20:30 pace at the moment.
The bike section was quite fun with 4 laps of a ten k loop which went round Copenhagen. There were 9 dead turns in total so it was hard to keep a steady speed. It was nice to ride through the middle of town though, up and down the main road in Copenhagen. At the end of the ride, I came into transition and I was only 1:20 behind the eventual winner of the entire wave. I had also managed to record the second fastest bike split of the day for all of the age group athletes...gutted that I was not fastest, but hey ho.
The run started off worse than I thought...the legs just did not want to run that much. Still, I'd been here before so just set about keeping a steady pace and trying not to lose sight of the guy in front of me. Thankfully, from about half way round, I had some Irish lad running next to me and we were able to keep each other going a bit. He tried to pull away with about 2k's to go, but I managed to stick with him. I put in some extra effort as we went over the bridge for home with 1k to go but he still managed to stick with me. At this time, I knew what was coming...it was going to be a sprint to the line for the place. With about 100m to go I could see the team manager handing out the flags that a lot of people collect en route to take across for the finishing photo but I decided now was not the time....there was national pride at stake. I started sprinting and soon realised that he was not gonna catch me now...the battle was won.
I had tried at one point to figure out how many people were ahead of me and whether I would have been in line for a medal but it was hard with so many age groups all going off in my wave. I knew that one 30-34 person had passed me and it seemed reasonable to think that there would have been another couple ahead of me. Still, there was always the chance...
When we got to the medal ceremony I waiting around for them to get to my age group but alas, it was not to be on this day. I had finished 4th in my age group, missing a medal by a mere 20s. I was not that disappointed though...a 4th place in a GB kit is something that I am pretty pleased with. It was also nice to see that a medal at a European Champs is not exactly something that is out of my reach....there is always next year.
1 comment:
Good work old boy! Many congrats on the incident-free race.
I just saw a TV report of the Tour De France which is kicking off in London. As you are so good on the bike, surely you must've thought sometime of becoming a full time cyclist instead of a triathlete? Unless of course you actually enjoy the swimming and running, hence the reason you a triathlete!
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