Oh dear.....Windsor 2008

This weekend we had the first of the big domestic Olympic distances races which took us back to the lovely town of Windsor. I can say this now because the race is over, but I had all intentions of taking the overall prize for this race. It would have been my first major triathlon win in my career and I was pretty sure that I had a good chance of doing it, especially when I heard that the winner for the last two years was having to pull out due to an injury - the race was now wide open and I was pretty sure that I was fit enough to win it.

The swim took me a while to get into, but after about 400m, I was quickly making my way back up through all the white caps that had set off a bit too fast. At the 1000m mark, I had caught what I thought was the last two. I pulled away from one of these and swam back most of the way with the other one. In the end, I was pulled out of the water in what turned out to be 3rd position in my age group. My time was quite bad (24:12) but I assumed that was because of the current in the Thames, which was pretty strong on the day. What followed can only be a lesson to all who take part in this sport....

As I ran into T1 I believed whole heatedly that I was running down the correct aisle to locate my bike. I ran, and I ran, but still I could not see my bike. At this point, the panic set in and I started to scramble around bikes trying desperately to locate mine. In the end, I had to take a deep breath, look at my number and then try to find my bike. By now, some two extra minutes had passed by compared to what I was supposed to use in T1 and I was only too aware that the race had slipped through my fingers, and all because of such a stupid mistake. They always say that transition is the 4th discipline in triathlon - now I know why. Even after all the training, if you can't find your bike, you might as well have not bothered doing half the training.

Still, I tried to calm myself down and get on with the race but out on the bike I was just not really getting into it, mainly because I didn't feel that I was racing for anything anymore. I had wanted to do a 57-58 min bike split and I knew that I was more than capable of doing that, especially on the back of my recent TT performances. Still, the miles went by and I failed to really get into the ride. In the end, I got back to T2 in about 59 mins and got through T2 in good time to head out on the run.














I must confess, I do actually quite enjoy the run at Windsor, there are crowds pretty much the whole way round and my club, Thames Turbo, provides some very vocal support on the infamous Turbo Corner. My run speed was not exactly what I had hoped, but I had not really regained my interest in the race by this point. Alas, the 3 laps passed by and I came home in 2:07:20.



This is still more than 2 mins quicker than 2006 when I first did the race and my run time was 4 mins quicker yesterday than on that day, so things are getting better. I finally found to, to my surprise, that my time was enough to get me a 2nd place in my AG and also 3rd place overall - I didn't think that would be possible!

I know it sounds like I am grumbling about what most would see as a good result, but to me, it just doesn't make me that happy. I could have won the race, but I made a schoolboy error that cost me dearly. So far this season, I have beaten the winner and the chap in second place in other races, so to all intents, it seems that it could have been possible - there is always next year.