Didn’t set the World on fire

There are times when you wouldn’t dream of doing anything other than being an athlete and race. And following my 5th place in the European 70.3 Championships, I felt that all the hard work was now paying off.

With the calibre of athlete’s lining up at the start line this was always going to test everyone, including myself. Folks like Javier Gomez, Sebastian Kienle, Terenzo Bozzone and Jan Frodeno to name just a few. I couldn’t forget about the large Aussie contingent which included guys like Tim Reed, Brad Kahlefeldt and Joe Gambles. A massive lineup of who’s who in the 70.3 distance.

My swim was good, well, to a point anyway. In this type of race, seconds can make all the difference and in this instance about 10 seconds. Make or break was made for me in the last few hundred meters in the swim. That was the gap from me to the lead group out of the water which meant I was always going to have to chase that little extra harder. I was out of the water in 23:15 but I was down around 1 minute on Gomez and Frodeno.

Into T1 is was looking around to see who I could work with to get up onto the main group. I knew the pace was going to heat up here and I was prepared to push when needed but not too early.

The second group I was with wasn’t charging forward enough early though. I felt that we were slipping away from the lead group and even after the first 7km mark the gap had widened only if it was by a little. Two of my mates were part of that main group which consisted of Amberger, Collins, Gomez, Fettell, Kahlefeldt and McMahon.

Passing through the 23km point of the bike there was now a few minutes gap from the main group. This was a little worrying to me now. Checking my numbers I felt good, averaging 303 watts over 33 minutes. For the next 43km, or 1 hour, I was averaging 43km and pushing out 291 watts – this was a little more normal for me.

I knew the back part of the ride was going to really hurt due to the elevation of the mountains. My numbers were again within where I would have thought, averaging 291 watts with a max. of 651 watts. This is where I pushed a little more to ensure I got closer to the front group, but to no avail. Closing out the bike, I averaged above my normal watts on the bike of 302W which wasn’t ideal.

Now off the bike and into T2 in 19th place with Kienle, there was very little chance that I would podium but I was determined to put a decent time in. I was quickly shocked by how sluggish I felt. Not happy! My legs wouldn’t kick-on as I’m used to. Nothing I did was bringing them back. Put simply, they felt like shit.

I finished the run with a 1h:23m which I haven’t done since 2008. Before you ask, yes, this is slow for me.

If you are on Strava, then you can view all my ride data now.

I’ve finally arrived back home in Australia and looking forward to putting the final touches to my Kono preparation. When I chatch up with Grant, my coach, we’ll be dissecting the race to make sure we hadn’t left anything out of my preparation.