Long Distance Tri World Championships, Vittoria Gastiez, Spain

News

After a successful debut in the World Champs in Nevada, Nov 2011, I was enthused and committed to race next year. My time in Nevada was good enough to qualify.

I set about training with the plan to improve my cycling, my weakest discipline and to improve on my position last year 26 th. With the inclusion of a swim in Spain I was aiming to improve on my placing.

2012 started badly with an Achilles injury in my right leg at the end of Jan, this dragged on until early April. I could train on the bike without any restriction and I certainly got plenty of miles in whilst continuing swimming.

In early April I had a chance meeting with an acupuncturist who was able to sort my troublesome Achilles and I could run again. However not for long as at the end of a training run with Simon Norwood in early May a long standing soleus injury in my left leg re occurred – this went on to flare up at the end of the Slateman Triathlon May 20 and proved to be a real tease. Further acupuncture locally saw me able to jog at the beginning of July.

The Worlds entry date was June 13 th, I was allowed an extra week to decide if I wanted to go. To be honest I enquired about withdrawing however I would lose my deposit so I decided to go.

During this injury period I lost my focus and discipline – in hind sight I did not train as effectively on the bike from May – my bike races followed long rides which meant I was racing fatigued and this masked a general poor performance.

So on to the race – Spain was scorching when we got there. 38 degrees and strong sunshine. Fortunately race day was forecast to be much cooler and the forecast was spot on. I really don’t know how I would have fared if the heat had been typical of the Spanish summer, but I fear I would have suffered badly, perhaps dangerously.

The race started with a 4k wet suit swim in a beautiful lake on the edge of the mountains. This was the first time I had raced this distance and by the end my shoulders were uncomfortable. Overall I was pleased with my swim of around 1hr 10mins

Out on the bike, a gently rolling fast course for 130k – my first sip of energy drink made me feel sick. I could not eat my power bar for the same reason. My stomach was not great and felt ready to explode and I could not hold the target power I had set. In Nevada I held 230watts compared to Spain at 210 watts. I managed through the bike with tiny sips of energy drink, water at the aid stations and 4 gels.

A depressing number of competitors came past me on the bike – I reckon more than 100. I am usually able to catch many of these on the run however I was not expecting to do that today due to the lack of run practice.

So after a hard 3hrs 32 mins I was in T2 getting my run kit on.

The run is 30k, 4 x 7.5k loops through the town centre through leafy pedestrian walkways and pretty cobbled streets. We were told that there were toilets after every aid station – I had just about held my stomach together on the bike planning to visit the first aid station on the run, I did not want to lose speed stopping on the bike. The first aid station was in the old town of Vittoria Gastiez but no toilet ….this called for an emergency stop in a café – under the tape, into the dark recesses to a door marked Cabelleros and back out to lots of cheers.

The bike left me sore in the hops and quads to start with and after 2 laps running was painful. I had set a target of 7.50 mins per mile – this dropped but on lap 3 I did not care too much. I had one more delay in the race loo on lap 3. On laps 3 and 4 it was all I could do to get to the aid stations without walking, I walked through the aid stations taking on Powerade, water and banana. My quads were incredibly painful.

2 hrs 41 of running saw me cross the finish line, thank goodness. I did not feel ill like Nevada which was a bonus. I had managed to remain ahead of my 4 (female) Hereford Tri Club team mates which had been a serious motivation to keep going.

Position Swim Bike Run Overall

53 01:10:04 03:32:16 02:41:11 07:28:45  

I was 53rd out of 91 in my age group

At the start I would have been happy to finish without injury. Now on reflection I am annoyed with myself for not being better on the bike and not training effectively and over eating whilst feeling sorry for myself with running injuries.

Currently I am being more careful with my diet, trying to run and keep injury free.. again and working harder on the bike preparing for a middle distance event in Henley Sept 16th and planning to do things differently next season.

Comment on this article

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.