After not being selected for World U23
Champs, I decided to make this race the last one of the season.
It took place in Alanya, Turkey, a country
I have never been so it was very good to have another country marked on my map
of where I have been. I have fairly collected new countries this season. I will
do a blog rounding up this season in the next week or so but I will focus on
this race just now.
I am currently sitting on a flight home
very tired and sore but looking forward to a bit of rest before hitting winter
training and working on improving for next season, at the same time glad that I
finished my first season as a senior/ U23 on a high.
Yesterday I came 14th in a very good
quality field, and had a lot of positives to take away from it as well.
The race result was created by having a
very good swim. I had a bad reaction time off the start but a very good dive
that allowed me to gain half a body length on my surrounding athletes and
allowed me a clean swim TI 1st buoy. I was the first person to get to the buoy
from the left hand side and was almost too far left so lost a few positions to
get on the right side of it.
I ended up getting a kick to my goggles
very like I did in European U23's only this time I was in a very relaxed state
of mine and was able to reassure myself that I could get back to pontoon and
get them fixed before I dived back in, an that's what I did.
I found the second lap of the swim very
easy but knew I was comfortable in front pack and in a very good draft so was
content in saving energy so that I was not red lining running to transition.
Transition went smoothly and got onto the
bike in front pack, the pace was fast with a high caliber of athletes such as
Vasiliev, Supunov, and Bryukankov jnr to
name but a few.
The rest of the bike was hard, although the
course was completely flat 90% of it was on brick style cobblestones and not
Tarmac which required keeping the power down and taking a lot out of the legs.
As well the bike pack was being dictated by the Russians as they made up half
the pack, putting in large bursts to try and get away instead of us all working
together.
 |
| Front Pack |
I managed to stay in the pack by the end of
the bike and on to the run safely. I felt incredible tired and flat on the run
but pleased with my efforts so far but it was still far from over.
The run consisted of 4 laps. Lap one I felt
flat, lap two I thought I was getting into it lap three was hell, and lap four
I was able to pick it up a bit which allowed me to run my fastest 10km of a
bike at 34.10. I know this is nothing special and not really representative of
my flat out 10km time but that is all about adapting to this new distance. It
takes time and thankfully it is going in the right direction.
 |
| Glad to see the finish line. |
So all in all I was happy with my
performance and achieved the targets I set out to, with the added bonus of
picking up some points to give me the chance of starts next season and better
start numbers in those races.
Thanks for reading and sorry it was rather
long but it helped punch in some time on my flight home.
Cheers Russell.
