Well that’s the 1st race of the
2015 season done, it is the earliest I have raced before but it is good to get
the season kicked off.
I really didn’t think I would be racing
this early this season due to my Uni commitments. After taking last year out of
university for the Commonwealths I returned in September straight after World
Champs to finish my final year. This year has been quite demanding with me
having to complete my final placement in a Primary School for 10weeks before
Christmas and then complete my dissertation after Christmas – which I handed in
the night before I flew out for this race. It hasn’t been a normal winters
training, reduced volume and fitting it around everything has been a big
difference from last year when I was completely free to train whenever and
wherever.
I managed to be in reasonable shape - not
as fit as I would have liked to be when racing - but I was happy enough
considering what I was doing at the same time.
… but anyway, enough of the Uni talk …
This was my 2nd time racing in
Quarteria, (last year being the 1st) and I was glad to be back, it’s
a well organized raced on a great course. Nice rough wavy swim, bike course
with good short, steep hill every lap and a flat fast 10k run to round it off.
Last year I had a good swim-bike and
rubbish run, so the plan this year was to keep the swim-bike the same and
finish off with a good run this time.
1st race of the season is all
about blowing the cobwebs away and making the mistakes now rather than more
important races during the season and I think I made enough mistakes in this
race for the whole season, you would have thought I had never raced a triathlon
before.
I made a hash of the beach start, somehow
managing to do a front flip as soon as hit the 1st wave which put me
at the back and a nightmare to try and swim through. Constant bad positioning
resulted in me getting battered throughout the swim, once again not using my
potential in a swim coming out well down.
It was now just a case of resurrecting the
race once I got onto the bike - I
managed to stay out of trouble on the bike and conserved energy as I wasn’t
100% sure of how good my cycling legs were, thankfully they were ok and got off
the bike with the majority of the field.
Didn’t have a great t2, which resulted in
me loosing out on some easy places, but put an ok run together to finish a
reasonable 18th.
The aim of the game is to beat your start
number – I was ranked 17th finished 18th; which is
annoying but I am happy to get the 1st race out of the way. Now to
get back into to some solid training so that I can beat my start number by a
considerable margin next time.
Big thanks to Stephen Delaney and Stephan
Teeling Lynch, it’s always great to have support staff out to make everything
run smooth – thanks for the help.
Lakeland Bikes Enniskillen, cheers for getting me my old race bike to me for this race, makes racing easier when
on top class equipment, great to be working with you again this season.
It was also my 1st race as an On-Running sponsored athlete, it is great to be racing in awesome shoes.
