1st out of the swim at Windsor

+ 1st out of the swim
+ 15th Overall

Great day today, smashed the swim out in front of the big boys which was great fun. The start was a bit insane (they might give that some coverage on Channel 4 when it shows next month) but basically nobody was behaving/getting behind the start line. I had my place firmly saved on the proper start line from around 10 minutes before the start but most of the guys desperately wanted to push the start line further forward so that caused some delays.

I quickly swam through the guys who had drifted further forward and got on Olly Freeman's feet with Stuart Hayes just to one side. For the first 300m or so I swam in 3rd then slowly picked it up moving past Hayes, then on Freeman's feet I settled into 2nd.

Once we hit the first bridge (500m) I had moved up along side Olly and was feeling great, picked it up a bit once we started moving towards the 600m mark and quickly moved into the lead. I'll know more once I've seen the video playback but I think I started opening up a gap once we reached the 800m turn around buoy. I got a good line into the turn around and started to kick it once I was heading back towards the exit.

Kept checking to see if Hayes was trying to sneak past down the middle (he did that to Stannard a few years back) but they were a ways back (not sure but I think around 15 seconds). Got to the exit with a good lead and held it all the way through the run to T1 and throughout T1. Sharp got out onto the bike about 1m ahead of me with Hayes in tow, that was the 1/2/3. Once we hit 5km 2004 Olympian and husband of the current woman's world champion Marc Jenkins came through with another 4 guys behind him, he was very strong along with Hayes but I managed to take quite a few turns (be it not all of them) at the front and stuck with the lead guys throughout the 42km.

Off onto the run with the lead pack, job done :)

The run was good, held technique but was far from blisteringly quick. That will come with time though. This time last year I came out of the water 3rd at Windsor and lasted about 20 minutes on the bike (falling quickly back through the pack the whole time), last weekend I just missed the lead guys but learnt a lot and this weekend it all came together.

There's still a long way to go before I'm near the leaders at the end but a top 15 in my first full Olympic distance Pro race and a solid lead out of the water is cracking,

A very happy triathlete this afternoon :)

Mike

PS. Time was 1.58.30