Good days and bad days

Here is my theory, if you take the number of hours between a race and a blog post and divide it by 1, you will get the probability that the race went well.

Therefore as I am posting 2.5 hours since my race finished, I had a good day.

3 weeks ago I raced in Strathclyde at the ITU European Cup race. Pretty much just had a sucky day, a very aggressive swim and suffered in the heat. So last weekend it was nice to get over it with a 2nd place at the Stirling triathlon. To prove my rule though I think it was about a week before I blogged after Strathclyde, its tough when things don't go well.

Today was a little better. This was my 3rd year racing at Windsor, another awesome week staying with my surrogate family the Yeoman's. Prep went well, lots of easy sets and short race pace work. Last year I had a super day coming out of the water first by around 20m and staying with the lead pack over the 42km bike.

This year the field was a little stronger with Gave Noble racing as well as Richard Stannard & Co, so before the race I was hoping to swim at/near the front for the first 500m or so before attacking at the turn buoy. Things went my way a little earlier though and after a great start I took a massively different line across the river from the rest of the field. Will have to wait and see the TV footage but I think I was out on my own from pretty much the very start.

Built my lead over the 1500m and came out a mile in front. Not quite a mile but close enough! Ran the 400m through transition pretty steadily wanting to feel fresh on the bike, got to my bike, out of wetsuit etc, out onto the bike first, into shoes, energy gel, drink of water....still no one in sight. It took the chasing group of Noble, Stannard, Jenkins and Halksworth the best part of 1km to catch up, so a good day in the water.

Felt progressively better throughout the bike and once the groups came together/everyone started freewheeling I rode from the back of the pack to the front and off for a while. Didn't get too far ahead but for about a minute I rode off the front making the guys work a little to catch me up, then went again once I was caught. Wanted to string things out a bit as there looked to be all the favourites/good runners in the group. Felt nice to be at the front making a difference though :)

Run was the run. I had worked very hard thus far in the race and definitely felt a little sluggish over the first lap. Did my best to limit the position losses and hopefully didn't finish too far down (results still aren't out)! Felt very good crossing the line though, starting to get more involved in these races and its nice to be out in front, very nice to be out in front.

Blueseventy Helix rocked the swim today, no other suit came close. Also thanks to Zone3 for a cracking new trisuit, SLS3 for my compression (that I'm in now) and Cervelo for my ride.

Good day.

Mike