June 2013 -part 1

June 2013

Last year I had a fabulous season - Bronze at National Duathlon and Triathlon champs, Gold at European Tri champs and Bronze at the Worlds! How could this get any better? For a short while I thought about doing something else as I couldn't see how I would ever better last year. How wrong was I?

On the first Sat in June Mark Charlotte and I drove up the M42 to Holme Pierrepoint for the National sprint championships. I wasn't in a very good mood to be honest. Two reasons - firstly I'd been feeling poorly again for a couple of days and I was worried that I was overdoing things and secondly my wave was off at 4.30! What a horrible time to race, just more time to get nervous and ask questions like when do I eat, what do I do all day, can I mow the lawn in the morning?? Of course once we got there I cheered up because the venue is great for spectators and the atmosphere was great. My friend Sam was already racing when we arrived so we gave her a shout as she stormed the bike and then I got ready. I quite like the two transition set up as it meant more reason to faff and chat -there were so many nice people there it took me ages to get organised.

Just before I set off I found out that Sam had won the 25-29 age group which gave me a real boost. what an achievement it would be if we could both get a medal! We were in a huge wave of about 200 and the swim was a bit of a bun fight. I don't like swims like that as I worry about using too much energy and when I got kicked in the face I thought I had done a ally bad swim. But as I ran into T1 i saw there were an awful lot of bikes still there so I sped off onto the bike course with hope that I wasn't too far down the field. It turns out I came out of the water in about 11th place and I quickly started passing the girls in front of me. I knew that my main competitor Sara Northover would be in
front of me as she is a fab swimmer and I could see the lead motorbike not far in front so I focused on catching it up. I loved the bike as it is really fast and the sharp corners make it very technical, it seemed to go really quickly. As I came into T2 I saw Sara running out ahead of me - I had about 20/30 secs to make up. So off I went in my Cloudracer trainers and I felt really good. I managed to catch Sara just before half way and then it was just about not blowing up before the finish. The best thing was that each wave is its own race so I knew that I was in the lead overall as I was running with the lead bike. That was a good feeling! I ran up the finish straight as the British Champion with a big smile on my face. Sara came in about 30 secs after me - a great competitor and a lovely girl. Thank you to everyone who spoke to me afterwards - Kath, Debbie, Sara, Suzanne, Penny etc - a great bunch of girls.

So once again I was on the podium, proudly wearing my tri suit with my new sponsor logo - a huge On! Thank you, your trainers have done it again.

Then it was all about recovering in time for the European champs in 2 weeks time. I don't seem to do much training at this time of year. I just seem to race, recover, and then taper for the next race!