British University Triathlon Championships

After a couple of weeks trying to recover from a knee injury I kind of managed to put in 2 weeks of good training before the British University Triathlon Championships held at Dearne Valley. I was really looking forward to this race since in the last two BUCS championship races my performance was not what you call exceptional. Once again I was racing with Johanna and we both were looking forward to do a good performance.

The swim course consisted of two 800m laps for a total of 1600m. I had quite a good start and managed to stay with the second group of swimmers. I came out of the water in 23mins 38sec and quickly took off my wetsuit for a fast transition. I managed to over take a couple athletes in the transition area and came out of transition in 15th position. I tried to pick up a strong pace from the start on the bike. The course suited very much my characteristics and I was looking forward to a good bike split. Unfortunately on the first lap I wasn't feeling too good and at one point I was considering of stopping as I was feeling sick. Luckily once the fist lap was over, I found my strength and started moving again up the field. I finished the hilly technical course in 1hr 05mins which was bang on target. Looking back, if it wasn't for that first lap I could have gone much faster but probably the lack of consistant training was a major issue as I would find out on the run.

After another good quick transition I set out on the running course which consisted of 2 laps round the lake, off road and with a few sharp hills which by the second lap felt like mountains. The run unfortunately turned out the be quite hard and eventually I finished the whole triathlon in 2hrs 15mins, in 15th position. Its a respecatable position is such a high standard race but once again I know I could have done better.

Johanna had a very strong performance coming in 9th Overall in a new PB at the Standard Distance Triathlon...... and surely that was not a course for PB's.

Dermot