April started off with the first race of the 2022 British Super Series, the Performance Assessments.
It started off on Saturday with a 400m swim time trial. We started off in the water (no dive) and there was one other person in the lane, which meant that everyone swam a bit slower than they would in a proper swimming race. I was feeling confident in the run up to the race as I was in good swim form, but couldn't perform on the day and ended up with 4:35 to put me in 18th place heading into day 2.
On Sunday we were set off, staggered according to our swim times, into T1 and then it was a bike and run into the finish.
I set off into T1, had a good transition, and got into a fairly large group on the bike. This group split around the first dead turn and lucky I was in front of the split, but in a group of 4. We were catching the front group until this point, but unfortunately only having 4 of us, we did not have the manpower to catch the front group up even though we were working hard. Coming into T2, I didn't have a great transition and set off a few seconds behind the rest of my group. My legs felt very fatigued and I had slight cramp in my calves, which went away after about 500m. As the run went on, I felt stronger and stronger until I started catching some people from the front group. I caught a group of them that had strung out, and started overtaking. I didn't want any of them to catch onto and run with me, going round the last turn I kicked, with around 750m to go. One person managed to catch onto me, and ran with me but in the last 100m I managed to drop them and come 5th overall.
I am happy with my performance as I did not make any tactical mistakes. The only mistake I made was in T2, I could not get my shoes on fast as my feet had gone numb and so I lost a few seconds on the people that were in my group.
Overall in April I have made improvements in all 3 disciplines, had another training race (triathon) and a 5km road race, where I did 15:09, which I was slightly disappointed with as I was expecting to go 14:50-14:55. I felt that I was capable of this, but overcooked it in the first 2km.