July has been the most positive month that I've had all summer. After some good results earlier in the season, the month started off with the British Triathlon Performance Assessments, which provided the best result of my career so far.
The race is held over a two-day period, and consists of a pool swim time trial on the first day, and a bike-run event on the second day, where each athlete sets off relative to the time that they swam in the time trial.
I swam slower than expected in the time trial, doing 400m in 4:45. I expected to swim under 4:40, but this time left me about 35 seconds down on the fastest time. However, I was still pleased with this result and I was determined to make up the difference on the second day of racing.
The second day arrived, and after some good preparation before the race, I was confident on the start line. I had 13 people that set off within a second of my time, which I was happy about because it means that I would be in a large bike pack and I could draft and save some energy on the bike. As the race started, I had a good T1 and managed to chase down a small pack in the first 500m. We were going at a strong pace and I was happy with how the group was working.
Coming up to the final quarter of the bike, we had still not managed to catch the front pack, so I decided to dictate the pace to take control of the group. I managed to catch the front pack with around 500-600m left, and had a few seconds to rest after the hard effort to catch. I noticed the group slow down in anticipation of T2, so I attacked and rode off the front into T2.
I had a good transition and came out with a small lead.
I had two choices coming out of T2 - sit back and let the group catch me, or go solo for the victory. I chose to go solo, putting in a hard effort in the first km of the run.
During the second half of the 2.5km run, I faded a little bit, but managed to retain my lead and take the win.
This result has motivated me even more to train and recover so that I can perform as well as I can next month, where I will be racing at Mallory. My next blog will cover this race and more. Thanks for reading.