I foolishly went into this race fasted…..long story but suffice to say Friday nights Chinese was a foolish choice as I never left the house yesterday for fear of, well you can all guess!
So my diet yesterday was a crumpet and a bowl of pasta, woke up at 5am and was going to not bother but then remembered what I tell all my athletes; ‘You never regret doing a session but you will always regret skipping one’. Still couldn’t face food so my breakfast was sipping a bottle of Hi5 energy drink as I drove to Boxend, was feeling OK, but a bit queezy.
Swim I absolutely smashed it! I’ve always said I’m not a swimmer, but the one thing this year has done for me is improve my swimming, averaging 20km a week for quite a few months now for channel training is paying off, 5min PB on my swim, and 2nd in age group! Well happy.
Bike, Lack of bike training this year (not enough time for bike and 20km swimming a week) certainly took it toll here, I felt like had no energy at all. My cardio fitness is through the roof (yup, that 20km weekly swimming again) but my strength has suffered massively. Either the reduced bike training or the lack of food for 24hrs, probably both but I was putting a lot of effort in but getting passed by everyone!! One positive though, I felt amazing on the TT bike, my new bike position is working wonders, my confidence and aero’ness on the bike is through the roof, I just need a winter of dead-lifts to get my strength back up 
Run,Well it was a boxend run, never fast or easy lol, and by this point I felt sick and was definitely suffering lack of food/energy. It wasn’t pretty but I dug in to give the best I could on the day.
Overall happy. Given my results from Eton earlier in the a boost that it Is within my ability to try and qualify for world’s and European champs at sprint and standard if I get my training to triathlon focus not just swimming. 7th in age group and well within qualifying time, however as 7th quite unlikely it will roll down as far as me as they have reduced numbers for euro next year due to this year’s places carrying over.
