It was one of those days where luck didn’t strike for me…… after a great swim exciting the swim in 3rd place I sat comfortably in the lead pack on the bike with all sorts of weather conditions being thrown us. At one stage it was torrential rain and thunder storms which didn’t help the leaner athletes from staying warm as they started to fall out of the race one by one. And it also meant that loads of mud, dirt and rubble was washed onto the road and it was on the 4th lap of the bike when I realised I had a rear wheel puncture and borrowed a wheel from a fellow athlete already retired from the race.

I had lost 2 minutes in the change over and continued to chase the pack when I punctured again this time with the front wheel. This time too far away from the wheel stop I had to ride on my rims before retiring from the race with extreme disappointment.

I was really frustrated to have gone out of the race this way, I came into this race in the best form of my career and was having a great day out there feeling on top of everything before the first puncture came. Although I’m disappointed right now I know it will make me determined later on in the season to do something else. So now I have to make another race my Olympic games.

I got straight back into it this weekend at Blenheim and took the win which is great. There will be some Channel 4 coverage of it in a couple of weeks. I will race London and the National Champs as well, but before that I going to race in the States. It’s the Des Moines World Cup in 2 weeks, then some non drafting specials in Minneapolis and LA on the Izalco Extreme.

Take care,
Stu.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 11:09 am and is filed under Stuart Hayes, Athlete Diaries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.