Not ideal I know, but I decided to do the National Championships about 2 hours before the race last Saturday. I couldn’t decide if I should race for the third weekend in a row. I was tired, my Achilles was a bit sore and I really couldn’t face getting myself ‘up’ for another hard race. The only real attractions to race were convenience (it was down the road) and financial.

Surprisingly the race turned out to be quite enjoyable. The weather was lovely and I actually felt pretty good in the race. I wore my new sleeveless wetsuit as the water temp was supposedly below 20 deg and I had a good swim coming out just behind the leaders. I cycled up the first hill hard and reached the front of the group with ease. In fact so many people got dropped up the hill on the second lap that the lead group was whittled down to 5. I must admit I did chuckle to myself when I realised that both of the Olympic reserves (domestiques) lost contention on the hill. I attacked several times on the bike up the hill but planned to put in my biggest effort with a lap to go. However, my plans went out the window when I got a puncture on lap 8 of 9 (I wasn’t chuckling now!). When I did make it into T2 I’d lost 30-40 secs to the leaders. I ran well for the first 3 laps of the 5 lap run and closed on the leader (Hollie Avil) but tired on the final 2 laps. I was happy to settle for 2nd and eased off on the last lap but nobody had warned me about Liz B who sprinted past me in the last 400 metres. Serves me right!

The best thing though is that my injuries seem miles better and I’m really looking forward to racing in the London Triathlon on August 10th. Two weeks preparation for a race should be a lot better than 2 hours.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 5:33 pm and is filed under Andrea Whitcombes Online Diary, 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.