Going into the London triathlon I was quite nervous, its been a long time since I’ve been a favourite for a race and ranked number one. I think the last time was when I was a kid at school.

The lead up to the race was perfect, I had a great two weeks after the National Champs and felt good all week so I new I had a great chance of winning.

It was a bit of a messy start, with a false start at the beginning which I was in. I’ve been to too many races where a false start happens and they don’t call us back as the whole field went. But in this instance, I went too and was at the front, and we got called back. On the second start a canoe got in my way and I had to go under water to get by, that’s the London triathlon for you, its a great race but you have to be ready for things as you are racing on a course made for first timers and safety with great numbers.

One the bike it was one large pack, I tried a couple of times to get away but it came to nothing until the end when 8 of us got a small lead into transition which gave me some room to get a clean T2. On the run I felt good and new that Robo and Petzold were going to be there, Robo likes to keep changing pace which is very bad for me as I never do this in training which is going to change now. It came right down to the wire and after lots of attacks I cracked with 200 meters to go and had to settle for 3rd which to me was a little disappointing because I wanted to win but I gave it everything and that was my best on the day.

Stu

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 10:02 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.