So, you’ve spent the winter concentrating on trying to improve your flat running speed. What do you do come race season A, sit in the pack conserving your energy in the disciplines you haven’t been working on and wait for the run or B, break away on the swim and try and 2 up time trial away from the field on the bike. For some reason at Windsor today I thought B was the correct answer.

In the swim I got on Richard Stannard’s feet from the start, and without working too hard we pulled away from the field, I looked back as we reached the turn buoy at 750m and we had around 30 seconds on the chasers and around 1 minute 30 secs on Richie Nichols the fastest runner from last weeks national championships.

Onto the bike and Richard and I had to make a decision, sit up wait for a group to work with and wait for the run, or go by ourselves. We went by ourselves and took turns on the front trying to build our gap from the swim. The first time we could see the chasers was at around 30km where we had a 30 second, however the chasers had all got together into a pack of around 15.

Out onto the run and Stannard pushed hard on the first lap heading up the steep hill to Windsor castle, I felt ok, but didn’t want to do anything stupid so let Richard open a small gap and tried to concentrate on my own race. Then it all started to go wrong. Basically I’d spent all my tokens on the bike and didn’t have enough left to get me around the 10km, I reckon you could have heard my explosion from the other side of London. Ritchie Nichols came past me at around 4km and went on to finish second around 10 seconds behind Stannard. At around 7.5k Steve Worthington having a fantastic run went past me to finish 3rd. I ended up 4th with Colin Dixon rounding off the top 5.

I’m gutted that I fell to pieces on the run. I know I’ve had some good run form and so far this season I’ve spectacularly failed to show it. I’m annoyed with myself for getting involved in a bike race when I knew that wasn’t going to be my strength, but credit to the other guys who came past me, they were both running really well and even if I had sat in the group I would have had a real job on my hands to beat them.

I had a good days training and attacking off the front of the bike isn’t something i’ve never tried before, so i’m going to try and get a solid weeks training in and then head to Avignon next weekend for the first race of the French Grand Prix….I’ve got to have a good run soon!!!