It’s always more difficult to write a post after a bad race and I have in the past been accused of taking an Ostritch approach to things hence its been a couple of outings since my last update.

First off I headed to Cyprus for an itu points race where I finished 11th, I was a bit frustrated with the result especially after a long trip. I lead out of the swim and sat comfortably in a large front pack during the bike course. I messed up my position riding over cobbles into t2 and got caught in the transtion bottle neck heading out onto the run 30 seconds down on the leaders. I struggled to get going for the first 3 or 4km, but finished in 31 minutes over a slightly short course which shows my running is coming along. To get the cheap flight home I stayed in Cyprus for a couple of days. A great place to train with the run track in Pathos and the 50m pool along with some good bike climbs and turtles to swim with in the sea. (see the pics below)

From Cyprus it was a bit of a shock to the system heading up to the national Sprint Championships in Strathclyde Scotland. The water was 13 degrees and the field of 70 athletes had to pass under a bridge 20m wide within the first 100m of the swim (we didn’t fit). The risk of travelling between races is getting sick on planes unfortunatly by the time I got to Scotland I was starting to come down with a cold. I was second out of the swim and sat with the pack on the bike, I didn’t get going on the run and finished 14th which was dissapointing as I don’t believe its an indication of my run form, but ce’st la vie at least I know there was a reason behind it and thats something I can work on.

Next up was a trip to Normandy with my French team. I had not met the team before and failing to turn up for the first race of the season could have been politically suicidal. I was hoping that once they had seen me make the effort to turn up they might tell me not to race, but no such luck. THe bonus was that the race actually went quite well, I didn’t have to push too hard in the swim and lead out by 30 seconds, a group of riders caught me on the bike and I sat in the group coming through to lead out onto the run. I went hard for the first 2.5km and went 30secs clear of the chasers so was able to ease right back and win without doing the chest too much damage. Good to be Normandy champ and good to earn some pocket money.