I’ve been having a look at a few athletes website recently, and it’s funny how people talk about getting the positives out of bad races and using them as a learning experience. I guess people want to keep sponsors happy and give out a positive image. Well, my last few weeks have been pathetic and embarrassing, and that’s that.I can see what has gone wrong in each race, but its more the position I’ve got myself into that annoys me, I should have seen it coming and plenty of people told me it was about to. I ended up making promises that have meant dragging my ass all over Europe for the sake of a couple of hundred euros. What I’ve found over the last few weeks is that travelling messes you up, and once you’ve got sick from travelling and are still committed to racing it’s a very slippery slope that’s tough to get off. Still i’ve done my race report below and posted the one from munich above.

At the last minute I decided to head over to Holten in the Netherlands for the ITU Premium European Cup. I had planned to take a second week off, but I was starting to feel ok and the race in Holten is always a fantastic event. Jan, who I’ve been racing with for years was the organiser and managed to twist my arm With the German nationals in Munich the following weekend I thought it would make travelling easier and give me a chance to meet up with my German team Lemgo and spent a week in the land of sausage and Saur kraut.

Holten is going to host the European Championships in 2009 and the whole town is triathlon crazy, everyone comes out to spend the day watching the race and drinking beer before heading along to the after party to drink more beer and then to one of Holten’s two clubs in order to continue with their favourite pastime. Local business really gets behind the event and on the Friday night Evelyn Williamson for New Zealand and I got roped into doing a question and answer session for 150 local business people. The race itself is run with a split transition. The 1500m swim is straight down a canal 10km outside town then you ride 7km into the town centre for 5 laps across the cobbles and up the only 10% climb to be found in the whole of Holland before running three laps around the town centre. 80 guys swimming in a gully 20m wide is a recipe for a fight, and we weren’t disappointed, I got well and truly battered at the start of the swim, but managed to work my way through to come out in the top 5. Luckily I avoided the shopping trolley on the bottom of the canal that put an end to Andre Gluchenko’s race. Out on the bike I wasn’t feeling great, in fact I had nothing in my legs and with the French boys at the front putting the pace down I wasn’t having much fun. There were 40 guys in the front group and no matter how bad I was feeling I should have been able to sit in the middle of the pack and keep out of trouble but I found myself at the back of the group which meant I was experiencing the full force of the rubber band effect out of each corner. On the third lap one of the frenchies put an attack down up the hill and I didn’t have anything to give and got dropped, very, very embarrassing. The race was pretty much over after that as my best result was going to be a 40^th place and I knew I had Munich to do the following weekend, I still wanted to get a solid training session out of it so ran tempo, but all in all not a great day at the office and despite being a bit tired I really shouldn’t have gone that badly so was a bit miffed to say the least. The party in Holten is normally pretty legendary with a beer festival in the middle of the town and bands playing on an outdoor stage in the square, whilst they show back the race footage on the big screens. The drinking rules are a bit crazy in the Netherlands and there normally seems to be a bunch of 14 year olds getting hammered but without causing any trouble. In England they would have been shipped off to the local cells by the meat wagon come 11pm but here they all headed on to the club whilst their parents were doing the same thing in the club next door before all stumbling home together as one happy family. The New Zealand athletes where also getting in on the party, as a late 21^st Birthday celebration they made one of the guys down 4 litres of beer from a race trophy. A crowd of horrified locals gathered to view the spectacle and use it as an opportunity to lecture their kids about the dangers of the western world and generally pass comment on the stupidity of English speakers.I was quite keen to have a blow out after a couple of average performances, but was feeling rough after the race and by midnight was knackered so decided to let the party go on without me and headed back to the camping site chalets where the organisers had put us up. On the plus side, I got to catch up with a few of the boys staying with Gav Noble and Andrew Fargus, I checked out Gaves website www.gavinnoble.com, have a look, some of his comments on racing the circuit are classic.