European Long Distance Championships

All done and dusted, silver medal yesterday and a really good experience of the longer type of racing for me.  See, I used to think Olympic distance was long when I was a 400m swimmer and 5km runner.  Last year 70.3 was mega-long and now it’s 4km-120km-30km.  I guess that shows progression – one day Ironman will be on the agenda.

This was always going to be a training race – a process rather than a goal and I approached it as that.  After a crash on the previous Saturday I only confirmed I was going to compete on Wednesday with a pretty sore shoulder, but I did the test set and was so relieved I could come.

The swim course in Vitoria was flat, clear and fast.  I started well, went straight into the lead and stretched out. I didn’t feel my sore shoulder at all in the race, I was apprehensive because my new blueseventy Helix is pretty streamlined and obviously in wetsuits you have to counterbalance the pressure of the rubber on a sore joint but I was cool – adrenaline as always kicks in and I caught quite a few elite men which gave me a target to concentrate on.  It’s getting a little bit hard swimming on your own on a single lapped course. I swam the 4km in 53mins – about 3 minutes ahead of the next girl – but on my own as the course was completely clear.  Having someone up front helps in pacing and for me I particularly like to chase, but there was nobody.

Now, as I said it was a training race and I rode my road bike with my draft legal tri-bars.  This was always going to be tough against hard competition but coming from Switzerland I had to race on what I had.  The second girl, medallist at Hawaii last year came past at around 70km to go and she was quick.  I couldn’t stay with her but on a time trial bike it may have been different. She was very strong and has been around a long time and is obviously a tough competitor.  There’s a challenge for the next one

With around 50km to go on the bike I could feel a shearing pain in my lower back.  The problem with road frames and time trial positioning is that my position lies too short so I’m kind of scrunched up like a pretzel for a long time.  We are going to work on this now but, as I said, it’s all part of the process at the moment.  I tried to keep pain to the minimum by working out of the saddle as much as possible.

I definitely lost time from this but when I entered T2 my legs felt remarkably fresh, although my back was screaming.  Virginia had 7 minutes on me, mostly gained in that last 30km, but  I  just wanted to get running.  I gained two minutes on the first 10km, another 1min on the second 10km and she held on for the last 10km – but I guess that may have been a certain knowledge that second was on the cards.  I ran for first for a long hard way though and felt that in my back at the end.  I could not sit, bend or squat (so the drugs testing delivery was a slight issue!).  It was so worth it though and another major medal – European silver this time, with the knowledge that there is a lot more time to come off.

A good day at the office.