Since my last race in Llanelli I had been training consistently and was still building the running going into the french D3 GP semis in Bray-Dunes. Thanks to having a french dad and being able to talk french fluently, my brother and I managed to get into Villneuve D’Asque Triathlon club. We travelled over a week before the race and went to a sport school associated with the club for a week in order to get to know everyone and integrate into the team, which was a great experience and super fun.
Now onto the race- it was a sprint distance with a tough sea swim, where our objective was to win in order to be able to pick our starting position first for the final, which would maximise our chances of getting promoted to D2. We had a very young team, with only 1 guy in the team being over 18 years old (there were no age groups). Having such a young team sets us up well from the future because it allows us to work up the divisions ourselves while learning so once we are a little order we know exactly what we need to do too be the best. It was a team of 5 with 3 to count and we also had 3 extra U23s who didn’t count in the ranking but we were allowed to enter in order to develop extra young athletes.
It was a very windy day which resulted in a very choppy sea with some big waves. In the swim course we essentially swam out to a buoy, turned 90 degrees and swam 600m parallel to the coast, then turned around another buoy and swam back in. I know in the swim I had a decent chance of leading out so the plan was to go out hard. I didn’t have a great run in so only got to the first buoy in about 7th, but then kicked out of it and took the lead very soon after. Then for the rest of the swim I basically had to swim as fast as possible while swimming in a straight ling to the buoy, which was easier said than done.
I exited with about a 10 second gap over second place. It was a very long run up the beach to transition where I struggled, but maintained the lead coming out of transition. One of my team-mates came out in second just behind me so I waited for him and we started working together, but waited for another team-mate who was alone in third and only 5 seconds behind. Once we had regrouped we started working together treating the bike like a team time-trial. We we quickly started gaining over the people behind, because the swim was so hard that the field was completely stretched out and no packs had formed. We worked like this for the whole bike, with our team-mates in the pack behind not pulling once it had formed and came into transition with a 1 min gap over the next group. From the we looked like we had secured the win as a team and it was just a run race, where I went out hard, got a gap and just held on to take the win by 30 seconds, over my two team-mates in second and third, which made for a perfect day for the team and individually.
So we took the team win and are now looking forward to the final in September where we are looking to get promoted. It was also a huge confidence boost for me on the run after catching whooping cough, which I feeling is still affecting me slightly but slowly going away, and now the focus is on the next British super series race on the 29th and 30th, which also doubles as the Europeans qualifier. I will most likely put out another blog just for that race at the start of next month.
Alex Robin Triathlon blog 