My strained tendon wasn’t completely healed at the start of the month so that meant no hard running for another 2 weeks. I was on holiday for the 2 and a half weeks before Mallory which meant my preparation wasn’t great. I did however manage to do my first proper run session since December while on holiday, which I was extremely pleased about. I wasn’t running too slowly either-in fact I was very happy with how my first two sessions went. The third and last one before Mallory (which was slightly easier) wasn’t quite as good but still ok.
Mallory was a heats and finals format so I was wanting to take the heats as easily as possible and then see what I could do in the final. This was the qualifying race for Europeans which was a big target of mine at the start of the season, but obviously I had to admit that I wasn’t in a great position to deliver, but I still wanted to give it a shot.
In the heats my swim and bike went to plan, as I made the front pack and just sat on the back for the bike. On the run however, I felt awful, but still managed to get into the ‘A’ final without too much effort. During my warmup however, I had felt a niggle in my quad which meant I couldn’t do any strides.
Thankfully my quad felt slightly better during my warmup for the final but it was still a little sore. In the final I wanted to position myself out wide to avoid the ‘washing machine’ effect to give myself the best chance of getting in the front pack. I also started hard to avoid the chaos, which worked quite well but I still got a bit caught up, however that was more due to my lack of fitness that tactics. I came out of the water in around 10th, or maybe just slightly higher up. My transition was average and I came out of transition in about the same position, just 5 seconds down on the front pack that was forming. I felt strong on the bike, but I wasn’t strong enough to close down the front pack. The technical course was also hampering me as cornering is a big weakness of mine and something I am working on. I came into transition 2 in the second pack about 5 seconds down on the leader. From this point on my race went terribly. I had an awful transition and went onto the run already quite a bit down. My run was also feeling awful, and something just felt off, and I felt sore but not in a good way, not like the pain from working hard. After 500m I made the decision to ease up and just jog home as I felt like I was going to injure myself from running hard, and I really didn’t want to risk it as I was already quite far down. It turned out to be the right decision as I’ve now got a bit of a quad niggle, so running hard would have aggravated that massively.
I think now I’m just going to focus on enjoying the season, not stressing about results and trying to be fit enough to train properly. The main positive from mallory is that I’ve qualified for the school games in September so that’s another race to look forward to.
Alex Robin Triathlon blog 