August has been the best month of this year so far. All. My niggles and injuries have finally healed so I’ve just been increasing my training steadily.
I also raced the British Super Series grand final in Sunderland. I had an awful start after getting pushed back on the start line(it was a beach start) but managed to swim well get back up into third. Transition was basically on a road but there wasn’t any carpet down so I lost 5 places in transition just from having sore feet. The particularly annoying thing was that my transition itself was really good.
Onto the bike and I was just off the front pack coming out of transition. I could have probably kicked and got up to that group but I wanted to save some energy and get up more steadily. This proved to be a bad tactical decision as I couldn’t close the gap in the end and had to wait for the second pack. I just sat in that pack until T2. Again I lost some time from running on the concrete in T2, and came out in around 12th. I knew I would never do too well running from second pack after my limited training ( only 3 run sessions this year) , but just did my best and came home in 9th (7th brit). I felt really good on the run which is a massive positive, but a stitch meant I couldn’t give it as good a shot as I would have liked. However after so long out it is a massive positive that I felt so good, I just need to work on race execution now, which should come back as I race more.
I still had a chance to redeem myself the next day in the British youth and junior relay championships. I went third and was very pleased with my leg, racing against guys up to 3 year older. In the end my team came third to massive thanks to Jess, Struan and Annabelle.
I’m writing this as I go down to UK school games. I’m racing tomorrow (1st September) in the aquathlon lon which is live streamed on the youth sport Trust YouTube channel. The heats are at 17:00 and the finals around 18:20. The relay is also livestreamed, in the Saturday at 17:15. I’ll explain how the format works in my next blog, but the individual race doesn’t only consist of the aquathlon.
Alex Robin Triathlon blog 