Race 7 19eme Triathlon International Le Mans (1st July 2007) 1500m/40km/10km

Now before you read on about the gripping events of this race I just want to state that I did this race far from feeling good. I am not making any excuses but the night before I had a little too much to drink and coupled that with about 3 hours sleep. It was all fun at the time (a party for a few girls in the club) but as I laid in the front of the bus, with one hour before the race start, and my guts churning, I was questioning my party decisions. I was hoping that no one would turn up to this race. I was number 1, but I soon found out that 2 was Xavier Le Floch (French long course champ), 3 was Stephan Bignet (Olympian), and there were a heap of guys from the Saint Avertin team all there. Great. I felt good to be in the water and had a pretty good swim start and as the field found their places settled in behind Boyd Conrick and Gareth Bannon (two Aussies from St Avertin). I stayed here for the rest of the swim, and we got out of the water 3rd, 4th and 5th about 30 seconds behind Adam Beckworth and Bignet. I rushed through transition and went hard out on the bike to catch the two swimmers. I got passed Adam but couldn’t see Bignet. And then (and you may smirk) I went the wrong way. I got to an intersection with a guy standing to one side and he looked to be pointing for me to go straight ahead. I went straight ahead and he just watched. The road soon became skinnier then turned to gravel and at around the same time I heard Boyd (who had just made the same mistake) yelling for me to turn around. I made a little u turn and rode my way back to the course, thanking my mute official friend on the way (on the second lap he was standing in the middle of the road). It was a non drafting race but I soon found that I was now in about 7th behind a pack of guys. I had probably only lost 30 seconds but it was enough to put me back in the field. I caught and passed them again and tried to go on alone but turned to find them still with me. They were not blatantly drafting but getting enough to stay with me. I could feel in my legs that I did not have the strength to get away. I decided to save what little energy I had left for the run and rode controlled with them for the rest of the bike leg, keeping well back as a few had been carded for drafting. 5 of us entered the second transition way WAY behind Bignet. He had rode about 2 minutes faster than us and had pretty much won the race there and then. All the guys took off for the first one kilometer much faster than I wanted to go (actually the way I felt walking was exceeding the limit at that point, but I digress), but after that started to slow so I just maintained the same pace and by two or three kilometers completed found myself alone comfortably in second. I actually had the thought of running really fast to try catch the leader, but two factors made me change my mind. 1- I felt pretty crap when I went too much harder, and 2- at the u-turn I saw just how far he was in front. I would have to run as fast as a car to get to him. My decision to hold back on the bike may have cost me the chance to win the race or it may have saved me enough energy to get second, who knows. I finished the race second and got the fastest run time, and a spiffy trophy to boot. Adam out sprinted Bignet out of the water and got himself an . . . .interesting trophy. Stephan Bignet could have got fastest in all legs but certainly deserved the fastest bike trophy.

Result from race 7- second + running man trophy Lesson learned – Pretty easy to work that out!!