Race 6. Charliville Grand Prix round 1

These grand prix races are never easy. The swim is a fight, the bike is chaos and dangerous and nearly always there is a pack of 50 or so out on the run together. Not fun! This was the first grand prix for the year and it went just as predicted. I had an average swim, couldnt get near the turn buoys and came out round 30th. On the bike the group was about 50 before the only big hill on the course and after the 1.5km climb the pack was about 30ish. Still pretty dangerous and I was kind of glad to get back to transition incident free. The run was painful. I was not fit enough to run super fast, but tried anyway. Looking back on the race I think I had enough run in my legs to do 4km.......yep its 5km. In the long finish straight I could see the leader, second, third etc. It wasnt that far (5 to 25 seconds), but at the same time it was all too far. With about 10 meters to run I thought oh well 7th it is then in an instant sensed someone next to me, tried to sprint, but it was all too late. The finish line photo pretty much sums up the day. To cap it off our team finished third, a painful one point off second! I am no math wiz but I am thinking that crushing less than 1 second loss could have been the difference!