The London Triathlon - 6th August 2006

GOAL : Qualify For Worlds!

I've been feeling great all week after my race in Copenhagen, and I really capitalised on that during the race at London. I had a bit of a bad start, in which I got bashed around a bit but managed to body-surf to some clear water and make my way to the front. Rich Stannard and Dylan McNeice got a gap on the rest of the field early on, but I was leading the main field for the majority of the swim and came out in third place, just under 30 seconds back.

After a terrible transition in which I wasted valuable seconds trying to clip my number belt up with the clip backwards I worked my way back onto the leading group of 8 or so which worked quite well together.

Alas, the chasers caught us at around 20K, a group which had been Driven by the likes of Bevan Docherty and Hamish Carter. This pack also contained Mark Bruce, who I was competing with for selection for the World U23 Championships, so I sat in a conserved my energy and decided to leave it to the run – feeling confident I could out run Mark. The merging of the two groups slowed the pace down significantly, with a fair few people decided to wait until the run to make their move.

Stu Hayes, however, decided the loafing pace wasn’t quick enough for him and rode off on his own with around 12K to go. By 40K he had almost a minute on the main field.

I had an excellent T2, with Richard Allen building up the pace in the last kilometre on the bike; I was 2nd into the transition area and second out behind Tim Don. My plan now was simple, get as much of a lead in the early stages as possible, then settle into a pace that I could maintain for the whole 10k. I executed this perfectly, dropping backwards a few places after the first kilometre and finding myself in 10th. My two competitors for the Worlds were both comfortably behind me, all I had to do was run strongly to the finish and selection was mine!

I held my position for 8Km, at which point the strength and experience of Marc Jenkins prevailed, and he overtook me, just edging me out of the top 10. I finished in 11th Place, just over 2mins behind the overall winner, which I was extremely pleased with, even thought it would have been nice to hold onto a top 10 I had realised my goal of qualifying for the worlds and also managed to run the best I have ever run! Thanks to the guys at Herbalife for letting me do the swim in one of their relay teams on the Saturday before the race – it was good to be able to get into the water and swim the course the day before! Also, thanks to everyone out on the course giving support, it is amazing how much the crowd can spur you on during big races like London!

I am now looking forward to a couple days of recovery before getting back for just over 2 weeks of hammer time before the worlds.

Thanks for reading… !!

Dann