We had a fun weekend at the European Championships this weekend in Athlone.

Firstly well done to Alistair (getting boring saying it) and Lucy who won the Juniors.  Also to everyone else who raced and didn’t get medals.  Everyone put their best effort in and “you can only hold your heart rate at 180 for so long!”  My Triathlonteam-mate Lisa Norden claimed a bronze medal in the Senior Womens race as well so congratulations to her.

It was an incredible atomosphere out there!  The Irish were very hospitable and friendly out there and the streets were lined with locals from the town all getting stuck into the racing.

I didn’t ever get going really, I finished 11th…it was a bit of a nothing race.  Just didn’t have the gas, think maybe I am missing some training since Madrid/Des Moines time.  I’m also looking to make some changes in the next few weeks to give me some extra kick.  A bit more intensity, maximum capacity make yourself sick sessions as well as a promotion on my training volume.  We will see if it makes a difference!?

Bring on the next races, but first some big training load:)

I’m on the flight from Madrid over to Des Moines after racing the World Champs Series.

It didn’t go great to be honest, It was far from the result I was expecting.  I didn’t see the move and the race moved away before my very eyes! Quite frustrating really but major fault by me for not concentrating in a key moment!

I had a decent swim, I knew it would be really important this bit, it was a non-wetsuit lake swim and traditionally, especially last year groups usually get away.  I started next to a whole heap of great swimmers on the start line and managed to stay with them till the first buoy setting me up nicely.  I only had 30 seconds to chase to get to the first Russian out the water! They were well in sight which was encouraging.

Jan Frodeno, Matt Charbot and myself did the lions share of the work in the first few laps to get the 8 or so athletes back.  Not going to lie though, I found it bloody hard to get there. I think they found it tough to stay away though as well so everyone was hurting I guess.

I think I was hurting a bit too much though as on the 2^nd to last hill (150m of  ascent each lap) a group of the best athletes were at the front and next thing you know they had time on us which soon rocketed out to 1:30!!!

It was the crucial moment in the race, and as I felt a bit tired after the early stages of the race. I wasn’t concentrating assuming we were going to have a running race and watched the best guys get a 1:30 head start on me!

Race not over though, I set off running ok but my legs were heavy and spent.  I had to let some people go but I started to feel good in the last stages and took 3 spaces back in the last lap (a very important skill I’ve been working on!) I finished 12th

I have been pretty confident with my form recently.  I think I trained too hard into this one and didn’t have enough gas on the day.  I am going to do next to nothing this week and I hope in Des Moines I can bounce back with a result I can be proud of! 12th place won’t pay for much of the wedding!!!

This was Alistairs first race back after injury.  He’s had a tough January-April but even when he’s injured he’s fit.  He surprised everyone again with a fantastic showing to win again! I can’t believe how much that guy can hurt himself. It’s inspiring.

One think that really annoys me about Triathlon is the amount of World Championships there are about and in-fact, the amount of races there are in the World.  It’s crazy how many top level races there are kicking about.

I would love to see one World Championships and the guy who wins it, is THE World Triathlon Champion!  I think its got way too carried away to the point now where we have, Ironman World Championships, ITU World Championships, Aquathlon World Championships, Biathlon World Championships, 70.3 World Championships, Long Course World Championships, Team World Championships (Isn’t that basically 70.3? Why is it slap bang in between Hawaii and Clearwater?) Shall we include Duathlon World Championships and Winter Triathlon World Champs?

How many Triathlon World Champions do you want?

Triathlon has become so spread out and diluted, to the point of who really cares who is the World Champion!  In one year, how many people can claim to be the World Champion? Lots!

What motivates me is being the best Triathlete in the World, what happens when/if you get there? I don’t know ask Alistair, my guess is not as much respect/attention as he should probably deserve…he’s surely going to struggle at Sports Personality of the year, probably partly because his status has been diluted down by all the other Triathlon World Championships and Champions around him, if he was the only World Champion then he would be so much more in the eye of the public.

We constantly have Craig Alexander pissing on Alistair Brownlee’s bonfire, Crissie Wellington pissing on Helen Jenkins’ Bonfire, you can go on like this all day!…Who is the best Triathlete out there? There will be constant arguments! There seems to be an event to suit anyone everyone and no matter how great you are you certainly can’t do them all, and some of them are within two weeks!

I don’t think it helps the credibility of the sport, I personally to be honest wouldn’t care which distance stays and which goes, maybe Ironman is the best as its the original distance? Although if you want the best guys in the world going head to head it should be in the Olympics and the IOC won’t be wanting a 8-10hr event, there certainly won’t be many exciting sprint finishes!

Imagine what an incredible event Worlds would be if there was just one of them.

I just watched the coverage from the World Champs…I hope everyone see’s this video.  It made me really proud to be part of Triathlon at this level. It looks so impressive, inspirational and professional!  Good job Alistair and the ITU and bring on 2010! I feel inspired…but not before my holiday in Thailand!

The swim was really fast this week, probably the fastest I have ever seen it.  It split up so quickly at the front I couldn’t believe it! Hence a good group of fast swimmers got away with a 45 second lead.  I actually felt really good in the swim and came out in 20th but unfortunately the standard was higher for this one so it didn’t really show.

I was determined in this race that these guys were not going to stay away on bike so from the very first pedal stroke I really kept the pace high getting help only from the Germans who were all in our pack.  There were about 40 guys just sitting behind getting a free ride…as usual pretty annoying and I wasted HEAPS of energy, a tactical disaster for me.  I think however that once someone initiates the chase…everyone kind of knows that you are going to see it through and hey…they were right! We did see it through, I kept on shouting at everyone, the 6 or so of us kept motivated we bought them back by half way through the bike.

Once it all came together the last few laps were a bit of a cruise, it gave me a chance to try to execute a big goal of mine, to try to get off the bike in first place.  This is something I have never been able to do yet is such an important skill! It’s so congested coming into the 2nd transition it’s actually really difficult to get in first, as everyone wants to be in the same position and everyone is jostling for that place!  I usually come off the bike in 20’s-30’s and the queuing nature of this process means that sometimes I start the run up to 10 seconds behind.  Usually I manage to make it to the front after about a kilometer which means that I am probably running about 2:42 when the other boys are on more like 2:52…If I can get off the bike at the front I would be able to put pressure on them rather then them putting pressure on me!

I really used my head in the last few kilometers of the bike and barged myself out to the outside so I had a clear run to the front so I created my opportunity to come off the bike at the front which was really pleasing.  Less pleasing however I knew instantly that I didn’t have fresh enough legs to finish where I wanted to today.  I gave it a go though, like in London I tried to surge straight away and create gaps to make it hard but my legs just didn’t have the same magic as 2 weeks ago.  It was just a case of trying to keep some momentum into the finish and limit my losses!

I’m not too disappointed with my result, I had a stormer 2 weeks ago in London and I believe that if I had that freshness this weekend I would have been running in around top 5.  3 years till the Olympics lots of practice time and experience to come to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again!

Congrats to Alistair, my friend Steffen Justus and Gemmell for their podiums.

I was speaking to Rick a minute ago…I was saying this has been my biggest ever learning year. I’m really looking forward to the winter, getting it all mapped out with my support staff to come up with a bullet proof plan for 09-10.

Cheers

Will Clarke finished in awesome 7th with 52 secs behind winner Alistair Brownlee.

Bravo!

More info will follow…

Check results here.

Post something on Will’s facebook wall.

What a race.  I’m tired but want to get the info to you tonight so I’m gonna write it in a wacky time line.

Saturday

14:00 Went to swim practice, found out we couldn’t swim because all the heavy rainfall has polluted the water and it would be a risk to our health!

14:30 ITU are saying its going to be a Duathlon, big fuss from all the athletes.  Huge race, great LIVE TV coverage, incredible venue all to waste…we signed a petition

17:00 After all that we decided to keep it as a Triathlon and race at our own risk! Very happy that we came to this decision…

17:30 Went for a run, Bloody hot! Checked out the Platomic river to see what the fuss was all about and I saw heaps of logs and muck floating down the river with a huge current!

18:00 Dinner in fantastic Pasta Restaurant + lots of Banter with Stu, Clare, Ali and I.

21:00 Bed.

Sunday

05:30 Warm up run+stretch cords+Breakfast. Banana, Oats and Bread

08:35 Warm up swim, almost got knocked out by a log floating down the river, it also took me about twice as long as expected to get to the first buoy!

09:10 HHHHOOOOONNNNKKKK.  We departed but not as quickly as the false starting Japanese guy next to me who then stopped right in front of me giving me no room and forcing me to the back of the pack!

09:17 Swam though about 25 meters worth of Logs, reeds, muck, condom’s and whatever else! Hurt myself and lost the feet in front of me. I managed to limit my losses thought and came out the water just in the main group.

09:31 Smooth transition, but soon discovered that Alistair (again) Maik Petzold, Javier Gomez, Hunter Kemper and Andy Potts had 30 seconds on us, an excellent chance for those guys to stay away.

09:50 We put in a really hard lap and I could have sworn that we would get them back…Gap before was 35 seconds…lap time after our effort…35 seconds!!! NOOOOO! Lots of heads dipped in disappointment! Thats them below.

10:10 Everyone sat up in our group and the gap went out to 2 minutes and 10 seconds….Game over, now racing for 6th best case scenario. Its a huge shame and so frustrating that we can’t get organised in these situations.  There’s so many good athletes in our group I cant believe they all want to race for 6th.

10:30 Headed out on run feeling fairly swift.  The boys were running fast throwing in lots of surges to break it up. My game plan was to go with it till I couldn’t anymore and I think on the most past I dealt with the surges well. A lot of the best guys in the world dropped off the pace…

10:50 Olympic Champ Jan Frodeno got onto his toes and started sprinting, getting in the cameramans’ motorbike slip stream, Obliterating the opposition splitting us all into little groups, everyone dropped off, including me.  Steffen Justus and I remained together but I lost touch on the last lap and couldn’t close him down.

10:59 Alistair Brownlee won his 2nd World Championships Series, about 10 secs in front of Gomez and Maik not far off the pace.

11:01 I crossed the line in 10th place.

11:05  Protein Shake, Jog, Ice bath, Compex (muscle recovery) and Sandwich and 3xDunkin Doughnuts.

11:30 I congratulated fellow team mate Gavin Noble on a solid race.

I’m going to have to sleep on this one and come back to you with my feelings on the race tomorrow! I’m very hard on myself and an emotional racer so I better give it some time to cool off!

Since Madrid as you have seen I have been cracking on with that old swimming chestnut! I’m delighted to report that at the weekend I dived in the water and felt fantastic…I just wasn’t getting as tired as I used to and felt stronger with every stroke! As I predicted and it seems to be a definite pattern this year, there was another lead group of 10 guys hammering it at the front of the race and a big chase pack…normally I am part of this chase pack but on Sunday I was up there mixing it up with the gun swimmers. I am so happy that the hard work I put in has finally payed off and it felt so good to be swimming with those guys at the front!

The bike was pretty fast! In fact, I think everyone who made the front bike pack had to work for it in the first 5k. If I hadn’t good riding form I would have missed it for sure because it was a long line out of the transition. The first two laps were fast and the 10 of us who eventually established ourselves in that lead group put 45 into the chase pack which dropped off to about 30 by the end when we eased off the pace a tad.

I hit transition first and came out with a small lead. I decided to run hard for the first kilometer to put a bit of pressure on the other boys but sure enough, Alistair Brownlee and Javier Gomez are class acts and they caught me after about 800m and we ran together to the finish line.

I got a very confused at the finish line…there was an extra out and back that I was told we had to do…It would have ended up being about 400m extra. So when Alistair started sprinting early, I thought it was 600m out, but in fact it was only 200m to go. No excuses…I should have known! I didn’t feel too good on the run anyway so when Washington comes around hopefully I will know the course and I will have more of a sprint in me! There was nothing in it really, we ran together the whole way and the best man on the day won, I’m happy taking that knowledge away with me.

I spent a bit of time in Paris after the race, it’s a beautiful city and was a good to unwind after the race. I actually got back today…and I am off again to Washington tomorrow morning! It’s going to be great out there, the course is amazing and I had better get packing!!!

I cant wait to be honest, training has been going great, and although its only been a week, if that week goes well it gives you so much confidence! The week has been full of PB sessions including that Track session I wrote about, and yesterday a MAX 100m + 2×50m swim (Just the 4!) and a very hard Bike/Run session with Alistair and Johnny Brownlee.  Was great to mix it up with those boys.  The week was chaotic though with the inclusion of packing and meetings with the Olympics Podium Squad. 

I look forward to writing tomorrow hopefully with some good news from the FGP.  I have some great memories from this course. It’s a real fast run and I want to try to test out my legs to a accuarte 14:45 5k off the bike!