Its gotta be the hardest Olympic Team to qualify for, as well as Jan Frodeno and Daniel Unger there are these hitters as well, a different german wins every week!

Steffen Justus, Maik Petzold, Sebastian Rank, Johnny Zipf, Sebastian Dehmer, Thomas Springer, Christian Prochnow, Franz Loschke…

See the German triathletes video at triathlon.org.

I finished 11th in a very strong field feeling weak as the whole way round!

I’m not over the moon with my result but my head hit the pillow last night safe in the knowledge that I did everything I could on the day. It was a really tough race for me, In the week leading into it I battled with extreme tiredness after giving it my all in Washington (6 days recovery wasn’t enough for me) and a bit of insomnia the nights before coupled with a bit of a dodgy stomach during the race did not help matters.

I’m actually quite excited though… So far this year I have been a bit greedy with how I planned my race schedule. I did 6 races in 8 weeks, the problem is there are so many fantastic races kicking about and not enough time to prepare for them all. I realise I have to prioritise a bit more than I am which means I probably won’t be able to turn up at one of the races I have wanted to do for AGES – The London Triathlon. This way I can get in an undisturbed 5 week solid training block which I know will push my form forward enough so I am finishing with or very close to the best guys in the world.

The race itself was a dream. The organisation was flawless. Everything from the stadium, to the carpets to the spectators. It was a great day for the sport and an amazing photo finish by the top 3 guys below:

Personally, I had a decent first lap in the swim but I could tell on the 2nd lap that I was in for a bad day. I struggled to hold the feet on the 2nd lap and in our chase group on the bike my legs felt like they needed to go back to Loughborough and put in some training! We eventually caught the lead group and on the run I built into it and actually ran quite well on the last lap but it was too late. I was happy to have had a nightmare and limit my losses to under a minute behind the winner though.

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!