Don’t you just hate those ‘bad days‘…Bit of a Rant here!

Does anyone have any tips on how to handle these days?

Some mornings you wake up and you realise almost straight away you shouldn’t have bothered waking up at all today…

I can always tell when I am on for a bad day, for me it usually starts when I wake up feeling a little tired then immediately following that a procession of other annoying things happen like you can’t find your car keys, you have run out of milk, or late for swimming. If you get 5 or more of these in the first 10mins you are on for a tough one!  If you sit down to watch 5 mins of TV while you put on your running shoes and after one hour you are still there watching loose women and Jeremy Kyle then you are having one!

I think Pro Triathletes have it tough on ‘Bad Days’ quite often we wake up very tired and you know you have a tough day ahead of you of Swimming, Cycling and Running maybe even Gym chucked in as well. You never fancy Swimming, Cycling and Running on a ‘Bad Day’ but what can you do? If you don’t go training then its simple you get your ass kicked by Alistair Brownlee and Javier Gomez.  Why not Chuck in a bit of bad English weather to make it even harder for yourself!

I felt a bit tired all day today, had a rubbish swim this morning, dragged myself to the gym. I then made a special trip to town to get my bike fixed.  Coming back to collect it 4hrs later and they still hadn’t done it….so I missed the ride with my friends.  I decided to sleep it off and ride at 5pm. Of course it was nice weather all day but as soon as I got out the door it started raining! 15min ride for me then!

I’m off to drag myself round for an hour alone in the rain and the dark, I fully expect to get attacked by these things in the woods…(Thanks Nikola for the picture!)

BRING ON THE SUMMER

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 grabbed my 2nd win of the season on Sunday in Dunkerque for the 2nd French Grand Prix. Its a great weekend and as it was so close to England and my parent and future in-laws are able to come cheer me on. The amount of kit we were given from Lagardere Paris Racing team is phenomenal, it’s like a 2nd Christmas and it’s so good to catch up with the boys for some banter.

The boys...

I actually crossed the line 1st with my team mate Laurent Vidal. I don’t normally bother to out sprint my team mates in the French Grand Prix because there are so many other opportunities where we are rivals, on Sunday we were a team with the same goal!

The swim went really badly actually, I came out the water in 45th which is less then ideal but I was still on the front group though so was safe. There is a new kid on the block – word is he is an ex Beijing Olympic 1500m Swimmer and he has been mixing up the swims a lot recently! To be honest, this is less than ideal for me!!

I felt really strong on the bike, the pace was seriously ON! The field was strung out the whole way through the city like a snake and was extremely hard to get to the front after the swim!

Fortunately I hit T2 almost at the front and I got onto the run feeling really great so could soon catch the front and take the lead with Alistair Brownlee where we pushed it on together for the first 3.5k. Alistair unfortunately got stopped by a marshall briefly under the tunnel for a time penalty giving me a chance to get a gap on him with Laurent Vidal.  We held this to the finish and took the tape.  

I love weekends like this, it was great seeing the boys (Stuart Hayes, Laurent, David Hauss, Mehdi and David Coach) again.  As well as the other guys from the other teams.  It was fast and furious racing and made it a very entertaining weekend for everyone involved! Its a dangerous race Dunkerque due to city centre course and cobbles but fortunately the rain held off and everyone got round safely. 

Next up for me is Madrid World Championship Series. I keep saying this but this is a real test… The best guys in the world, hard course and full distance.  I hope it goes as well as the others so far. If not, long season ahead  I’m heading to the pool so I can give myself a chance of swimming with Javier Gomez this weekend. 

Cheers for checking out my first post and well done Lagardere Paris Racing team!