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!

Yesterday we went to the Natural History Museum… One of the only things to do around here that is FREE!!! A bit of a diamond connoisseur after buying Clares engagement ring recently, I can now appreciate how expensive and amazing diamonds are… I couldn’t believe some of the gems I saw in the museum, including the Hope Diamond below:

I look forward to updating you tomorrow.  Hopefully with good news…

The journey was relatively painless to be honest, I had a good night sleep and here I am! Absolutely loving it so far, Washington DC seems especially good! For America, everything seems really close together so it saves us hiring a car to get about. We are staying in the Grand Hyatt right in Downtown DC. I went for an extremely historic run this morning. Thanks to all the tourist attractions being cramped into a 1 mile radius from our hotel, I took in probably the most sites ever on one run! Apparently Washington has 16.5 million tourists every year – and I can see why! White house, capitol hill, reflecting pool, national archives, history museum, war memorials, the mall and some far 1 minute efforts using Washington Monument as my loop

It is so expensive though…phew! Eating out 3 times a day is not cheap anyway… and especially not here. The Bell boy also wasn’t impressed when I tipped him 75 Cents for taking up 2 bike bags and 2 heavy bags! I looked in the manual after he left and it said the recommended amount is $1.50 per bag!  NEVER GONNA HAPPEN!

Feeling pretty good though, run was swift this morning and did some good 50’s in the pool! I hope it all comes together this weekend. I’m going to be nice and rested for this one so will be good to see what I can do… It’s all experimenting this year

Really have to go, Im meeting Barack in Starbucks, I hope he doesn’t bring his lap top…

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!!!