Tough Day at the Office.

I can’t believe after all the beautiful weather we have had in Europe, the heavens opened the night before the race including thunder and lightening and it just didn’t stop. The air temperature dropped from the thirties to 12C and it threw all my race preparation into turmoil……what on earth do you wear when the conditions are like this? Not something I normally have to deal with racing in Asia where it’s either hot and humid or hot and wet!! I finally got myself re-organized and Christian and I biked over to the race start about 3km from the hotel.

When we arrived at transition, one of the officials ran over as the TV wanted to interview me as the race favorite……please, you are kidding me? I think they had failed to realize I am still working up to race fitness and definitely didn’t feel like I was ready to be a favorite of any sort. We also had the hassle of sorting out transition bags as all the briefings/instructions had been in German and Christian hadn’t arrived until the night before so we had missed the briefing. T1 and T2 were in a different location and they had requested you provide your own transition bags for your various items to be transported in……I have never heard of this before, all the races I have ever done gave you the bags with your race number on. Surely, the race office would have some spare bags at the start, right? NO, wrong……when I found the race director, who had not been the most helpful/friendly person via email pre-race or given me any details in English. His attitude was NO BAGS/NO RACE!!! Great…thanks for your help and seemed an odd way to treat the race favorite who you wanted to give nice interviews to the press?!?!?

Thankfully the coffee shop at the lake next to the start area found me some bags that we could write numbers on, so Christian got to work making me some bags while I got ready. In the meantime, despite the freezing conditions and rain, it was announced a non-wetsuit swim as the lake water was still really warm. This was good for me as my swimming is generally strong in the longer races and I had remembered my speedo fastskin, so I could put this over my bike shorts.

After all the bag stress, the hour pre-race flew by and it was time to say my Goodbye and get in the water for a short warm-up. I felt pretty good and was excited to be racing. There were about 90 other women lined up on the start with me as it was a race to the finish between men and women and we had a 30minute head start…..definitely not enough!!! BANG….we were off. I went out hard trying to stay close to the Czech girl I had seen wearing a World Cup race suit which had to mean she was a good swimmer. Well, I tried and failed….she pulled away within the first 100m and I was in no man’s land ahead of the main pack but couldn’t get to the two girls ahead. I tried to hold a solid pace for the swim but it can be hard when you are on your own and came out of the water in third place, 4min down on the Czech girl and 2min behind an Italian but a good 2-4min ahead of the pack. My elation was a little short lived as I ran up the field to the bikes and my legs felt heavy……hopefully this would wear off. My transition was not impressive as I struggled to get some clothes over my wet body…..not looking much like a race favorite at the moment!

As you head out on the bike, there is a 2km flat section before you go up a ridiculously steep 800m climb out of town. Thank God I had my 27 cassette on my bike or I am not sure I could have even got up the hill. The good news is that in typical European style there were already hundreds of spectators on the climb screaming encouragement despite the rain and cold. The course looked so different today…..no blue skies, green fields, snowcapped mountains just lots of cold mist to ride through. I was trying to work at a solid pace on the bike but my legs were just not responding and all the short, steep hills were killing me…..man this was going to be a long day. There was never an option of not finishing and I tried to focus on each small section at a time and make this a solid training day. It’s hard to stay mentally positive when you have a stream of women going past you all looking super fresh and like the hills don’t exist. After about 20km of shorter hills, there is a longer climb of about 4km then the second half of the loop is more flat to rolling with one longer climb at the end before you go back through town for lap 2. I can’t tell you the relief when I finally crested that longer hill and I was trying desperately hard not to think about having to do the whole thing again. I didn’t feel so bad on the rolling section which was a relief and as I came back through town, I couldn’t belief how many people were out cheering. As we went up the steep hill again, the crowd was 5 deep on each side and you could barely ride through the gap……very cool and slightly took your mind off the climb. It was a little depressing, as the first men started to go past me at about 65km on the bike……no prize money for me as it only goes 10 deep and is split between men and women!!

I finally came into town ready for T2, well at least I couldn’t feel any worse on the run than the bike. I knew I was in about 10th place in the women’s field so I was focused at trying to catch a few girls on the run. I liked the run course as it was 3laps of 7km and you went up into the old town centre on the cobbles and through the market place where they had music, announcers and tones of spectators then back towards transition and the finish line for a 4km loop through the forest and round a lake on some tracks. I felt I was running ok for the first two loops and gaining on a few girls ahead and finally overtook two of them at 16km and could see another girl in the distance who wasn’t looking so strong. I finally worked my way up to her by 19km but it has to be said, I was feeling fairly wasted now as well. I went past but could hear her right behind me and she went back past with 1km to go and I had nothing left to respond, so I ended up finishing about 20m behind her in 8th place in 5hrs29. The Czech girl had won the race in 5hrs7, so I was off the pace but goes to show what a tough course it was with the slow times. I soon got really cold at the finish and we had to buy some Allgau souvenir towels to keep me warm while we found the car and I was definitely ready to go home for a hot bath……at least no packing bikes and traveling/flying for the day!!

Plenty of work to do before my next race especially on the bike………more diary updates to come.

Happy training & racing.
Cheers Claire

Happy to see the finish line!

Swim finish. Things still looking good at this point.

The race course on a nice day!

What it should have looked like!