My motivation has been massively up and down recently and I’ve certainly not felt in control of what I’m doing in my preparations. This has left me in pretty poor condition for the World Long Course Championships this weekend. Luckily it’s not a key race and with it been a funny distance I’m sure I’ll be able to take positives out of it whatever the outcome. Nothing too fancy in my approach – get in amongst it on the swim, aim for a fast bike and then focus on pushing the whole run whatever pace that turns out to be.

Given this lack of motivation I was feeling relatively good this morning following two tempo runs yesterday – 9 miles in morning in 64 minutes and 9 miles at lunchtime in 63 minutes – I was up this morning at 3.40am. I was in Regents Park on my P3 by 4.05am but unfortunately I wasn’t moving but had the bike upside down trying to locate the source of the creak and the wheel rub. In the dawn light I realised that the little bolt in the horizontal drop out on the drive side was bent. This is used to position the wheel correctly. No idea how it got bent but it was severe enough that I couldn’t remove it. I gentle rode home and took a look at it on the bike stand – no way to get it out. By about 5.45am Jo was up and ready to go so I joined her on my fixed and salvaged something of the morning. I took the bike into the local bike shop and he managed to remove it and find another bolt. We both agreed that the wheel must have slipped and bent the screw,

Thinking back this explains the creaking on the bike from the start of the second lap at Switzerland. The wheel must have slipped and started to bend the bolt. This morning was the first ride on it since then and the wheel was rubbing. Could this explain the drop off in my bike splits. It would certainly make sense, as I was rather surprised to not get under 5 hours on that course. We’ll never know. But good news is the P3 is up and running for this weekend.