My race report is here.

Firstly I must say how beautiful the course is here. The lake for the swim is gorgeous. The ride was on closed roads through lovely villages and twisty turny roads. The run is 3 x 10k lap with lots of turns and different terrain to keep it interesting. The logistics need improving before the World Long Course is here in 2012 but assuming they sort this that will be a fantastic race to do.

Two days before the race I got bad news – the mechanic here spotted a crack in my frame. He told me to race this weekend then put the frame on the wall. Pretty gutting as I’ve grown very attached to this bike. Also, he was so adamant that I don’t ride it after this weekend that it made me question whether he really thought it was OK to ride it in the race. So … I put my number over the crack and didn’t worry about it.

The field here was pretty small which made for a lovely relaxed race. It was so nice to race where there wasn’t much aggro. I did the whole race more or less on my own. Next year doing the ETU Long Course again is a definite possibility.

The most pleasing thing about this race is that I really RACED. There’s no knowing whether different pacing would have produced a medal (ie not going so hard on the run at the start) but given the strategy I’d decided on I raced my heart out and felt I executed that plan as best I could. My swim was great. There was a certain level of luck that meant I gapped the others in my age group so I didn’t pull any of them along. My ride was fast but conservative then the start of the run was really satisfying – I felt good running at that pace and at the time was visualising this being the pace I run the whole marathon at at Kona !  It felt like I was in a good place to start building up my running after a little down time.

On reflection it’s rather disappointing that I missed the medals. I was the fastest Brit and I was 4th fastest age grouper. It just feels rather harsh that that didn’t result in a medal. I guess being in such a competitive age group will make winning all the sweeter when it happens.