Life is a game of inches!

                                 Photo by Etienne Van Rensburg

 From parking your car and nearly missing that pole with your rear view mirror to missing out on that sprint finish by 0.01 seconds, life is a game of inches.  I have learnt over the past month the importance of that inch. The knowledge of every small detail is like a passport you can take anywhere in the world. Just like baking a cake, if you don’t follow the recipe and take a short cut, the likelihood of the cake turning out is a hit and miss.

After my first race in Europe, London WTS, I had some solid weeks of training building up some consistency, confidence and warming (literally) back into Vitoria Gasteiz.  Summer has arrived for us or otherwise known as a “heatwave “ for the Europeans. You get into a routine of what you do on each day every week and like they say if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. It is always nice being back in a group environment with always someone to train with, work with on your good and bad days.

A made a small trip via the train, to Barcelona, to race the Garmin Barcelona Triathlon. I have never been to Barcelona before, except the airport, so I was excited to race and have a look around post race. The race was different from normal races as the girls and guys started together which meant you can draft off the boys throughout the race. My first Olympic distance in ages, I enjoyed the hurt after a hard week of training leading in. It was a fun course that kept me motivated to work all day and ended up 2nd. Thank you to Javi Theilacker for inviting me to be part of such a great and well organised event.

It was all about recovery post race and getting another week of training in before heading to my first French Grand Prix of 2015 with my new team, Poissy Triathlon. I felt very welcomed and excited to be racing for a team, I always thought so highly of. Like most French races, it is about coming out alive out of the swim and even more so with Dunkerque with the first buoy being 100m or so away. I got nailed to start with, fists and legs all over the place but moved my way quickly on the back straight to the end of the front group. We rode the 5 lap bike course as a group of 18 trying to maintain the pace at the front to stay away from the group behind.  I felt strong that day running and I think I found some glimpses of my running legs.  I finished up in 9th place and 1st overall for our team. I can’t wait to race in Enbrum!  I look at French races as valuable opportunities to race the best in world and maybe sometimes surprise myself.



Last weekend I was looking forward to racing my Holten European Cup and seeing where my training was at over an Olympic distance. This course suits small break away groups and that was what I wanted from the start. We found out on it was getting changed from an Olympic to a sprint due to the heat. This changed the whole dynamic of the race and to be honest I was pretty annoyed over the change. I have raced plenty of races in heat and being athletes you have to adapt to whatever the uncontrollables are. We ended up starting at 7.30pm at night and after sitting around all day, it was a terrible time to start.

 I had a great swim and for the first time in ages, I felt comfortable swimming hard. We started with a group of 8 girls for the first 9km back into town. Before the first hill, the group behind us had just caught on and everyone was getting antsy as per usual. Climbing up the first hill, I thought I was in a good position at the front in the middle of the group. That changed pretty quickly. One of the American girls lost control taking a drink and I saw bikes and people crash in front of me. I had no where to go but on the road with more bikes and people on top of me. I looked down at my elbow with blood all over it, checked my bike and thought what the heck, get back on your bike. By the time I got back up, it was all over. I wanted to finish the race and catch as many girls as I could on the run. Finishing, I was still in abit of shock of everything that happened. I got a stitch to my elbow about 5 mins post race with no local to numb the pain and honestly, I just felt more faint. It’s pretty disappointing as I was looking  for a good performance there.

Now it is about getting the body back into working order for Hamburg WTS in a week and a half time.  I had three days out of the water with my stitch which nearly killed me as I love swimming! I am just grateful that I didn’t land about 1cm closer to my elbow bone otherwise I could be writing to you from Australia. Life is a game of inches sometimes cm’s. Move onto the next one…



  






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