World Champs day came and it was definitely time for a change in luck, not a lot seemed to be going in my favour, an early knee injury before leaving limited my bike training to the indoor trainer, a bit of a sad race in Lausanne and then getting sick the week before race week.
It would be fair to say that I was definitely feeling the pressure of my first triathlon worlds and my nerves were going into overdrive. I believe it was showing. It was really good to have numerous chats with Mental Pete, our psychologist, and a fair few reassuring words from the coaches.
It eventually came time to leave and we headed down to T2 to sort our stuff out, something quite different to usual races as we usually have only one transition area. I managed to keep myself from getting too nervous which was awesome. T1 was a bit of a mess as the officials weren't keeping to the times they had set for everything but not letting it phase me too much worked my warm up around it and managed to get a decent swim warm up in.
Wasn't long till we were called to the pontoon individually and I was near last to line up on the start. My start number proved to be quite lucky giving me a start on the favourable side for the swim. First time starting off the pontoon, but I got away nicely.
I wasn't feeling too amazing in the water but Tim Brazier and I had done a bit of technique work over the last week and I think that got me through with a good swim. It was quite a clean swim for me getting round the buoys without getting into too many fights, coming into the last buoy I had my first sighting to see where I was sitting and I was for sure sitting on the back of the first pack, success at last, luck was coming my way!
That was until T1 having quite possibly the worlds slowest transition struggling to get my left arm out and watching helplessly as the pack was leaving. I drove hard out of transition missing the small break that happened but not to worry this was world champs and here people will do absolutely anything to get back on. We worked awesomely together with one train going I probably was only on the front for max 6sec as everyone was helping out and we made contact in no time.
The call before the race due to the technicality of the course was to ride from the front so I positioned myself there for the entire ride not falling outside 10th wheel. The Russian boys were determined to make the ride tough and drove us for the full 20k. Europeans love to ride hard not quite like our racing in NZ where it's a bit of a Sunday cruise.
Coming into transition I fought my way to the front and hit the dismount line first had a beautiful transition and was off! The run started extremely fast and my body wasn't quite up to Tom Bishop's initial pace. The run didn't let up at all; pain was just getting thrashed through my body as I was holding the gap for the first half of the first lap at about 19sec. The challenges were coming from the other countries but I was in some serious pain. Final lap and an onslaught of people came through and from somewhere I managed to lift a bit, pulling back Gosman the Aussie that had got me at Oceania's. I thought I had him this time but he out kicked me in the home straight, I tried but had nothing. Crossing the finish line and my legs just said no more, ending up in the medical tent is always a good place to be after a race.
So far I have only had a small debrief from my coach Silas Cullen, tactically I had put all the right cards on the table to give myself the best chance possible. This was backed up by Mr Gemmel who congratulated me on my race tactics saying that you can only train so much, but reading the race is something you can't train.
14th in the world I guess is not too bad. I was hoping for better but I couldn't have raced any better, so I can't be disappointed with my race.
Thanks to everyone for their support, to Mum and Dad for all the sacrifices they made to get me there and to my sponsors. It was an awesome trip and some valuable experience gained. Lets hope we can do this all again next year.
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