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British Super Series at Blenheim

22nd Jun 2014

Blenheim is traditionally the first round of the domestic Elite Super Series- a chance to race with the best of British almost on my doorstep!

The Blenheim Triathlon last year was my first ever Elite race. It was only one week after getting married- so needless to say I was underprepared and had hardly trained in the month before! This year I was keen to come back and see how much better I could do when actually fit!

Cornering tactics to break away on the bike

In drafting races my weakest event is always the swim- the ITU girls put in 9 swims a week and I’ve simply never had time while working! In AG races it doesn’t matter since I can usually catch up the lost 1-2 minutes on the bike or run, and training time is better spent biking or running. But if you’re dropped on the swim in a drafting race (which usually happened to me last year) you have no chance of catching the bike peleton alone.

This year I was pleasantly surprised to keep up with the second swim pack- thanks to taking almost 1 minute off my 750m swim PB! There were plenty of girls to catch on the bike before they formed into groups, and I must have overtaken about 15-20 girls, taking a rest in the slipstream each time before moving on. Sadly there was no-one to really draft and work with, and I’m aware that the groups at the front would be pulling away.

Finally on the 3rd lap a small group caught me, with Suzie Richards and Natalie Seymour doing the work on the front- happily I was able to jump in and add to the chain gang effect! Drafting is so much fun when you get an effective group- taking turns to work at the front and then getting a breather. There were a couple sitting in and not working (who I’d already overtaken before they got into the group!) but I guess that’s tactics and they won’t always be able to get away with it…

All too soon- as I was enjoying this- it was onto the run. Normally my favourite discipline, and I was keen to redeem myself after my terrible race at the Duathlon World Champs the week before! Suzie, Natalie and I all set off on the first lap together and seemed to be quite evenly matched. This would be interesting and hopefully push us all to faster times. Already we were moving up the field, overtaking many more girls.

Claim to fame!

I still felt good on the second lap and pushed on- only Natalie was able to come with me, perhaps Suzie’s gold medal winning efforts from the Duathlon were still in her legs! Several more runners to catch in the last kilometre, and it was going to come down to a sprint finish. Thankfully I still have enough speed and judgement left from my track running days to come out ahead ;) I finished in 10th place overall (according to the TV!) with my time a full 4 minutes quicker than last year. All in all a great day out :-D

It was great to see such a big ladies field with more strong bikers and runners taking part- makes the dynamics far more interesting than a race purely defined by the top swimmers!

Finally congrats to race winner Emma Pallant, always a top runner but she has obviously been working hard on the swimming and biking over the winter!