Last friday was Trelleborgs Triathlon sprint which consisted of a short distance of 380m swimming, a 18km bikeride and a soft 4.2km run.

250 slots were sold whereas about 50 was from my team. So this was not only a fun race, but a chance to compete against my team members.

I had set some goals for this race:

Beat Julia Montgomery (see her website HERE)

Beat Andreas Nilsson

Beat Jonathan Öhrling (see his website HERE)

The above team members are better than me but I feel they can be in reach if I do a good race.

Jonathan was not scheduled to compete, so obviously this goal failed on it self.

I told Andreas just before the race that he was on my list. I’m a better swimmer and also faster on the bike. But this guy, he can run and run fast.

Julia is better overall than Andreas and very consistent in all three disciplines. But hopefully my intentions with the race would suffice.

My intention was to build a small lead out of the water from both Julia and Andreas.

The lead would then increase during the bike ride and then I would just try to run fast enough so they would not manage beating me to the finish.

Alright, what happened?

Swim: Holy cow, chaos. It was shallow so some people ran into the sea, took some strokes and then stood up. In Mallorca I had waited for people to get out of the way so I would miss the worst chaos. Now I threw myself into it just to see how it feels. Knowing it was shallow and I would not drown if something happened 🙂

But it was really chaos. I did not get any flow. I had to stand up several times because of all the people. When it opened up after buoy 2 I had a couple of idiots that was swimming over me. Not passing, just swimming over me! I tried to get away, but they followed me. Pushing my legs and butt in the water so I had no chance of swimming. Gahh, but that’s racing sometimes. You can’t do anything about it.

I came up from the water, my plan of being in front of Julia and Andreas failed. Julia and I came up exactly the same time.

The transition was OK, not the worlds fastest but out to the bike course I went. On the bike, it was lonely. There was not many people in front of me and those that came up from behind was going really fast. I went up to a comfortable pace and held it. Saw I had a 30s lead maybe to Julia at the first turn and I was following my plan perfect. But at the other turn, the gap was still the same (or less!). I pushed just a bit harder and at the next turn the distance had increased to Julia. I saw Andreas which was pretty far behind. Plan was going OK.

Stepped off the bike, did my transition but forgot my watch on my bike which I ran back to get. I like my watch, it gives me comfort.

Ran 2-300m but it felt horrible. No go at all in my legs.

I had to switch off the pace immediately and try to build from there. Julia passed me early in the run and I did not make any effort to pursue her. It was doomed from the get go.

So the goal of beating Julia failed.

With heavy legs I thought I’d try to get into steadypace/long distance running instead and just endure the run.

At the last turn going back to the finish line I saw Andreas coming. I knew he would catch up with me pretty soon and indeed, within 300m from the goal he passed me.

Goal of beating Andreas failed.

Total time: 58:58 min

Conclusions:

Last saturday I had felt superstrong when riding bike intervals with my team. Nothing could stop me.

On monday we had duathlon practice: bike 3x(5km/run 1.3km) and I killed it at the bike section and ran a comfortable 4:08 pace.

What I think went wrong was doing 8x1km intervalls on tuesday around 3:55-4:05 pace. I had muscle soreness both wednesday/thursday.

Well, I know I can do better so this race goes straight into the “forget” bin. My 3 goals still exists and I think they are well in reach until next time.

Note: The girl, Julia, I was trying to beat came in 3rd of all the women. RESPECT!

Race info