Lausanne World Sprint champs, What a race !!

Firstly, I appologise for not having pictures and Videos… My camera’ battery died and I dont have a laptop anymore 😦

From Budapest to austria, then Switzerland- Alendorf then finally to the venue for the World ITU Sprint triathlon championships.. 4 days, 1500km by car and a LOT of beauity seen along the way!

This was my 1st World Sprint champs and would also be the 1st World Sprint Championship event to be broadcasted live to many hundereds of thousands of people all over the world.. NO BIGGY I thaught 🙂

Moving into wednesday before the race on the saturday I picked up a bit of a head cold, and recconed I would be able to nurse myself through the week untill the big show down with the big boys in the world in Lausanne..

All went very smoothly except for our stop just inside the Swiss boarder where we paid R300 for two sandwiches and 2 cokes !! Rather cheap haha..

After we had been raped by the petrol station and its serives station we were soon by the ewonderful venue where briefing was held inside the Olympic Museum about 1km from the race venue.

My parents and I decided to move our home base to the venue where the action was taking place , instead of 10km away.

The hotel fee was some what astronomical, and dinner was equivelant to buying a weeks groceries back home in RSA 🙂 never the less, this was for a greater than staying away form the main action !

Pre race day, and I was feeling about 70percent there and recconed I would have a OK-Good race  ,nothing spectacular due to my chest feeling stuffy and my head and nose hurting.

Race day dawned and my pre race morning shuffel  “6min/km run” was followed by the most AWSOME crossants,cheese and coffee! A 40min bike is also a must to insure my legs are awake for the cycle in the race.

The cource was a 800m swim followed by 4×4.9km laps on the bike ” a 500m climb of 10.5%grad” and then a flat 5km run .

Soon we were under starters orders and the song “pirates of the carribean” ended, and then i know…. IT’S go time!

The horn sounded and 78 on us unruly triathletes hit  lake geneva with 350 meters to the 1st Bouy. I think this swim now takes top honours with regards to being rough… I was trying to survive instead of swimming around bouy 1 and I do hope next year the ITU will concider making it a straight 750m swim to remove the chance of someone drowning . IN the swim I was feeling strong and managed to breath to my left once!! HI 5 :-)… Out the water and my usual heart rate of about 400 was booming and then I was through transition and onto my AXUS road bike!

 

A small bunch was up the road about 50 meters and I saw Runolf Naude not more than 5 meters behind it. I really pushed hard and tried to catch the second pack, but alas NO-ONE wanted to pull another hard turn in front of our bunch, and the 2nd pack now had about 25sec on us ” the 3rd pack”

For the rest of the bike, I tried to get the guys working together, but i will admit, Triathletes are not road cyclists and have NO idea how to roll through…25 meter can be made up in about 2minutes or less.. BUT if no one is contributing, the bunch will continue to lose time.

On the 3rd lap , myself and another 3 guys made a small break on the bike and managed to pull clear of the 2nd bunch . we managed to get 25sec by the time we hit transtion 2.

 I was 1st out of transition 2 and I sprinted out onto the 5km  run cource behind 34 other athletes. I was hoping for a top 30 finish as I knew a top 20 was not in the cards.

I ran a 15:05 .This was good concidering i did a lot of work on the bike…. was hoping for a 14:40 though.

coming in 27place was a great achievement, but for me… top 10 was achievable if i managed to catch that second pack..

 

NEXT time i guess!!

Great time was had, and the following day TEAM RSA would hit the streets and pick up a respectable 16th place out of 37 on the world team Championships!! Welldone team 🙂

NEXT race for me will be my 1st Bundesliga of the year for my TEAM ALZ sigmaringen in Grimma this weekend 28th aug!

Greta season so far, now just grimma,China “maybe japan” then back home to CAPE TOWN WOOOHOOO!!

Much love people 🙂

Rich*