After a great race at the London Triathlon, it was time for the Junior Women’s British Triathlon Championship which took place on Sunday 10th in the Liverpool Docks. The championship was held in extremely testing conditions with gales and heavy rain intermittently battering all us athletes racing on Sunday.
Our Junior Elite race was amongst the Senior Elite field, which featured a guest appearance of the top ranked female triathlete in the world, Gwen Jorgensen, all the way from the USA. The race would consist of a 750m straight swim, a 20k windy bike course and a 5k out and back run in a quality field of 45 competitors.
As the race got closer the weather wasn’t looking great, after setting up transition everything was knocked down due to strong winds. After a quick warm up, my wetsuit went straight on and off to swim assembly I went. The officials had to postpone the race for 5mins as the weather was so bad but it soon blew over and I was on the start line ready to race before I knew it.
Due to the big field racing, the deep water start was very packed with most athletes on top of one another. With a good start I was swimming well trying not to focus on how many jelly fish I was passing in the docks. With a strong swim I exited the water in 10th place overall and 4th in my category.
With the second fastest transition behind Gwen I was in a strong chasing pack, pushing for podium I worked hard in a 6 woman chase group around the windy technical bike course. It was a great course but sketchy on some corners with a couple of crashes in different packs on the bike. When entering transition I was in a strong position.
Thankfully I had a smooth transition and all that was left to do was give everything I had left for the windy run. I managed to finish with a very respectable 5k run time of 18:47m. I finished 16th overall in the Senior Elite category and 5th in the Junior Elite group, 17-19 years. I’m really happy with this result as I was the youngest in the race and still have a few years to up my game ready to move into the senior age group.
The severe weather conditions forced the organisers to abandon the Elite men’s race which had been due to follow the women’s race on the Dock side course.
My next focus is a European Cup Race being held in Nottingham on August 22
Thanks for reading Megan McDonald
No comments:
Post a Comment