As I posted before, this was my first real attempt at qualification for the GBR team at the European Championships, a task that was never going to be easy and relied on a perfect day with no mistakes. For those who don't know how GBR qualification works for Long Course (Ironman) triathlon, it relies on you coming within a certain time of the winner, so while I had a rough time to aim at its all down to the best person on the day. Its hard to admit, but I didn't hit that time this year, but that's OK - as my first competitive Ironman I learned a lot about myself and about tactics and will be taking this all into the 2019 race season. I had no real expectation of actually achieving it this year as I knew I'd be cutting it fine on a perfect, no mistakes day, but still wanted to give it a shot.
So what went wrong? The swim was as perfect for me as I could have hoped for. The cycle had some issues after I had to emergency exit my flying mount due to some other athletes stopping dead in front, this meant my bands snapped and I couldn't get the bike moving with the shoes clipped in. I dropped a bottle of drink, struggled to eat the food I took (lesson learned, take a variety), and had a nasty mechanical. The run was where it all fell apart though, blister from hell, cramp that meant I spent ages stretching out my calves constantly, and an inability to take on food in the final miles dragged my aim of a 3:30 IM marathon to a pityful 4:09. Although I did far better in the swim and cycle than I had ever dreamed of, the run meant I missed out.
It's not all doom and gloom though, I posted my best ever Ironman swim and bike, and my 2nd best run to date, I smashed my original target of 12:30 that I'd set when I first entered, and I knocked over 30 minutes off my previous PB and 1 hour off of last years time.
I also got to run briefly with my hero Lucy Gossage, who went on to win the female pro category. For me, this alone made the pain and torment worth while.
Overall I came in 47th in my age group, impressively knocking that down from 104th after the swim, and even though my run fell apart I still managed to knock off 9 people in my AG.
I was in a rough shape when I finished yesterday, and I felt for the first time ever of throwing the towel in and quitting IM entirely, however after recovering today I can safely say I'm going to go at it again in 2019. With the lessons learned this year I'm confident I'll be in a significantly better position to qualify next year.
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