It felt great to finally get that win this weekend in Wimbleball. When you race big races every time it can be a long time between winning races unless you’re the best!
We had beautiful weather in Exmoor finally, even hot at times and the whole course glistens when it’s like this. It has to be one of the most beautiful 70.3′s out there…maybe one of the worst when it’s raining though!
My bike was really well prepared by our BMC mechanic David, thanks for that! I went for Shimano C75′s on front and back due to the steep nature of the hills and I think it was a good decision.
The swim is where I knew I had to try to do some damage. I prepared to swim fast in the weeks before because if I could help it I didn’t want the boys at the front getting away from me and I wanted to try to leave Ritchie Nichols in my wake because I know what he can do on his best days.
I felt great in the swim and managed to exit with my training mate Mark Threlfall and Dan Hawksworth. I love my Sailfish wetsuit and swear I’m racing beyond my level in this suit! Mark ramped it up in the last 600m, I could see the chop coming from him and I just managed to hold on so we had a decent split on the other guys and we made the most of it on the hilly course. I had no idea through the ride what was happening behind but we just got our heads down and Dan and the other German guy we were with rode hard. I felt decent the whole way with minimal bad patches but there were times where I thought the other two guys were turning the screws on me and I felt tired.
I think I actually ended up being the strongest in the pack to my surprise and in the end we actually managed to drop Dan on the last set of climbs.
Out on the run we had about a 90 second gap to a pack of 5 who were not too far behind us the whole ride. Harry Springall was chasing me hard on the run and it was a long way back to Ritchie and after a few laps of good running I knew I had enough gas to get round for a semi comfortable win.
Congrats to Harry Springall for his first 70.3 podium in 2nd. First of many I’m sure and Ritchie for battling it out for 3rd.
The crowd were amazing at the finish and it was nice to see Freddy, my new born son come to watch me for the first time win my first 70.3 on fathers day! Great timing!
Thanks for the interaction everyone! I hope those who raced got what they wanted out of it, what a tough course!