Eastbourne Triathlon

 

Firstly I would like to thank Rich Campbell (Beyond Going Long / 32Gi UK) for bringing such an exciting race to my home town; a place where I love train and take full advantage of the challenging environments. The race was a beach start in to the sea for the choppy 600m swim. The race was fast due to the strong elite field featuring Ben Allen (AUS) and Richard Stannard (GBR) - See full list here.

 

I was really happy to exit the swim first along side Richard Stannard (7x world champ and 10x fastest swimmer at London Tri) who at this point dropped out the race due to an injury. Really happy to show off the Blueseventy Helix in my home town. I was excited to be the first in to T1 and out on to the bike. I knew that the bike was going to be tough looping round the mountainous Beachy Head, a bike course which suited the smaller framed athletes like Ben Allen and team mate Jamie Bedwell, who both caught me on the first of the two bike climbs of the day. Once we had descended from Beachy Head, there was a 5km flat straight section to finish the 25km bike. This was where I was really able to put the hammer down and close down the 25 second gap to fellow tam mate Luke Howard who was in 4th. I finished the bike and entered T2 with a marginal lead over Luke and we set out on the run together. For pretty much half of the run we ran together but then three quarters of the way up the 800-1000m hill climb he got a gap on me. From the top of the climb it was a long descent down to the finish on the seafront. I was gaining on him with every stride but I basically just ran out of road; having to settle for 5th! I was happy with how my race went and before the race I felt a top 5 would have been realistic. 

 

Big thanks for all the support out on the course, I was great to see so many people supporting a fantastic event! Entries for Eastbourne Tri 2017 are open - so if you have been inspired to take part  have a look here.