I finally got to experience my first true French Grand Prix!
The weather was really cold and windy but thankfully not hectic enough to
cancel the race. I came into the race expecting it to be crazy fast, but it was
even faster and technical than what I imagined! During the race I was thinking “I’m
gonna die!!!” But then was able to smile and have fun when the realization hit
me that this is the EXACT reason why I’m here.
The swim was a fast 750m “point to point” layout. We had a
180 degree turn buoy about 100 meters from the start which made position and
early speed essential. The plan was for me and my team mate Raoul Shaw, who
swims an amazing 14:52 pool 1500m (for speed reference my best 1500m pool time
is 15:49), to swim extremely hard and try to get away on the bike. In the women’s
event a girl soloed out of the water to a minute lead into T2, so after
watching that we decided to try that approach on the very technical five lap
bike course. Even though we line up according to team ranking, and we had
excellent positioning, I still got ruined around the buoy. I was top 10 at the
first buoy but was about 15th-20th after the buoy. Once
we hit the long straight away heading to the swim exit I took a few sighting strokes
and noticed Raoul was already about 25m off the front of everyone! There was
one other athlete in between the large main group and Raoul and once I was able
to compose myself and see where everyone was it was go time. I attacked our
swim pack like it was a cycling race, I went about 10m to the left and made a
strong 200m surge to make sure I wasn’t going to drag the rest of the field up
to the lead swimmers. To my surprise it worked and I was able to bridge up to
the 2nd athlete by the last buoy and then exit the water in 2nd
and about 15 seconds behind Raoul and 10 seconds ahead of the main field.
I had a very good transition and was onto the chase of
getting up to Raoul so that we could work together. Luckily the athlete I
bridged up to in the swim was an extremely strong cyclist and after I slowed a
bit for him we were able to work together and got up to Raoul about ¾ of the
way through the first lap. After the first lap we had 15 seconds on a chase
pack of about 30 men which contained the majority of the heavy hitters. After
the 2nd lap we only had 10 seconds, but we were still holding to our
plan hoping the chase pack would let us go, but they wouldn’t have it and by
lap 3 we were one lead group. It was a good thing we were going hairy hard for
the first few laps though, because the lead group which used to be 30 men was
now down to about 15. The extremely fast chase caused half of pack to get
popped off the back and gave us better positioning going into T2.
Since our pack wasn’t gigantic and everyone knew what they were
doing we had a very smooth entrance to transition (I was expecting it to be
like a Mexican continental cup where there are no rules and everyone is going
nuts to get into T2 without following unspoken safety protocol). I racked my
bike and got my shoes on fine, but my hands were so cold I couldn’t undo my
helmet. It took me quite a while to finally get it undone and I was finally off
having lost about 4-5 unnecessary seconds.
The run was a two lap, flat but pretty technical 5.3k run. I
went out really fast and bridged up to some fast runners and was in 7th
after lap one, but after the first lap I realized if I kept running with these
guys I wouldn’t be able to recover or walk for about a week. I decided to back
off slightly and just lock into a solid pace for the second lap to make sure I
was going to be able to train properly for Mardid WTS the next weekend. I ended
up getting passed by quite a few more guys from our pack and from the chase
pack and finished in 13th.
It was an awesome experience and I know after a few more of
these races I will be ready to handle most ITU races no problem. Project development
is ago!
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