The ITU Sprint World
Championships in Stockholm, Sweden did not go quite how I envisioned. It’s
important to learn lessons, but learning them by having things go wrong on a
very important day is less than ideal. The outcome of this race was somewhat
similar to WTS Madrid, but for a completely different reason. Out of all the
races I did this year for development purposes, the biggest ones were the ones
I messed up the most.
A quick recap as to
why this race went downhill:
After I got back from my three month European adventure I took a solid two week
break to recover from racing 10 times in 12 weeks. When I started training
again I got one solid week in then caught an annoying cough. I’ve never really
been sick longer than 48hrs so I figured I’d still train, but just take it easy
until the cough went away. When the cough stuck around for over a week I decided
to take two full days off, and after those days I felt back to normal again. I
started to get back into my training rhythm and was disappointed at the numbers
I was seeing. I wasn’t really coughing anymore, but my heart rate was really
high, and I was short of breath on all my hard sessions. I figured it was
because I was still out of shape and had to take so much time off. I ended up
racing the Santa Cruz Sprint and International Tri’s the next weekend and
thought I was back on track, but after the second race that weekend I was
coughing again. I didn’t think much of it, just figured it was because I
exerted too much energy that weekend and I needed to recover. I was leaving the
next day for Spain to train there before flying to Stockholm so I knew I’d give
myself a couple easy days to get back into the groove.
When I got to Spain
my luggage got lost for a couple days which was annoying, but it forced me to
take things a little easier. When I finally got my bags and started really training
again, every night I would have these coughing fits where I would be up all
night, and keep my room mate Matt Chrabot up all night. I honestly didn’t think
this cough had anything to do with training, I legitimately thought it was my
throat, chest and lungs being dry from the air conditioning. I ended up moving
my bed into the other room and tried to get away from the AC. It worked! I didn’t
cough at all that night, but what I didn’t correlate was the fact that we were
leaving for Stockholm the next day and I was on my taper; no hard efforts = no
cough.
When I got to
Stockholm I was rooming with Jarrod Shoemaker and we didn’t have AC in our
room. I slept like a baby every night, not one cough! At this point I was still
sure the AC was the problem and figured I was going to be ready to race. I did
all of my proper race preparation and felt good and ready to race.
The Race:
I had a lower number so I ended up getting a spot in the middle of the pontoon,
but when the horn blew I had an awesome start and was out in front with clear
water right away. I got lucky and Richard Varga (who lead out of the water at
the Olympics) swam from the left side of the field right in front of me. It was
perfect! I was swimming in second place with no issues. Around the second buoy
Alisandro Fabian started swimming on my legs and lower body for some reason. It
was extremely annoying and there was no reason for it, but instead of
retaliation I just decided to let him go in front of me. I exited the water in
3rd with no issues and was confident I could make the front pack
quite easy.
I was first out of
transition and was able to get my feet in my shoes on the downhill cobble
section and was happy with my placement. Fabian came by me just before the
first turn and I got on his wheel no problem. By the time we were a quarter of
the way through lap one, we had a solid group of about 12 guys, but when we
were about halfway through the first lap I started getting extremely short of
breath. I found myself rubber banding off the back of this group, a terrible
place to be on a technically challenging course. Before we even started the
second lap I knew something was wrong. I ended up getting dropped about a
quarter of the way through the second lap and knew my day was done. I didn’t
even try to go with other groups. My chest felt like there was a knife in it, I
was only able to get about 20% of breaths in, and coughing hurt my entire body.
I ended up riding next to Olympian and Canadian National Champion Kyle Jones who
was also having a shocker of a race. We
didn’t really even talk; we just rode side by side waiting for the bike to be
over. When we got to T2 Kyle asked me if I was going to run, I said “Yeah, I
hate not finishing. I didn’t fly all the way over here to not finish”.
I ended up jogging
about a 19:30 5k, finished 58th, extremely embarrassed, and wondering what was wrong. After
the race I didn’t stop coughing the entire weekend and knew I needed to go to
my least favorite place on earth: The Doctor.
The Team Relay event
was the next day, and because Matt had a torn calf and couldn’t run I was put
on the team. Our High Performance leader put me as fourth so that if we were
really far behind I could just cruise. Long story short, after the solid
efforts of the first three legs, Team USA was far enough back that the ITU
official told me “Your team isn’t lapped yet, but after you swim I’ll have to
stop you. So you can do the swim, and then stop, or you can just stop”. As much
as I wanted to support my team mates, it was a miracle I didn’t have to race!
One of these days I’ll
have a WTS race where I don’t get dropped and Barrie Sheply will be confused.
