ITU World Cup Mooloolaba

Another day, another dollar… I have to spend on fixing my bike from yet another crash. Better to be fixing my bike as opposed to my body, although I’m tired of hitting the ground and not being able to finish races.

As the Olympics points qualification start in May, it’s more and more important to perform well at the higher level races. This race was very important as I need to get some points to even be able to race later in the season

Leading up to this race, everything was going awesome and I have been itching to see where my consistent training has gotten me. In the race I lead the swim out and had a comfortable run to transition, got my feet in my shoes and from then on it was “conserve as much energy as possible”. The bike ride was slow as heck which allowed basically every athlete that was on the start line to be in the front pack. The course went from wide roads to narrow roads and this caused a lot of chaos in the bunch. I made it through about 19k of the 20k bike course alive when guys were starting to make their moves to position themselves well for transition. I got caught up in the mix of some guys making some sketchy moves and stayed upright as long as I could while there were bikes against bikes all around me until two of my spokes broke and my tire came off my wheel. Over the handle bars I went. I hit the ground going just over 40kph which didn’t feel very nice, but surprisingly I popped right up, grabbed my sunglasses, and went to get back on my bike – but it wouldn’t roll. I looked down, put the chain on, fixed my rear wheel, then realized my spokes were broken and my front tire was off my bike. Day done… almost! I decided “hmm, I’m not that far from transition, maybe I can run there before I get ‘lapped’ out”. So I took off my bike shoes, picked up my bike, and started “running” (walking as fast as I could) barefoot (on the blazing hot pavement) the last kilometer to try and finish the race. I didn’t make it. I didn’t realize how far I was and ended up having to walk about 15 minutes carrying my bike back to the finishing area/medical tent.

Luckily nothing was broken on my body, but my front race wheel is “beyond repair” because there was too much carbon shredded off the rim. My body is sore, but it is time for redemption! In just a few days World Cup number two in New Plymouth, New Zealand is ON!