I have started my first season racing in France for a national division 2 team, Tocc Cesson Sevigne, and what an experience it has been so far! However, even though the experience was priceless, the race didnt go as hoped. They decided to fly me out friday (8th may) morning to race saturday morning (9th may) at 11.30... this flight was sorted 2 days before i went, so my input was minimal. Anyway, the flight went to paris where i caught the shuttle bus to Monpanasse to catch the train to Poitiers. As expected the flight was late and to cut a long story short ended up travelling for about 10hours due to many delays on route. With a lack of food and sleep, woke up the next morning looking forward to race. There was about 100 people in my race, all crammed into tiny team pens on the side of the lake preparing to run and dive into the cold waters. The 750m swim went ok, came out in the lead bunch and the transition went cleanly and was out in lead back. Approximately 10 of us formed and there were constant attacks up the first big hill... this was agonising as my legs did not feel great, but just held on to start the descent, which was quite technical. However, to make life worse the rain began to fall heavily and trying to stay on a wheel ended up with sprays of water in your face, so navigating yourself in the pack was very tricky. The bike was a two lap course, 25km in total, and the constant attacks took its toll on me and when the hill came up again could not respond and was dropped with 3 others. We worked desperately hard to bridge the gap back up to the lead pack, but with the hours of travelling in my legs i didn’t feel I had enough there to do it and the lead pack slowly drifted away. The run finally came and the rain was falling heavily now. Unfortunately my legs felt like they weighed at least 50kg each and only moved up a few more positions to come in the top 40. These grand prixs are very close and the 1st place triathlete had only 3mins on me.