Had my first serious hit out in TRI colours at the weekend and as it was a great day for us so I thought it might be of interest. I was really keen to get some open water racing in before Roth but missed Bala due to illness. Knockburn standard the week after was perfect, 1.5k lake swim, 42k undulating bike and a 10k VERY hilly run. The field was the strongest that it could have been with Scott Neyedli ironman champ and previous winner Adam Chmielowski among others.

Mike Adams was there racing in a team and led out the swim hard and fast with no body able to match his pace. I was slow out of the blocks shivering in the cold but stuck in for a steady swim coming out in 5th. The bike course is good but challenging, I wanted to average over 300 watts for the ride but the technical bits made me cautious on the first lap. I flet great as I've just started riding the Ceepo Venom which has given me a huge boost and feels super fast with way better handling than I'm used to. The second lap started close on the heels of Adam who had taken a minute out of me in the swim but immediately got caught in traffic between a horse box and the back markers! This was so frustrating as Adam was getting away and gave Andy Turnbull, Stirling bike specialist the chance he needed to take me on the steep climb. This gave me a real kick in the ass and I picked it up a bit getting 20sec on Andy in the last lap as we both passed Adam and picked my average watts up again.

Neyedli was comming back to me as we approached transition but still about a minute at the start of the run. Mike was there too putting his feet up after a supereb swim-bike while his father finished off the job on the run. I took start hard and caught Neyedli at around 2k at the foot of the main 3k climb. He was stuggling somewhat in the aftermath of his suberb performance in Lanza last month. I was pretty confident I was the best runner out there now and not wanting to dig any holes settled down to a solid aerobic pace. The rest of the run was good beutifull scenery a little cross country hill section and then a long fast cruise down to transition.

I was delighted to break the course record by 2min and run 36min dead for such a tough run. I'm really pleased with my equipment and my legs going in to the last few weeks before Roth now. It was twice as good as Jen won the girls race too! Thanks to Mike for these pics I ripped off his blog!!!!!!

Next stop Roth

Graeme