Hi, my final big hitout before Budapest! Tours is a small town 2hrs drive south of Paris. I arrived the evening before the race and was warmly greeted as always, by my Beauvais Triathlon team members and managers. We had a long late dinner which is always good too. Not so much the food, but the company I am talking about.On race day, I slept til 9.45am, so good, and just in time for the end of breakfast. I then rested all morning before leaving by bike to do a lap of the course before entering the transition as a team. Aerobars were scrutinised, which I don't have - luckily because I have compact handlebars and aerobars go longer than the hoods.
We start on the pontoon in the current ranking position of the team. Beauvais was ranked 4th so I started about 20th position from the
left hand side. Not a great start, but found Liz Blatchford's feet after 50m and then swam my way out next to Vicky Holland. I exited 3rd out of the water and in a good position to break away with Vicky, my teammate. But a bit of misdirection by not seeing the last swim buoy and some fumbling in transition cost me a few seconds and after 400m, there were some other girls with me and Vicky was 5 metres in front still. We couldn't get working in time before the next girls started catching. A sprint triathlon is half the distance to an Olympic distance, so there's half the time and reactions have to be spot on to make that break from the pack. But anyway, it worked out well for Beauvais, because by the end of the bike it was a large group of about 50. I got a great lead out off the bike by my french teammate delphine Pelletier. I ran hard out of transition 2 and made a 20m gap straight. It took until 1km for Barbara Riveros, Erin Densham and Vicky Holland to chase up. Then we finished in that order with a nice sprint finish! It was a great day for my team too, as we picked up the win with myself 1st, Vicky 4th and Delphine Py-Bilot 8th and we now have a shot at the overall Club title. We are in 2nd just behind Poissy.
Tours FGP results here
