2011

Hi,

It's the start of a New Year and the start of a new season. I can reflect on 2010 and say 'it was a very good year' then I think about Budapest and say 'well, it could've had a massively better ending'.

I am happy with where I am now. I feel great training. It's refreshing to be back home in Christchurch. On the 19th December, I added in a draft legal shorter than sprint race to my offseason training. I won the 500m swim/15km bike/5km run local event and enjoyed the huge work put in by the Canterbury Triathlon Club to produce an ITU style event.

2011 is a big year. Triathlon New Zealand has named our Olympic Team selection race as the London World Championship Series round in August. And then there are loads more races this season for me to choose from, which I haven't decided on yet. I just know I will be racing a lot when the season starts.

My first change for 2011 is over in France. I am now a member of Poissy Triathlon. My previous club from the last 4 years, Beauvais Triathlon, decided to withdraw from the French Grand Prix Series. It was really unexpected as we had won the competition the past 2 years. My first race for Poissy in the blue and yellow strip will be on the 24th of April in Nice.

Next week, Laurent and I head down to Wanaka up to the Snowfarm. Contrary to it's name, there will be no snow because it's summertime.

Best wishes for the New Year. Forward and up in 2011.
Andrea

Bad swim in Budapest = 22nd place

Hi, I had a really really poor swim today which resulted in a second pack chase bike leg. The front group of 40 rode faster than the 2nd group of 15 which I was in. My group had handbrakes with tactics going on, so there was no flowing everyone taking a turn to try and catch up scenario! This resulted in a 1 min 30 sec deficit changing to the run and I had no chance. I caught as many places up as I could but 22nd was the best I could finish. It is so frustrating, because I have had such a consistent run of results with good swims and good runs. I raced the best I could today, but with my 22nd place I dropped to 6th overall for the year in the 2010 World Championships.

Budapest Grand Final results

2010 World Championship Overall results

Tours French Grand Prix Sprint race

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