So I guess I am a World Champion

What has just happened? 

No really.... What has just happened?

I am sat on the plane now as the World Sprint Duathlon Champion! Pretty cool eh?  I won my AG (20-24) but I was also the first female in the entire field of 175 Age Group athletes from 37 different nations.

Travelling and racing on my own has been a massive learning experience. Not that I am new to either, in fact my first solo flight was when I was 5. Travelling with a bike is not exactly free from drama, especially when it is your pride and joy. I have also realised how travelling to competitions with someone you can offload your stress onto them, even if you or they don't realise it is invaluable. My other half normally acts as mule (carrying all my crap I insist on taking , but often never really need), my conscience (do you need to eat that giant tub of peanut butter - probably not) and general helper. 

Due to work commitments I only had a very brief time in Pontevedra. In fact I would say it is the minimum time you could successfully execute a race in. Fly, a day to build and test bike, compete, and then return.

The atmosphere was amazing, athletes everywhere. The elites raced on the Saturday which certainly got you in the right frame of mind. We had a briefing on the Saturday too and then a team photo (which was huge) I think we had one of the largest teams there.

One thing which wasn't so great was finding the food I wanted/needed. No where sold sandwiches, instead these stodgy pastry meat and cheese things - not ideal. Also all restaurants seemed to sell a lot of meat, and not so much in the way of carbs. I normally take my own race breakfast, but not other foods - lesson learned there! 

Another thing I will do in future is to take my own pillow, the hotel had these strange sausage pillows which were not too comfy.

360 degrees of transition

The Sprint distance athletes were the first to race at 0800 on Sunday, starting with 2 waves of men and then all the women together. 37 Nations were represented in the Womens race, comprising 175 people. I got to transition at 0600 in order to rack my bike and generally get ready. It was still pretty dark at this time, and it was also disconcertingly cold. I realised that I would have to time leaving my bag at the bag drop, followed by warm up and then the start quite carefully. Que the need for my mule :) 

The first run (5km) was two 2.5km laps of the streets of Pontevedra, very twisty with one hill.  

The bike course followed an out-and-back route, over an undulating course. The turn around point at half way provided a valuable opportunity to gauge how far I was in-front of the next competitor. Once I was around the cone at the top of the hill, I counted how many seconds the second woman was behind me. I am not the greatest cyclist, but I can hold my own, so I knew I needed to do some fearless descending in order to stay in the lead. Catching up with the blokes gave little incentives to keep pushing and some shouted words of encouragement to the 'first chica', some also shouted at being 'chicked', but all in good spirit'. 

The crowds were fantastic, lots of GB friends and family, but also other nations were cheering the fact I was the first lady, I almost couldn't believe it and kept pushing the pace all the way to the finish for fear of someone catching me!. Coming into the stadium the announcer missed me and announced the second lady as the winner. I thought that maybe I had incurred a penalty for drafting or something (even though I hadn't) so I didn't want to celebrate too soon, and then have to un-celebrate! After a couple of hours and a few panicked text messages, it was confirmed - I had won, I was now the World Champion!! And not just my Age Group, I had won the whole race!" 

I flew back home the next day and then was back in work bright and early on Tuesday morning - what a weekend!