Xterra UK

Not quite the race i'd hoped for, but at least i started and made some impression on it. I ended up driving down at 6am on the day of the race, in the back of my mind i knew i shouldn't be doing it. I had tried to run the previous night and again it ended in pain after a few minutes. The plan was to turn up, do the swim, get the quickest bike and not run, but it didn't quite work like that...
I had a reasonable swim, exiting only 3 mins down on the leaders. On the bike i felt great, very fresh from a nice easy week beforehand. Unfortunately in my haste to catch up the leaders i crashed really heavily on the first descent, landing hard on my left quad. I could feel this all the way round the race, gradually seizing up. I wasn't helped either by a slow puncture at the end, which i rode to finish, ending up riding on the rim! How I manged to get the quickest bike split was pure adrenaline.
Instead of being sensible I decided to do the run, to try to defend my 6th place overall in the series and my 6th place on the day where i started the run. Unfortunately as i knew would happen, my knee gave way again. I could barely walk the descents and hobbled to my slowest ever 10km. I dropped to 7th overall and 9th on the day, exactly the same as last year amazingly.
A very turbulent week of lots of extra work shifts, intense physio, the unfortunate break up with my girl friend of 6 years has left me exhausted mentally and physically. One more day of training and hten i fly to Tahoe for the US champs. I am going to do as well as i can here, but with the main aim of getting ready for Hawaii in a months time.