The Vitruvian is one of the best races in the country. With 1000 athletes, it sold out within 48hrs of entries opening. It has also been voted event of the year several times if i'm correct.
I won the event back in 2005 at my first attempt, but was never able to defend my title due to it clashing with Xterra events.
However yesterday, 5 years later, I returned hoping to repeat my victory.
I have been suffering with an achillies injury for the last month which has meant I've missed 3 weeks of running and only been running for 1 week before the event.
However this meant I had got myself in great bike form.
To top this, a few days before the event I got a sore throat which I was hoping to shake before race day, but it was not to be and instead of being sensible and resting I was so excited to be back I decided to give it a go anyway.
I was pleased with my swim, coming out of the water in 27 minutes for the 1900m, only 2 minutes off the leaders in my wave.
A reasonable transition where i lost a little time putting socks on, saw me onto the bike and on a mission on my new Cannondale slice TT bike. Wow, I love this bike, having borrowed one before for Tagaman earlier this year, where i blitzed the bike. This time I could put my own kit on it such as USE Tulabars and get it just how I wanted it.
My bike leg was going great, passing literally 100's of athletes in earlier waves, then my stem came loose and started to twist on the fork steerer tube. This was entirely my fault, for building it up in a hurry 3 days before the event and not testing it thoroughly enough. Luckily I managed to finish like this ,the the amusement of other athletes, but it certainly didn't help my aim of getting the quickest bike.
In my rush to get onto the run I was penalised for unclipping my helmet before racking my bike, which again was my fault, oops. I really should know better.
The run was always going to be hard, especially lacking so many running miles in my legs recently. I was actually very pleased to run a 1hr 21min half marathon at the end of the race.
All credit to Joel Jamison for an amazing winning time, which all my excuses added together wouldn't have matched. Jonathon Hodgekiss pipped me into 2nd place overall, and got the fastest bike of the day which I would have liked to have got. Maybe I'll have to do more of this road triathlon middle distance stuff in the future, or an Ironman to get some revenge on these guys.....?
Anyway, a great day all round and still 6 weeks of hard training before Maui. Plenty of time to get running fast again.
Next week is Xterra Switzerland where i want to get back in the top 10.
First I need a few days rest, to get over my sore throat which is back with avengence this morning, racing certainly didn't help it!
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