5 Days, 3 races

Well its been a busy few days, I've been training hard and part of the training was a ride in the peaks on the MTB Thursday last week, the weather was amazing, the scenery was superb and the trails were unbelievably good. I had a chill out day Friday then Saturday was the Beaver Middle Distance race. My coach had said I would be tired going into the event after the 3 week training block i'd just completed so don't expect a great race. As it turned out I had a good race, swam 1 min quicker than the previous year, biked 2 mins quicker and ran the same pace to finish in 4 hours 5 mins and 1 second. This was good enough for 13th overall and 3rd in my age group. The following day I was up at Swallow near Caister for the bicyclemania 40 mile mountain bike event. During the 40 miles we climbed just over 3700 feet, I hit 38.7mph on one of the descents and finished 3rd, the only reason I didn't win was 2 guys in front of me went the wrong way and cut 2 miles off the course. I had a quick (not quick really) 3 mile run after finishing, swam Monday, ran Tuesday then yesterday was the RAF Odiham sprint triathlon. I felt OK but once the swim started I knew my shoulders were still tired from the weekend so just swam steady thinking I can make time on the bike. It took a couple of miles on the bike to get going but then it all fell into place and the rest of the race was good. I finished in first place and won by 2 min 26 sec with a time of 1:03:28. This is my easy week this week so a gentle 40 min run today, 1 hour swim tomorrow and the only training this weekend is a 1 hour 30 bike so a nice weekend ahead.

Bit of an update

Its been a few weeks since the Grantham race, I've made some changes since then. I've started tweeting more and you can follow the tweets @SharpeDaz on twitter. I've also decided to go down the coaching route to see if  I can make some progress as although I've done very well over the last few years I think there is improvement still to come but I need some help to get there. My coach Stefan has made a lot of changes to the way I train and after nearly three weeks I'm feeling stronger already. This weekend I will be racing middle distance but with my training plan I will be going into the race tired so I'm not expecting to PB however yesterdays 3 hour bike into 1 1/2 hour run was great and I felt strong so things are looking promising. All the training is built around being in top shape for the World Championships at the end of July, but I have other races on the way to that event to check my progress.

Talking of races I did another sprint a couple of weeks ago at Brize Norton, had a good swim climbing out the water on 5:45 which was nice and the fastest 400 this year for me, had a great battle on the bike and then on the run with Greg Macdonald and the fight went all the way to the finish with Greg pulling away toward the end of the run to take the win by just 13 seconds. It  was a great head to head battle and I really enjoyed such close racing.

So its middle distance (Beaver) on Saturday, mountain bike sportive on Sunday and Odiham sprint on Wednesday the 30th, pretty busy  few days.