Season round up and a picture from Beth

I've been meaning to do a season round up for a few weeks but a prompt arrived this week. Beth (my 14 year old daughter for those that don't know) has been busy with photo shop  at school and did a picture for me which is very cool indeed, as a result I just had to publish it on the blog.

So the season (not quite over yet) has been a busy one and started in March just as the cross country season finished. I won the senior men's cross country league which was a good start to the year! Anyway on to the multisport season.......

The year opened with the Dambuster Duathlon, I'm not a fan of duathlon but had a go anyway. Not a great race finishing 8th in my AG, a strong field as it was the National Champs and World Championship qualifier which I qualified at but a few months later turned down my place on the GB team as I'd found another race I wanted to do instead, more on that at the end of this blog entry.

Next was the Hull sprint triathlon and my normal season opener, a very fresh bright day but very very cold start, I had a good race finishing 3rd overall.

Lincoln sprint was next, still quite ill after a nasty cold/man flu and only managed 11th overall and 3rd in my age group.

A week later was the Grantham sprint during the Lincolnshire monsoon season, the wettest race I've ever done, windy too! Back on form and finished 3rd overall.

I think it was 10 days after Grantham that I was at Brize Norton for the sprint triathlon and the first of the RAF Sprint series, I finished a very close 2nd to Greg Macdonald after a neck and neck race from start to finish. 

Beaver middle distance was my next race and at the end of a 3 week build phase (after deciding to get a coach) was not expecting much but managed 13th overall and 3rd in age group.

The War of the Wolds mountain bike race was the day after the Beaver middle, felt strong all day and finished 3rd overall.

3 days later and just 5 days after a middle distance (Beaver) I won the Odiham sprint triathlon.

Late June and I raced Dambuster triathlon on a new bike, a World Championship qualifier and a strong field saw me finish 14th overall and 2nd in age group (another GB qualification for me that I turned down)

10 days later and it was the Cranwell sprint (RAF Championship) which I won for the 3rd year on the bounce and also won the series with Brize Norton 2nd/Odiham 1st/Cranwell 1st.

On to the Cowman middle distance which was the British National Championships, a great race and 12th overall with 2nd in age group to gain a British Championship silver medal.

3 days later and I was at Heaver Castle for the Inter Service Championships and a true test of how quick I could recover from the National middle distance, I did recover well and finished 7th.

A couple of weeks later I was in Spain for the World Long Distance Championships representing team GB, a large field of 1000 age group athletes had assembled for this race and I was very happy with my performance finishing 10th in my age group and 44th overall.

I've not raced since the end of July at the World Champs, so why did I not do the duathlon World Champs or the Olympic distance World Champs? Money plays a big part, it's very expensive as most of you know, I had seen a brand new event I wanted to do so channelled what money I had left in my 2012 race fund into Lanzarote 70.3 which is a new event in the 70.3 series and the race is based in and around Club La Santa. I'm training hard for this event and it's a bit strange to be training this hard at the end of September as I usually am winding down now before the cross country season starts. It's hard work too training so hard this late in the year when the season started way back in March! I hope it pays off with a qualifying slot for the 70.3 World Championship? I guess I'll find out 6 weeks on Saturday.

Quick edit: Almost forgot, raced the Wolds "Hilly" 10 road race at the start of this month, a very tough course indeed, finished 8th and just under the the hour with 59:58 (google it to see the course profile) sub hour is a good run!

10 days ago I did the Inter Service mountain bike championships at Wakerly Woods near Stamford, I was pleased with 8th place, just lack of experience on the single track, I think I could do well if I spent more time off road. 

So there it is, 2012 season (almost) which I would say has been a success.