2. Bundesliga Gütersloh - lesson learned!

Never thought I will have a dreadful race, because of an awful first transition, but… there is difference between draft and non-draft legal triathlon racing. Our second stop in the 2. Bundesliga race season was once a gain a great team effort, rewarded with a good 9th place.

All kicked off with a 1,000m pool swim in the beautiful Nordbad in Gütersloh. All athletes, 75 in total, were divided in eight lanes ready to rumble and rock the pool. I was a little anxious of this situation at first, but a good opening 300m (1:15-1:17 pace) had me in third position, feeling quite comfortable in my lane.

As expected by myself, I wasn’t able to hold this pace, got passed but still hang in there and easily cruised to the finish, with four other guys out of my lane. Jumping out of the pool, on my way to the first transition, I saw a huge line of athletes, knowing I would make this massive bike group and be right in the hunt.

But, all came different and reminded me of Chris McCormack a few years ago in Kona. Standing at the bike and fighting with the helmet. In addition to those essential seconds I wasn’t able to get into my shoes, after jumping on the bike, further loosing significant soil. Once I had everything back under control, the entire group was gone and I had to start the first bike loop by myself.

Loop after loop, my group grew bigger, but also loosing roughly 30 seconds per loop to the 40 to 50 man strong lead group. The 40k high-speed bike course wasn’t tricky enough to go for an attack, or hard enough for more athletes to drop out of the front group. So, at the end it was a massive pack that arrived roughly two minutes ahead in T2.

Even though I felt very strong and relaxed starting the run, it was almost impossible to make up further ground to the front. At the end, I clocked a fantastic 33:41 run split for myself, making up a few spots, but only finishing in 48th place. The upset of the missed bike group after T1 prevailed my mind and I was super disappointed not being able to help the team further with a Top 30 finish.

Luckily the team managed a much better transition and overall race, with another Top 10 finish in our second Bundesliga race of the season. Thanks to Michi, Julian and Blei! http://www.dtu-info.de/ergebnisse.125.html

Now, I have six weeks to work on my transitions and swim speed until our third team race on July 3rd in Düsseldorf.

Let’s get to work!