15th May 2016

It had been quite a few years since I had raced in Malta, when I was a Junior and picked up my first ever International Win at the age of 17yrs old at the Malta National Sprint Champs.

Thanks to Garmin Malta for the invitation to come and race.  It was an interesting trip along with the family, flying out of Cyprus on Emirates direct flight to Malta.  We arrived on the Wednesday afternoon and finally got to our Hotel, not the best place in the world as we dodged the All Inclusive “Benidorm style” “poolside hoggers”.  I don’t think there was a night that the fire alarm didn’t go off.  However I made it to the start line on the Sunday, feeling quite good.

Swim – 2 loop 1900m sea swim, managed to find a small group 5 and swam really well compared to previous 1.9’s.  The leader out the water had already got 4min on me so I knew if I wanted to get anything back it was going to have to happen on the bike.  With the fastest T1 I was out on to the bike on my own and catching Relay Teams (who tried to draft me, but i soon aired my views to them).

Bike – 7 loops with a 2km climb each loop, but also coming down at 70km/h, the wind was really blowing and the coast road was open to this.  Really pleased with 2:29hr bike split only 30sec behind the leader who i had not been able to make any way into the 4min he had from the swim.

Run – i most certainly was not feeling great and along with the fatigue my stomach was not doing me any favours.  Welcome to the life of Triathlons, Swim/Bike/Run is easy but if you get the nutrition wrong certainly on these longer courses.  One of my worst 21km runs in races finishing off a disappointing run split of 1:37hr  (4:35/km)

I had built enough of  buffer on the bike over the rest of the field to come home for a 2nd Place Podium, which i was really pleased with however not with the greatest of performance in splits.

Back to Home Cyprus for some RnR and build towards the Outlaw Full Distance 24th July