Back to winning ways

Hi Everyone

Finally the first win of the season arrived. After a poor performance at the national Duathlon Championships due to sickness, I am back on winning ways. I won the first race of the Birkirkara St Joseph Triathlon Series, a series I won for 5 times in my career.  This year I focused a lot on running and had very good performances placing among the top 3 runners. For me that was like a win but coming first is a different feeling. It was not easy for me psychologically to be back on the start line so soon after such a performance in the duathlon but I was determined to prove that I am still on top.

The Triathlon was held at Kalkara Bay. Since it was a different route I did most of my sessions at race venue. I tackled mostly the bike as it was very technical and with false flats parts. It’s a route that it does not suit my characteristics, however if I trained a lot on it I could make the difference. I started the swim at a very fast pace. I took the lead after the first buoy together with my brother/coach Dermot. I was first out of the water covering the 750m in 11minutes 20seconds.

On the bike, I tried to push and put some gap between my brother and I but Dermot was strong so I settled in a good pace. Both my brother and I kept a constant pace. The route was very difficult so I tried to save my legs for the run as it will determine the winner of the race. I covered the 20km in 33minutes registering the third best bike split.

After the bike to run transition I immediately went into the lead. My legs were fresh and I noticed that Dermot was suffering a bit so I pushed a lot. I opened a good gap. In the turnaround there were no marshals and I did not turn until someone told me to turn back because I was going in a completely wrong way. Most of my advantage build was reduced. I kept calm and pushed again to win the race 20seconds in front of my brother and a minute in front of the 3^rd athlete.

I am happy that I am back to winning ways. I trained a lot for this victory and after a win I feel that all the training I am doing is worth it. Now my next commitment is next Friday were I will be on the start line for the European Triathlon Championships which are going to be held in Alanya Turkey were am looking for a positive result and a strong performance. I would like to thank my sponsors GARMIN MALTA, STARBENE SHOP of Mosta and BBB for their constant support.

That’s all for Now

Yours in Sports

Keith

Bad day ruins title defence

Hi Everyone,

On the 18^th May I participated in the national Duathlon Championships. I was looking forward to this race as I was really determined to defend my title. I trained hard for it. In fact my training was very encouraging. After coming back from my honey moon, I had 7 weeks of training to prepare for the race. They were hard 7 weeks and in these 2 weeks I participated in 2 races.

The first race was on the 21^st April. I participated in the last race on the MAAA 10km road running league. I was expecting much from this race as I was still in the third week of pure training. However I had a great result covering the distance in 34.30 coming 4^th overall and 3^rd Maltese. The 2^nd race was the Malta 113km Half Ironman. I did only the 90km segment. Our team was composed of Steve chetcuti swimmer and David Agius Lia the runner.  I was happy that we came first in the relay team competition. My performance was good, however due to inexperience in doing such a long time trail I didn’t paced it well and the last 30km were very painful. I covered the 90min in 2hrs 29mins with an average speed of 36km/hr.

The Duathlon was held at the Zebbug by pass and it consisted of 8.5km run, 38km bike and 4.25km run. I started at a very fast pace. I was leading the race together with another athlete. I was feeling good and confident. However when I started the bike I had a shock. I started suffering from cramps immediately in the first lap. I started to worry as it was a bad sign. I was still leading the race but I could not make the difference. The cramps continued to increase and I could nt push. The wind got stronger and stronger by time and this didn’t help. Pushing with cramps was devastating for my legs as then they got tired and slipped to second place. At that point I noticed I lost the title

In the second run I still kept on pushing to get the lost ground however cramps increased and at one point I stopped walking and then continued to jog as much as I could till the finish line just to finish it race. At one point I was going to stop as I could not run fast with all those cramps and it was very frustrating. I finished the race in 4^th Place. I was very disappointed with this performance. I was not expecting such results. The cramps ruined my race and even on the bike I was not that strong as I was last year

After the race I talked to my coach and we discovered several factors that all together led to such a result. We think that I got dehydrated before the race because maybe I took a bit more coffee that usual as I was feeling a bit nervous before the race and this results in severe cramps.  Another factor was that it was a very bad weather with strong winds and I rarely perform well in such conditions, and the fact that I didn’t like the route as I never performed well on it was another factor.

We looked a bit on the training and we think that since the training was not targeted on this race specifically is another factor as we have other targets in mind. Training is focused on drafting races for international races so the bike intensity was decreased and since this year we focused a lot on running because of the half marathon the cycling intensity was decreased a lot compared to previous years. It is not a matter of fitness or not training well as after the race I did a performance test and the results clearly shows that I am in the best shape of my life as I registered a personal best in it. We now did some arrangement in the training and in the nutrition in order to avoid such a result again.

All the above factors altogether led to such a performance and this means that it was not meant to be. I am still very disappointed as I wanted to win but after a great season like last year a bad trace had to come. Now I am back to training. Am feeling well and am looking forward for the next races to be back on winning ways. I would like to that my sponsors, GARMIN MALTA, STARBENE SHOP of Mosta, and BBB for their support. A big thanks to my wife Elizabeth because she held my a lot during this difficult period after the race in order to pick up myself and get back stronger

That’s all for now

Yours in Sport

Keith