Finally I won a medal in the TCSSE. After 3 editions coming very close to win a medal, this year after all the hard training I managed to win a bronze medal in this year’s edition which was held in Cyprus. It was such a great emotion to be on the podium and being presented such a medal by the ETU President. One always feels a great sense of satisfaction when a target is reached after all the training and the sacrifices done to achieve it.
I did not had a very fast start as it was a beach start and I am not so good in it, however I immediately settled myself in the leading pack. In the first lap was not feeling that powerful as I expected but I got into a good rhythm in the second lap and came out of the water in 21 minutes. We had to run around 800m for T1 and all my hopes to go under the 2hrs were close to nil. After a good transition I went on my bike and started pushing to enter in a good group.
I managed to catch up 2 athletes, one of them was my teammate Mark and the other one was an athlete from Monaco. I realised that us three were leading the TCSSE. We settled ourselves in a good pace. However I was not feeling good. I vomited and was feeling a bit without energy. Things were not looking good for the run. I registered the best bike of the day covering 43km in 1hour 3mins.
In the Run, I immediately realised that my legs were not in the mood to push. I tried to keep the pace with Mark, who had a really good run but my legs were not in shape. I settled myself in 2nd place, however the athlete from Monaco, overtook me in the 2nd lap of the run. At that point, my aim was to defend the 3rd spot. I finished the race in 3rd place in 2hrs 7mins 30seconds.
I am very pleased with the bronze medal, however I am slightly disappointed because I was close for the gold medal and I know that if I was strong as I should have be, I could fight to win Gold till the end. At least the Gold medal went for Malta and in these occasions one has to put his individual targets to aside and put ones country first.
Now I have to see what went wrong. It was strange that I was not feeling well as I should have been at my peak. I did not expected to have such slow run as I was running really well in most of my track sessions. Considering that transitions were too long and bike and run where longer from the standard distances, the time is good however I was not feeling good within myself. The week leading to the race, was feeling very tired and was a bit sick. Maybe had a virus, however I have to evaluate everything in order that such thing does not happen again.
Yours in Sport
Keith
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