Shropshire Triathlon World Championships Qualifier, 3 Sep 2022

After a long journey up the day before, I wasn't in the right head space for the race. I set out with the intention to finish.

The swim was murky, I was tempted to stick with the front swimmers but couldn't quite catch their feet in the mass start. However, not a bad swim.

Starting the bike, I immediately felt FLAT. I thought I had a flat tyre because of this and kept checking - nope, just me! I was being passed a lot, which was disheartening. Towards the end, I ended up in a bit of a group which helped motivate me to push a little more. We were clearly all conscious of drafting, but all being similar speeds we kept passing each other. 

Going onto the run, I was relieved and planned to just keep comfortable - not easy when it's straight into a gradual climb! With the out and back sections, I was able to estimate where I was in the race and realised I wasn't doing toooo badly. I managed to pick some females off one by one, which felt great. Although it wasn't enough to put me into a top 3 AG finish, I'm not feeling too disheartened now considering I was 5th AG, 15th overall - and that's with an awful bike leg!

Holly-Mei Jones