10th @ Pontevedra Premium European Cup

13 06 2010

Hi,

It’s been over a week and I said I would at least post some news every week…this update is now overdue! My first week in Europe was spent in London, Islington with my good friends Hayley and her partner Peter. It was great to catch up with them and spend some time seeing parts of London while doing some light training to get ready for my first race in Pontevedra, Spain.

Pontevedra is an old town located off the Atlantic Ocean, just north of Portugal. Not having raced since March I was using this race to do well but to also blow the cobwebs out and get into race mode again after being through a big training block back at home. With Pete as my new coach I was excited to see how the training he’d put me through over the past three months was to pay off.

With water temps at 14 degrees I opted for no swim warm up. This made the first lap of the swim a bit difficult but I did warm up into it. The ride I found rather good, not too hard, unfortunately my group wasn’t working well together and 6 girls got away in front and put time into us every lap. I came off the bike feeling okay and was ready for a good run. I was pegging back a few girls every lap of the run until I was handed a 15 sec penalty that was spent standing still while they ran away from me again. Determined not to let it get to me I put in an effort and caught them back up along with 3 others who were in the front bike pack. I finished in 10th spot…in the money and received some good points in order to lift my ranking.

After my race finished I watched the mens race along with at least 20 000 other people who had turned up and lined the streets to watch Gomez win. He managed to lead out of the water and extended his lead on the bike and run to win by 4 minutes.

I am now off to Vitoria, in the Basque region of Spain to train with some of the other NSW athletes for the next two weeks. I will then race in Belgium.

Also below is a pic of my new swimming cossies compliments of Aquadiva. They are really comfortable to wear with some amazing prints and desings to choose from. There is a link on this page so be sure to check out the new stock that has arrived.

Soph:)