Louise gives Versailles another tri

Versailles Triathlon de la Reine - Sprint - May 21st 2017

Race reporter: Louise

Versailles Triathlon always seems to be one of those races that I say I will never do again, yet there I was waking up at 5:30am thinking to myself.. why!

Reasons for this is I always seem to have a disappointing race;  first year I was overwhelmed by the aggressiveness of the swim and ended up doing breaststroke for 200m, then last year the weather conditions were abysmal and I slipped on some rail tracks and fell off my bike and ripped my tri-suit :(

It was supposed to be a 9am start, but due to some organisational problems we started off rather late.

Once in the water Aurelie, Hilary, Vivi and I positioned ourselves at the front on the right side (furthest point from the first buoy mainly to avoid the washing machine effect), then Orida, Kinga and Wippy positioned themselves towards the back.  The gun went off and we were off.  I think we all had a fairly good swim, mine was not particularly fast but I was happy swimming away from the pack as it was my first open water swim of the year in a competition.

Out the water after accidentally hitting a lady in the head, I ran towards the transition to get my bike.  I was cursing the fact that we had to run up hill to get there.  Luckily I had put my bike into the small chain ring as a saw a few others fall off their bikes after the transition area. The bike course was a bit technical with a few sharp turns a nasty little hill at ~15% but some good flats so we were able to draft (draft legal ofc).  I was able to draft on the flats so clocked up a nice speed, not so much on the descent :/.

The run was twice round the lake, in the opposite direction to last year.  It was a lovely day so the run wasn’t at all bad, I personally realised that doing no running in training really takes its toll as my legs cramped.  Happy to get to the finish line, I saw Aurelie waiting.  I was soon followed by Vivi, Kinga, Hilary Orida and Wippy.

Lovely conditions, great company and a nice picnic to finish the day off.