My Triathlon Journey

A week ago I was racing my first international triathlon, on the biggest stage yet, at the XTERRA Youth World Championships in the Italian Dolomites.

Sunday marked XTERRA’s first ever Youth World Champs, in an effort to promote and provide opportunities for youth racing and involvement into XTERRA’s off-road triathlon.

The racing would be my longest yet, with a 750m swim in the lake, followed by a 16km mountain bike, up the mountain and back down, with 600m of elevation gain, before rounding out with a 5km off-road, technical trail run, with 150m of ev gain. Pretty tough…

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Pre-race build up and Recces

I drove down to Italy from England, about 15+ hours of driving (excluding stops), so it was a long journey.

I arrived on Thursday morning for Sunday’s racing and managed to get a lap in to understand the bike course. The first two days were pretty much non-stop rain and visibility was low, with low cloud since we were 1000m+ up at times. The course was running really muddy and slick on practice, making the technical rooty and rocky climbs a little more techy and on some of the rock slabs on the downhill, it made it feel like riding on ice.

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The sun came out on the days up to the race and the lap dried up come my race, making the mud a little stickier, but was obviously still there.

The lake was about 14°C so felt quite icy when I took a swim on the Saturday, but was bearable for Sunday morning’s racing.

The 5km run lap featured a bit of open flat gravel tracks but definitely didn’t limit itself with hills and technical terrain! There were parts of the course that became unrunnable on the climbs at times, peaking at 45% at various points and a little less steeper for prolonged periods.

RACE DAY.

I had no clue really the quality and strengths of athletes I was racing, having not really raced any of them before, so came into Worlds with an open mind of the guys I was racing against, but knowing the competition would at least be strong.

Watching the sun come down the mountain side to the lake, I had a couple hours until it all started. With my brother racing first in the Youth A race, I was racing in the Youth B (16-17 yrs) category, being 16, however with the Juniors (18-19) alongside at the same time.

SWIM

Warm ups had been fine, I’d set everything up and felt good and ready for the racing ahead.

Nearly 100 of us crowded the holding area to be let onto the start before being let onto the line a minute before go time.

I ran to the furthest end looking for the most direct line and cleanest start.

When the horn went off, I ran in for a couple seconds before diving into Lake Molveno’s chilly water. It was pretty nice to swim in Italy’s cleanest lake, since most places in my country are brown water and you can’t see your hand half a metre in front of you.

Anyway, I’d timed the dive to perfection and had a bodylength or at least half on the people around me instantly. Sensing strong opportunity and clear water, I carried the effort and was top 5 to the first buoy 100/200m out. With probably my best swim start I’ve ever had, I found some feet after but had tried to maintain strong pace earlier to avoid the grouping at the buoys’ turnpoints.

I stayed with a group of a couple, of which the leader lead for 4th, and carried on myself on the hips of a swimmer to T1, before exiting 5th (including juniors).

BIKE

After T1 and getting my nutrition on and bike out, I was in 6th or so but unaware what position exactly at the time. We formed a group of 6 or 8 by the first climb, a couple kms in.

The gravel climb was quite a wake up and tested the legs early as we overtook a few and dropped some from our group to become 4.

Coming across the road near Andalo, the gravel climb ended and it was onto the more technical climbing.

The road crossing lead straight into a relentless section of about half a mile, averaging out at a 18% gradient! I got dropped from the group here and was really feeling it now. The group started to split but I caught back to the guy who was 3rd from our group, before he then again dropped me further towards the top of the mountain.

Onto the downhill, where I stayed in position until transition, with the fatigue already, riding a hardtail compared to the full sus bikes majority of other people had, it was jolting on the way down but I managed to get a gel down, when we were onto the village roads and hairpins down through Molveno to the lake.

Coming of the bike, I was now 5th Youth B, and over 2 minutes behind the leader, so had dropped some places and had time to make up.

RUN

Running out of T2 I’d made up maybe a couple seconds but now focused on picking of the guys ahead.

After catching and passing a few by the first off-road climb a mile in, I wanted to progress forward and began to overtake athletes one by one whilst I gapped ones behind me.

After passing a good number I was ahead of all Juniors and in 3rd Youth B. I carried the pace through the undulating and technical climbs and caught 2nd Youth B just after the techy run sections finished, and we were running alongside the lake.

With no clue of how far ahead the leader was and unaware of my position at the time, I maintained the effort and saw one of the guys with the lead bike, less than a minute later.

With about 1km left I went straight by and took the lead, not completely aware of my position yet but with some decent understanding.

Onto the grass flat alongside the lake where everyone watched, I picked up the pace again to maintain my gap and by the wooden bridge, 100m before the finish, I had sized out the gap quite quickly and then knew.

I ran down and under the bridge into the finish chute and with a gap created, had time to cross the line as the first ever Youth B World Champion!

After a sort of comeback, I guess, on the run pulling back 2+ minutes and then creating a gap of about half a minute to 2nd in the final stage, I was finished and exhausted, but put out my best performance when it mattered most. (Check the final image in the story here)

Thanks to everyone who donated to the GoFundMe, I genuinely would not of even got to Italy, let alone the World Champs without your support. I am incredibly grateful and the support from friends and family too…

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Thanks very much for reading,

Fin

• Photo Credit to Alice Russolo, Carel du Plessis and XTERRA PLANET.