My Triathlon Journey

Individual

With a large field and strong athletes, I lined up ready to start my debut ETU Junior Cup, in Romania, racing up a category and looking to deliver a strong performance.

Having arrived later on the Wednesday, I had a couple days to do a few bits of exercise to prepare for the individual race on Saturday.

Come race day and ready and well prepared, it looked much the same as the other days with temperatures above 35 degrees and a 12.00pm start, meaning it looked to be around the hottest point of the day.

A non-wetsuit swim as expected, I lined up with the other 70+ athletes to dive into the water and line up for the deep water start.

When the gun went off it was a big effort to the first buoy, which was little over 100m out and about a near 180 degree turn, it made for an extremely physical swim and losing much time being pulled back by others and trying to make my way through everyone else who most had the same.

In the end I came out about 45s back, meaning I had work to do, but after 15/20s the pack was properly close so there were people to catch straight away.

Catching a couple places up to T1 helped, but I was setback with a slow transition, as I was unable to put my helmet strap on as it was tangled and lost about 10s trying to solve the issue.

After, I worked hard early and with a swift mount, and was putting power down to gain as much time as possible on the bike. With a flat and non-technical course, with two dead turns at either end of the 3 lap, 11km course, it slowed dramatically when we hit the turns.

Unfortunately for the first dead turn I was towards the back of the second group which started to form. I did go late of the brakes and slingshot my way past about at least 10/15 people, however someone in front unclipped and couldn’t get their cleat back in, shoving me into oncoming riders as he panicked. This left me with a big effort to do having lost momentum, however, I worked hard for the next mile, gained some position when forcing my way through as far front as I could, then on the next dead turn a gap opened up the inside into the dead turn as everyone threw wide and again I went late of the brakes and flew straight up to 3rd in the group from the back of 20/25 of us.

Afterwards I was able to stay towards the front and with my British teammate from Scotland and another athlete, we were able to make everyone else behind work a lot harder. The other British athlete got a gap briefly before T2, however I pushed hard and it strung out behind me, as I led into T2 with a very strung out group now, and in the best position I could’ve been.

I exited T2 second, half a metre behind my British teammate who came into T2 about half a bike length behind me, and we set off at a fast pace. I went by him 100m later on the small hill and focused on chasing and catching those ahead. I caught back a lot of time on the bike, setting the fastest bike split by near 10s and pulling back what was about 50s (with a poor T1), to 20s coming out of T2.

The heat was high, but I pushed on. I was catching people, and there were about 20/25 or so ahead starting the run. I could sort of feel like I was going to be sick but pushed on because there were a group of at least 6 athletes ahead for the top 10 and I set myself the aim of catching that, pulling back 10/15s over the second lap of 1km, (2.5km total run distance). I caught them with about 600/800m to go and then threw up straight away whilst overtaking, and then did so a couple more times, about 6 times over the whole run, but pushing on as I’d worked hard. After the last time I caught one more place for 6th and ended up just 1s off 4th and only 10/15s off top 3, securing the third fastest run split too.

I’m happy with how I performed, and is a bit gutting in one respect that I couldn’t get those couple more places just ahead, however I was being sick when I would’ve wanted to start a kick, so can be happy with how deep I went, and performed against older and high quality competition.

Results link here

Mixed Team Relay (MTR)

On Sunday, the following day after the individual, came the mixed relay, in the format of female, male, female, male, corresponding with this Olympic cycle.

With a 250m swim, 7km bike and 1.5km run it proved to be another fast race.

I was going on the 4th and final leg, but by my leg there was a quite a gap to the front, myself starting with 2 and a half minutes time deficit to the leader.

I still went hard, aiming to catch as much time as possible. In the position we were in there was one athlete not too far behind me but I gapped them and ended up doing pretty much the whole race solo.

The swim went well benefiting from the clear water I had, and being only 8s off a top 3 quickest swim split for my leg overall and less than 15s off a top 3 fastest swim split overall, showing progress from the day before.

T1 was much better than the previous day, going from 1.13 the day before to a minute flat, and setting the fastest T1 split overall.

On the bike I pulled back time solo to the two working together ahead, giving me a closer gap to those ahead for a fast run.

With a swift transition to the run I had about 10s to close. With a short two laps, plus a run from T2 and to the finish, I closed time, setting the 2nd fastest run split overall, and finished just 1s behind the Romanian team and the guy who won the day before, but he kicked at the end when I was pushing deep after a hard solo effort, so I can still be happy with my individual performance in the relay and gaining time for us to finish 7th overall as a team.

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I enjoyed my time racing in Romania a lot with the GB team, and racing up a category like a couple others with strong elite Junior competition felt like a great preparation race for European Youth Champs coming up in Austria next month.

I have two more big international championships left this year with European Youth Champs on the road in Austria in just over 3 weeks, and then XTERRA World Champs two weeks after where I’ll be looking to defend my title from last year.

I’m excited for the opportunities upcoming and if anyone can support me with funding support or sponsorship I would be very grateful as I’ve been tyring hard to find some, with the increasing costs of racing which increases as I do so more internationally.

You can donate and support at my Elite Athlete Fund profile here and read my story too!, or feel free to contact me at finlaygoodman14@outlook.com

Thanks for reading and I appreciate your time