This was the first triathlon I had done in well over a year, so I didn’t really know what to expect, but I was very excited to see where I was at compared to the rest of the British guys considering all the hard work I had been putting in over lockdown. It started off well, after a solid swim I got onto the bike and managed to close down three riders who managed to get about a 5-10 second gap after T1. We managed to stay away from the chase group for 16km but as we approached the final lap on the bike we got caught by a group of around 10 athletes. This didn’t concern me too much as I was backing my run ability and knew that I could put down a fast enough run. time to qualify as long as nothing went wrong. The last lap of the bike was very punchy with several attacks in and out of the dead turns, I covered these attacks which allowed me to stay towards the front of the group and eventually come off the bike first going into T2. As I came out of transition my run legs didn’t feel great and I was starting to feel the lack of ‘race sharpness’ that people talk about. After 1km I started to feel more like myself and went to the front and pushed on the pace, my main aim was to try and make the run hard from there to make sure I could finish in the top 2 U23’s. After leading the run for 4km I got passed by Connor Bentley and Matthew Wright who flew away from me as I started. to struggled in the closing 800m. Nevertheless I finished 3rd overall and 2nd U23, which was enough to qualify me for the European U23 Champs in Kitzbuhel.
