Triathlon World Cups….. Those are the things we normally watch on triathlon.org like all the other tri geeks to see how all the big boys are going in the lead up to the Olympics. So… we’re packing for the French Divvy 2 race, ready to leave when we check e-mails for the last time to see we can both have a start at Hamburg World Cup! An hour later and already late for our flight to France, we’ve booked flights from Paris to Hamburg and we’re off…. Accommodation will have to wait (we’ll come back to that).
The French Divvy 2 race finally worked out for us, we managed to stay away in a working group of 12 on the bike and come off with 20s on the main pack. At 35 degrees the run was HOT! I’d packed my legs and ran for 1st which was very pleasing. Harry, who pretty much had gimped for me on the bike decided to leave his legs ‘dans le velo’ and ended up 13th. We ended up 3rd in the team standings which left the team manager a bit pissed off! So pissed off in fact that we got dropped at Charles De Gaulle airport that night to sleep on the floor without any dinner. All for the love of sport of course!
After a ‘great’ nights sleep we jumped on the plane to Hamburg, got the bus to the city centre and set about the task of finding a hotel for the week. 1 hour later and we’ve found a 41 Euro a night hotel bang slap in the centre, bargain! It came with free cigarettes (half smoked of course) and a 6 light chandelier, 1 of the lights even worked! Easy access to the city centre and the race and even easier access to the girls who were standing on the corners outside……
We survived 5 nights and by race day were ready to go! Well, Harry was ready to go, I started racing after about 20 minutes by which time I’d missed the front two packs in the swim, not the ideal start. Harry performed his usual magic tricks with ‘the claw’ to appear at the front of the field after the swim. Deciding to give the big boys a chance he waited patiently on the bike and sat in the front group until the run.
Now, when you watch on the little screen on triathlon.org they don’t seem to be running that fast! They’re a little bit quicker in real life, or so Harry assures me. I was still somewhere out the bike course when they started running! Although not being spectacularly fast, Harry put in a solid run to finish 13th which was still a good result in only his 2nd World Cup. I managed to run ok but ended up 24th, minutes down on the winner and never really in the race. Still, great experience all the same.
Saturday night saw another sleep in an airport before a 1 hour BA flight, 1 hour underground, 2 hour South West train and a 2 hour car journey back to Tavi just in time to be tri geeks again and watch the girls race on triathlon.org. They didn’t look to be running that fast…. But I’ll never know, I’m too scared to check if they out ran me or not!
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