Congratulations to Biggleswade AC member, Emily Varley, who recently represented Great Britain at the World Triathlon Championships and achieved a magnificent 2nd placing in the duathlon and 6th in the aquathlon. Read Emily's event report below:
At the end of April I travelled to Ibiza for the World Triathlon Championships. I was competing in the standard distance duathlon (10k run, 40k bike, 5k run) and the aquathon (1k swim, 5k run). It was very exciting to go away, and the weather was amazing! 20 degrees and sunny every day we were there!
The first event was the duathlon. The pressure was on because this was my preferred event, and I won the sprint distance of this event at the European Championships in Bilbao last year! We started at 8am before it got really hot. The run snaked around the harbour of Santa Eularia, and even included a sandy section! Very Chariots of Fire! The run was hard and I went into transition in 5th place, the first woman on the run did a 10k in 35 minutes!! I knew I would have to dig deep on the bike leg to get on the podium!
The cycle was long straight loops out of the town, perfect for getting some speed. I managed to claw my way back into 2nd place, but absolutely spent all of the energy! Going on to the final 5km run I knew it would only be a matter of time before the people behind caught me up! I managed to limp to the finish line still in 2nd place; 3rd place had managed to gain an entire 2 MINUTES on me over the course of the final run! It was a relief to finish, and we treated ourselves to mojitos at a beach bar. Admittedly this probably wasn't the best post-race nutrition, but it was absolutely delicious, and very needed. The pressure was off now I'd managed to bag a podium place!
The aquathon the next day didn't start until 10am, what a lie in! I even got to have breakfast in the hotel; although I restrained myself from eating chocolate croissants before the event! The swim took place in the sea, an out and back loop around some buoys which were basically impossible to see. This is a common problem I often encounter with open water swimming - it is basically impossible to see where you are supposed to be going! Despite this the swim went reasonably well, I came out of the water in the top 10, even though my legs didn't seem to want to do anything helpful like propel me through the water. The run was tough - it was hot, I was already salty from the sea, and my legs were basically on strike by this point! Nevertheless, I managed to get into 6th place!